It has almost been three weeks since the 2023 football season has ended, but that has not slowed down the news cycle for the Pitt football program. Pitt hired a new offensive coordinator this week in Kade Bell, a different type of a coach than Pat Narduzzi has typically has pursued in the past, and we get into more about what that hire means. Signing day is on the horizon and we take a look at where Pitt’s recruiting class stands heading into Wednesday.
The Pitt basketball team is proving to be one of the more gifted offensive teams the program has ever had and we take a look at where they stand heading into the 11th game of the season tomorrow.
We have plenty discuss, as usual, in this week's 3-2-1 Column.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
Pitt gets an offensive coordinator
Pat Narduzzi is not unfamiliar with the process of hiring a new offensive coordinator, but for Pitt’s head coach coming off of his ninth season on the job, this most recent one felt a little different. Narduzzi has had five different offensive coordinators work for him during his Pitt tenure, but the bottom fell out with Frank Cignetti Jr. who was fired one day after the 2023 season ended back on November 26th.
Pitt’s offense ranks 114th out of 131 FBS teams in both total yards and overall scoring heading into bowl season. It was a colossal failure from top to bottom with how the offensive production got so bad this season. Narduzzi had the best season of his head coaching tenure in 2021 (11-3) and also the worst (3-9) just two years later. It was a swift fall from grace and the offensive production was undeniably the main culprit. Pitt only scored more than 30 points twice in the 2023 season. In fact, the Panthers failed to even score more than 20 points in six games. It was unacceptable and the change was inevitable.
It took exactly two weeks from when Cignetti was fired to the announcement of Kade Bell being named the new offensive coordinator for the Pitt Panthers on Sunday. Bell is in a totally different mold than what Narduzzi previously valued in who he hired to run his offense. Previous play callers like Jim Chaney, Matt Canada, Shawn Watson, Mark Whipple, and Cignetti all were veteran coaches, some with pro experience, and were all on the older side when Narduzzi hired them to lead Pitt’s offense.
Bell, age 30, is none of those things.
The young assistant comes to Pitt with very little experience of coaching at the highest level of college football, but he does bring a rather impressive resume he has cultivated in a short amount of time. Bell has been the offensive coordinator at Western Carolina for the past three seasons, working under his father, head coach Kerwin Bell. With the younger Bell calling the plays, the offense flourished, especially in this past 2023 season. Western Carolina led the FCS in yards (504.1) and finished fourth in scoring at 37.5 points per game.
Bell also had a successful run of calling plays for Valdosta State and Tusculum at the Division-2 level as well. Wherever he has been, his offenses score points and that is ultimately the name of the game and Narduzzi admitted as much in his final postgame press conference after losing to Duke 30-19.
“We’ve definitely got to score more points, that’s a fact,” the Pitt coach said back on November 25th and a few weeks later his newest offensive coordinator hire seemingly reflects that very notion.
Narduzzi has never really hidden the fact that he knows what he knows. He is a defensive coach at heart, and while he oversees the whole program, he may shade more towards the defensive side of the ball with his extra time. As a result, the offense is usually more or less governed freely by the offensive coordinator. I think with that line of thinking in mind, it always made sense Narduzzi put his trust in veteran coaches to run his offenses, but that has not always been a failsafe approach and as we saw with Cignetti, it really proved to be more of a detriment.
Narduzzi broke from his usual line of thinking with hiring Bell. He saw an up and coming coach and took a gamble on him and did not opt for a journeyman coach who may have been the safer option. Bell does come with some question marks and concerns to be sure. He is obviously young and does not have any experience coaching at a power-four level and most of his resume has been built working for his dad or through his connections.
The experience concerns are legitimate, but his offenses have produced at different levels and that is hard to ignore. It may take time to get things operating how he wants, but given his youthful ambition, it seems like this is a job Bell is fully invested in and trying to hit the ground running. For that end, this hire has the potential to pay off long term for Pitt.
Narduzzi broke from his usual preferences from the type of coach he hired but also the style of offense that coach will bring to the program. Bell’s motto is #PlayFastScoreFaster and that is certainly a different type of style that Pitt has played with under Narduzzi.
It is not hard to picture that Pitt would have won a couple more games had the offense been slightly more effective this season, because that’s basically all the team needed to flip a few results. For a defensive coach like Narduzzi, an extra score or two a game, and Pitt’s 3-9 season could have been 7-5. He could have sought out a better version of what Cignetti was doing and called it a day for his next coordinator.
I think the hiring of Bell represents a little bit of Narduzzi stepping out of his comfort zone, however. Sure, he would like to win the time of possession battle and let his defense sit on teams, but that leaves you with little room for error. Pitt needs to score more points and the tempo of the game might be a little faster than what a defensive minded coach like Narduzzi prefers, but I think it was a concession he needed to make to keep up with the times.
Bell should be able to upgrade Pitt’s offense rather quickly, mainly because there is nowhere to go but up, but by how much of an improvement he makes will be the biggest question heading into his first season. While a moderate upgrade would be a step in the right direction for the program, Bell’s ambitions obviously go higher. He wants to show his offense can work at a higher level and I think having a coach with a chip on his shoulder can be an advantage for Pitt.
Bell has some pretty important tasks this offseason in order to make everything can come together before Pitt’s 2024 opening game on August 31st against Kent State at Acrisure Stadium. The biggest, of course, is figuring out a plan at quarterback.
Nate Yarnell and Christian Veilleux are two pieces to the puzzle, but does Bell’s plan involved getting another option in the mix? I think it does and it is something I think he is working on that already.
Finding the right quarterback for next season is huge, but Bell’s other primary objective is finding ways to maximize the retuning players he has to work with for next season. Despite the offense struggling this season, there should be a good starting point. I think Pitt has to feel some level of confidence with Rodney Hammond at running back, Gavin Bartholomew at tight end, and a trio of receivers in Konata Mumpfield, Kenny Johnson, and Daejon Reynolds. Those are all guys who can make plays, and I think part of Bell’s pitch during his interview with Narduzzi to get the job was having a plan for all of those guys for next season.
Beyond getting a quarterback and utilizing what he has, Bell is going to try to fill in the gaps as best he can for next season. Pitt has been active in searching for offensive line and wide receiver help in the transfer portal. There is room to add another weapon at running back and tight end as well.
Bell has a lot of work in front of him, but getting him hired and announced before this important recruiting weekend coming up and also signing day next week was important. It will be a while before we know if his offense can score points, which is what he was brought here to do, but for now all eyes will be on how he builds the roster before next season. It was an interesting hire by Narduzzi, but that part is over, and now he is being thrown right in the fire to try to fix Pitt’s offense.
This is just how college sports are now
I think it was sometime after one of Pitt’s players announced, through the team's NIL collective X (Twitter) account, that they were staying with the school for the 2024 season, that I had this revelation: We are simply at a point when a freshman wide receiver has to announce he is coming back to the same school to be a sophomore. Not a freshman All-American, just an every day freshman football player.
I do not know how or why we got here, but that is just the way things work now, I guess.
There is no sense in trying to hide what things are anymore. This is open free agency, and apparently you can transfer as many times as you would like, as we learned earlier this week. Tampering is not a rule that is being enforced, either. A player does not need to enter the transfer portal to know what his options are financially, those figures are being dangled in front of him while the season is happening.
Pitt star tight end Gavin Bartholomew was openly being recruited a few weeks ago, and he was up front about it too and mentioned it on a podcast like it was normal business, and again he was never in the transfer portal.
Like I said, it is just how things are now.
College football teams are now at a juncture where it will be difficult to build anything long term, because at this point it is all about just fielding the best team each season. Does Notre Dame really need to recruit a high school quarterback anymore? The Irish plucked 2023 quarterback Kenny Minchey from the Panthers’ recruiting class. Minchey is never going to play in South Bend because they started Sam Hartman from Wake Forest this past year and the Irish will roll with Duke’s Riley Leonard next year, they are sure to just go find a new quarterback from the transfer portal in 2025.
There is less of an emphasis for certain teams to develop what they have, because their NIL collective can go fix the problem (for a small fee, of course), at the end of the season. With less of an emphasis on development, the same is being trickled down to recruiting. Why sign 25 guys when you can sign 15 and go get ten transfers for immediate help?
It will be hard to get the toothpaste back in the tube at this point as well. Allowing NIL was eventually going to turn into free agency, I just do not think the NCAA realized it would be full blown chaos by year three. It is also becoming abundantly clear the organization has little interest in offering any kind of regulation for the transfer portal/NIL phenomenon that is happening in its biggest sport either. Nobody is telling these schools what they can or can’t do, and that kind of has us in this limbo of uncertainty.
That is just a broad glimpse into the situation, but as it pertains to Pitt, the chaotic nature of college football offseason has hit the Panthers quite a bit since the 2023 season ended. In the past three weeks, we have seen 12 different players his the transfer portal, but just this week Brandon George and Nate Temple decided to return to Pitt.
Of those other ten, some feel more influenced by NIL than others. Deandre Jules, a projected starter at defensive tackle, has since committed to South Carolina. Samuel Okunlola, who was Pitt’s most promising young defensive end, has offers to play for Colorado, Florida State, Ole Miss, Washington, and more.
The losses are one thing, but I guess you have to chalk up player retention as wins? Bartholomew’s story was well documented, but then again a number of Pitt players have felt the need to announce a return to the program for next season. We have seen returning to school announcements from Jordan Bass, Solomon Deshields, Ryan Baer, Branson Taylor, Rodney Hammond, and more. If there needs to be announcement that a player is returning to Pitt, then there was obviously something Alliance 412, Pitt’s NIL collective, had to do to make them feel that way, right?
Again, it is just the way it is now.
I know we are hyped focused on everything that happens around Pitt, but as I look around at other teams, this whole hectic offseason is unavoidable. Pitt’s 3-9 record did not necessarily play a role in why the offseason looks how it has to this point, because it is becoming more and more clear that nobody is immune to this. Pitt could have gone 10-2 this year and would still be at the exact same risk of losing a player like Okunlola, and that’s the sobering thing about this new age of college sports. It’s all about money, it always has been, but now it’s magnified.
In much more short winded way of saying all this: I think having to tweet you are returning to the team you already play for is really dumb, but I also get why it is happening. This is we we are and it isn’t going away.
Pitt Volleyball falls short
The Pitt volleyball program has undeniably been the best team on campus for years now. Dan Fisher’s team reached the final four for a third consecutive year, but the Panthers concluded their season last night in disappointing fashion, with a 3-0 sweep to No. 1 overall seed Nebraska in the national semifinals in Tampa.
Pitt has now reached three straight final fours, but has been bounced three times in a row before making the national championship game.The Panthers have proven themselves to be a top-10 program over the course of the past decade, but bringing him the gold has alluded them and that does seem like the next step this program needs to accomplish, fair or not.
Last night’s match produced a number of uncharacteristic service errors, 22 in total, and 13 in the first set. Pitt only held leads in the early stages of the first set and it felt like the Panthers struggled to build any momentum and go on any types of runs. Nebraska simply looked like the better team from top to bottom and kept Pitt arm’s length the entire match.
I do not exactly know if Pitt or Fisher could have done anything schematically in that match in particukar, because at the end of the day Nebraska is just the better team. What Pitt can do is continue to plug away in search of a national title. This program has earned those kind of lofty expectations and given everything that has happened, moving forward the expectation is still for Pitt to contend for conference titles every year and eventually a breakthrough can happen.
Pitt has had some good players pass through the program in recent years, which is something that comes naturally when a program makes four straight Elite Eight’s and three Final Fours. The Panthers have two budding stars in freshman Olivia Babcock and Torrey Stafford, and those are players Fisher can continue to build around fur further runs in the tournament.
Pitt volleyball is close as a program can be in terms of winning a national championship, but the next step is just that: winning a title. The Panthers have continued to put themselves among the nation’s elite, and it is just a matter of taking that next step, but this program has shown steady signs of doing just that under Fisher. Pitt went from a team sneaking into the tournament around 2016 to one of the top contenders in the Big Dance year after year in more recent seasons.
Pitt ended the season with another ACC Championship, the program’s fifth. The Panthers garnered numerous individual honors from the league and also nationally from the AVCA. There will be banners hung again in the Fitzgerald Field House and the team’s place as the best program on campus will go unchallenged for another year, but still it is that national title that is escaping them. It might not be reasonable to expect a national title, but now that Pitt has entered these waters with all that success, it does feel like the one thing that is missing.
TWO THINGS WE KNOW
What should we expect on signing day?
Most of the attention around Pitt’s offseason has been about the transfer portal, rightfully so, but the class of 2024 will get the spotlight for the next couple of days. The NCAA will holds its early signing period next week, but effectively the ‘new’ signing day occurs on Wednesday December 20th.
On that day, most high school prospects across the country will sign letter of intents. Some may wait out for the original signing day in early February, but for all intents and purposes, this upcoming Wednesday is the day everyone pays attention to now. So now that signing day is upon on it, what can we expect to see?
Well, Pitt is heading into the final run to finalize its 2024 recruiting class, and if you are a member to Panther-Lair.com, then you have seen us tracking Narduzzi’s in-home visits for the past two weeks and now the last thing left to do is have these prospects sign on the dotted line.
Heading into Wednesday, Pitt currently has 19 commitments in its 2024 class. The class is ranked 38th nationally according to Rivals.com, but that number may fluctuate a bit with more commitments happening across the country in the next few days.
I think the expectation, as I write this now, is that all 19 players currently committed will be signing on Wednesday. There does not feel like anyone swaying late in the process, but in fairness that band-aid has already been ripped off to some degree.
Pitt has lost four commitments throughout the process. Chasen Johnson was committed to Pitt for about a week in June, before opting for UCF instead. The others held commitments a little longer. Day Day Farmer, surprisingly committed to Pitt nearly a year ago and maintained that for a while before ending up at UCF as well. Eric Ingwerson, a tight end from Nebraska, committed to Pitt but ended up with the Cornhuskers anyway.
Yasin Willis flipping to Syracise is the most recent one. The four-star running back committed to Pitt in the summer, but the hiring of Fran Brown in Syracuse got him changing his mind. Willis, a New Jersey native, was drawn to Brown, a fellow New Jersey native, and decided to back away from his Pitt pledge earlier this week to drop Pitt's commitment total to 19. I think at that point that should be the last action we see from the recruiting class in terms of movement.
Pitt looks poised to sign the other 19 prospects it has committed on Wednesday, and will have a chance to make it an even 20 as well. The Panthers are hosting 2024 defensive back Jah Jah Boyd from Philadelphia this weekend for an official visit. Boyd visited Indiana last week and the decision appears like it will come down to these two programs.
The class has its strengths and weaknesses for sure. Pitt has 4 four-star recruits committed, the most in a single recruiting class for the program since the 2016 signing class. Of the 19 recruits, 11 of them are on the defensive side of the ball, including all of those four stars.
The class definitely looks like it tried to address the trenches first and foremost. Pitt has five offensive line commitments and an additional five from the defensive line. The headliners are four-star defensive linemen Jahsear Whittington, Francis Brewu, and Sincere Edwards.
Pitt also added three linebackers and three defensive backs in this class. The linebackers are fronted by four-star Aliquippa commit Cameron Lindsey, who is coming off a state title run at the high school level.
The class does seem to be lacking some weapons, however. Pitt does not have a tight end committed and only has one receiver so far in the class. With the loss of Willis, the prized offensive recruit is now Juelz Goff, a three-star running back from York, Pa.
So what are we expecting on Wednesday? Well, I can say we are not expecting much to change on Pitt’s commitment list. You can never say never, especially in this era, but it should be an uneventful signing day, and sometimes those are the best ones.
Can a fourth scoring option emerge for Pitt?
The Pitt basketball team has now played its first ten games this year, so they are about a third of the way through the regular season heading into tomorrow’s game against South Carolina State. The Panthers are off to a 7-3 start and through these first ten games, we can start to see some patterns developing.
One thing that is becoming clear about this team is that Pitt has three guys who are going to do the bulk of the scoring. Blake Hinson is off to a scorching hot start as he leads the ACC in scoring with 21.9 points per game. Hinson is the reigning ACC Player of the Week after he torched West Virginia for 29 points on nine made three-pointers in a record setting performance.
The high-scoring Panthers also feature Bub Carrington, one of the top freshmen in the country. Carrington took home ACC Rookie of the Week honors after averaging 16 points and seven assists in two games last week.
Ishmael Leggett is not drawing as many headlines, but has scored in double figures in all ten games and is averaging 14.4 per contest. Hinson has reached double figures in all ten games with six 20-point efforts. Carrington has reached double figures nine out of ten tries.
Having three scoring options of that caliber has carried Pitt to some wins, but that is where some of the problems start for this team. The rest of the roster has only produced nine double-digit scoring efforts combined. Guillermo Diaz Graham has done it three times. Starters Federiko Federiko and Zack Austin each have two double-digit scoring games, while Jaland Lowe and Jorge Diaz Graham each have one.
Pitt is lacking a fourth scoring option and it has cost the team games already. In Pitt’s three losses, it was Carrington, Hinson, and Leggett doing most of the scoring and it was not enough to carry the load. The rest of the team combined for 19 points in a loss to Missouri and even worse with just 13 in the defeat to Clemson.
It is something that needs addressed, but I think that is easier said than done. This requires one player to sort of take their game a step forward and the other six member of the rotation have all been inconsistent at best.
I think the candidate who was expected to be that fourth option was Zack Austin and his first ten games have been underwhelming to say the least. Austin is averaging just 6.3 points per game and is shooting a career-low 21% from three-point range.
Austin came to Pitt known for great athleticism, which he has displayed at times, but also some scoring ability. He had over 120 career made three’s at High Point, but has not shown the ability to knock down shots for Pitt so far this season. It does not look like he is on the verge of turning it on either. Capel played Austin a season-low 17 minutes against West Virginia, then only played him for six minutes against Cansius a few days later and confirmed it had nothing to do with an injury, so a message is trying to be sent. His minutes are being lost to William Jeffress currently, who is not really noted for his offense, either.
The player who has shown the most promise of being a viable fourth option is Guillermo Diaz Graham. He has three double-digit scoring efforts this season, including 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting against West Virginia just last week. Diaz Grahan is hitting 56% of his shots, up considerably from last season and is shooting an impressive 40% on his three-pointers. He is not starting at the moment, but has played more minutes than Federiko Federiko in each of the past two games.
Federiko provides more in the way of post defense then Diaz Graham, but that might be the only thing at the moment. Federiko’s numbers are down this season and they weren’t all that high to begin with. He has only scored 14 points total over the past four games. Rebounding is one of his strengths, but he has yet to lead the team in rebounds in any game this season. Leggett, a 6’3” guard, is pacing the team in that category. Like Austin, it’s hard to see a sudden revelation here with Federiko's production given the minutes being decreased.
Guillermo Diaz Graham seems like the best bet, but his brother Jorge can be a wildcard, as can freshman guard Jaland Lowe. Jorge is a career 36% shooter from three-point range, which is a unique skill at 6’11”. His minutes have been spotty and the same can be said for Lowe. The freshman guard has only been playing 10.3 minutes per game over the last four contests.
OK, so Pitt has three consistent scorers, two starters were are battling to keep their jobs, and only one player off the bench who has been showing any capability of scoring consistently. Pitt is going to have explore what it would look like having Gullermo Diaz Graham playing starter minutes because the alternatives just have not shown much over these first ten games.
Pitt became tough to defend last season with four starters who averaged double figures plus the league’s sixth man of the year. That team could beat you in a different manner each night with someone new driving the bus and it made them tough defend. Obviously this team is different and Hinson, Carrington, and Leggett are going to handle most of the workload, but on some nights, there is going to be a need for that fourth. As Pitt gets set for its 11th game of the season, there is still not much of an answer to this question as who it will be.
ONE PREDICTION
Pitt scores 100 on Saturday
The last section sort of came off like I am down on this Pitt team for only having three good scoring options. Well, the three ones that they have are fun to watch, particularly Hinson and Carrington. Pitt is playing an unprecedented brand of basketball for the program, at least in modern times.
With that being said, I think Pitt notches an impressive achievement as a team tomorrow. I predict Pitt will score over 100 points tomorrow. South Carolina State is 342nd in team defense out of 351 Division-1 basketball teams. The Bulldogs give up 81.8 points per game.
On the flip side, the Panthers are one of the best offensive teams in the country. Pitt is second in the ACC averaging 82.5 points per game. The Panthers have scored over 100 points twice this season which is the first time that has happened at Pitt since the 2015-16 season.
The last time Pitt had more than 100 points three times in a season? Well, that was back in 1990, when that Paul Evans coached team led by Jason Matthews and Brain Shorter scored over 100 points five times.
So if Pitt gets over 100 points tomorrow, it will be the first time a team has done something like that in over 30 years, which would not be too bad. But hey, even if Pitt does not eclipse 100 points tomorrow, it is pretty apparent that this team score the ball and has one of the most exciting duos in college basketball.
Hinson has range when he steps on the court and some of the step-back jumpers Carrington pulls off are NBA worthy. They are fun to watch, if nothing else, and I have no idea how far those two will take them this season, but I’m willing to watch them shoot a thousand more three-pointers to see where they end up.
It is noteworthy number, albeit early, but Pitt is averaging 82.5 points per game. The ACC schedule still looms, so the offensive numbers may take a dip, but historically only five Pitt teams have ever averaged over 80 points per game in a season.
Back in 1987, Pitt averaged 84.3 points per game with two future first round picks Charles Smith and Jerome Lane dominating down low. The 1990 and 1991 teams both averaged over 80 a game, so did the 1972 team with Billy Knight. And of course, the 1964 squad with Brian Generalovich and Johnstown native, Dave Roman, scored 81.8 points per game.
But this team, this Pitt team score. I think there is a chance this becomes the sixth team in school history to average over 80 points per game, and they have the scoring punch to do it, and toppling over 100 points tomorrow should help the totals.
