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In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about what went wrong in Pitt's loss to North Carolina, the path ahead for the hoops team, the 2021 football schedule, returning seniors and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The big three
Well, Tuesday night didn’t go so well for Pitt, as you might have heard.

In some ways, we should have seen it coming. North Carolina hasn’t looked great this season, but the Tar Heels brought a few things to the table that made them a tough matchup for Pitt. Like size; that was a big one - quite literally - and it played out on the court with UNC’s standout post players Armando Bacot and Garrison Brooks more or less getting whatever they wanted.

But Pitt being undersized wasn’t really anything new. UNC might have been a bit bigger than most opponents the Panthers have faced, but as Jeff Capel pointed out after the game, Pitt has been the smaller team more often than not this season, and the Panthers have handled it just fine for the most part.

So it wasn’t just about size. It was about something else, and I think that something was actually two things.

Two players.

To put it as simply as possible, Pitt just won’t have a great chance of winning if Xavier Johnson and Au’Diese Toney go 5-of-18 from the floor and combine to score 15 points. The issues were further complicated by Toney, who entered the game as the Panthers’ second-leading rebounder, grabbing just two boards, although that was probably more about the size differential.

The truth is, more than its height advantage, North Carolina attacked Pitt with a game plan that was well-prepared and well-executed. The Tar Heels knew what the Panthers wanted to do and they played well enough to take it away.

That even contributed to Justin Champagnie’s performance, or at least his production. Sure, the star sophomore scored 23 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, but he only attempted nine field goals and just four of those came from inside the arc.

That seems like a stat that is almost unbelievable. Four shots from two-point range for Champagnie, who is currently averaging about 10 shots per game inside the arc? How does that happen?

It happens because the opponent has scouted you well and prevents you from running your offense. UNC’s defense limited Champagnie’s opportunities by preventing his teammates from getting him the ball - and he relies heavily on his teammates since his game is not built on creating his own shot - and the Tar Heels extended that defensive preparation and execution to hold Toney in check and cramp Johnson’s style.

If you can execute your defense well enough against Pitt to more or less control what those three players do, then you’re going to have a great chance to win. For UNC, the size advantage was how the Tar Heels capitalized, but the preparation and execution on defense were the foundation.

Still confident
It’s weird to say this after the momentum of a three-game winning streak has crumbled in a two-game losing streak, but I still have some confidence about this Pitt team.

The scenario I just described, where an opponent is able to execute its defensive game plan at a high enough level to keep Champagnie, Toney and Johnson all largely in check - that scenario is much harder to achieve than it is to discuss.

North Carolina did it, and future opponents will look to replicate what the Tar Heels did. But I don’t think they’ll all be able to pull it off, and the reason I don’t think they’ll all be able to pull it off is because Champagnie, Toney and Johnson are still very good players, regardless of what happened on Tuesday night.

Few teams this season have accomplished what UNC did in that regard, which makes me think that Tuesday night’s game might be more of an outlier than a harbinger of things to come. Sure, that loss came on the heels of a stunning defeat at Wake Forest, but that one was different. That was about a team - and, in particular, one guy - getting white-hot from three while Pitt missed seven free throws in a one-point game.

Nothing was exposed in that game. The poor free throw shooting was emphasized, perhaps, but nothing was exposed, and I don’t think that loss invalidated the win over Duke or the wins over Syracuse. Pitt is still the team that beat the Orange by 20 and held off a late surge from Blue Devils.

And I think they’ll be that team again.

I don’t know if the free throw shooting will improve, but I also don’t think they’ll run into a team that goes 15-of-32 from three again. Nor do I think they’ll see too many teams that defend them as well as North Carolina did.

I’m sure Pitt will have its ups and downs this season, but I think there will be more ups than downs along the way, with Champagnie continuing to play at a top-of-the-conference level and Toney and Johnson contributing at a high level more often than not.

In addition to that, I think Femi Odukale will continue to mature and develop, and there were some interesting flourishes in Ithiel Horton’s game on Tuesday night that could turn into something. Even Abdoul Karim Coulibaly is giving Pitt more post production, which is a positive (as long as he stays out of foul trouble).

There’s talent and some cohesiveness on this team, and I think we’ll see it look more like the Pitt we saw in the early January wins than the recent losses.

So that’s how it’s going to be
There was some football news this week, as the ACC announced the 2021 schedule. We already knew the names and dates for the nonconference schedule - UMass, at Tennessee, Western Michigan and New Hampshire on the four Saturdays in September - and we knew the opponents in the conference games, too, so those weren’t the big reveals.

No, what we learned on Thursday was the order of Pitt’s eight ACC games. Here are a few observations:

- I said we learned the order of Pitt’s conference games on Thursday, but there was one thing we could have bet on: a Thursday night for the home game against North Carolina. Since Pitt joined the ACC in 2013, the Panthers have hosted the Tar Heels on four occasions, and the last three of those four games at Heinz Field have been on Thursday nights. Sure enough, this year’s game - Thursday, Nov. 11 - will make it four in a row.

- When it became clear that the ACC wasn’t going to deviate from its previously-planned schedule rotation, Pitt won the prize by getting to play Clemson two years in a row. Sure, the Atlantic Division teams and Georgia Tech have to do that annually, but the conference put the Tigers on the Panthers’ revised schedule last year, so they get back-to-back matchups with the perennial playoff contender.

- Sticking with the plan for 2021 also means that Pitt will go to Atlanta three years in a row. I like the Georgia Tech road trip a lot. It’s easy to get to Atlanta - lots of direct flights available - and I think it’s a fun city to visit and explore without really needing to rent a car. But I can’t imagine that Pat Narduzzi is thrilled about having back-to-back-to-back road games against a division opponent.

- I’ll say what everyone else has said: Pitt has a real shot at going 4-0 in the nonconference schedule. The game at Tennessee is the big one because Tennessee is in the SEC, but the Volunteers are experiencing some turmoil this offseason and could be ripe to get picked off by a decent team. If the Panthers can get that one and avoid any slip-ups against UMass, Western Michigan and New Hampshire, then it will be their first undefeated nonconference record - ever.

(The annoying asterisk with that note will be that Pitt went 1-0 in the nonconference in 2020. But let’s not count that, kind of how we’re all going to pretend as much as possible that 2020 didn’t happen.)

- Really, if Pitt can get through the nonconference unscathed, then some very interesting and historic scenarios are on the horizon. Winning out in September would be Pitt’s first 4-0 start to a season since 2000, and then if the Panthers can beat Georgia Tech in the first game of October, it would be their first 5-0 start since 1991. And not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but if Pitt can manage to avoid any stumbles in the nonconference and take care of business at Georgia Tech, they’ll go to Blacksburg to face Virginia Tech for the program’s first 6-0 start since 1982.

But like I said, we would be getting way ahead of ourselves to start considering that possibility.

- One last thing about the 2021 schedule: It’s pretty well-balanced. Pitt’s off week comes in Week Six, giving the Panthers five games before the break and seven games after. And in terms of home and road games, Pitt doesn’t have more than two of either in a row all season: vs. UMass, at Tennessee, vs. Western Michigan, vs. New Hampshire, at Georgia Tech, at Virginia Tech, vs. Clemson, vs. Miami, at Duke, vs. North Carolina, vs. Virginia, at Syracuse.

Compare that to last year when the admittedly-screwed-up-schedule had Pitt playing at home just twice in the final seven games. Or 2019, when Pitt didn’t have an off week until Week 10. Or 2018, when the Panthers closed the regular season with three of the final four on the road and had two conference games in September. All things considered, this is a pretty even schedule.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How do you rank the returners?
The NCAA’s decision to let seniors return for a free year due to 2020 being a mess opened the door for teams to potentially bring back some key players.

For Pitt, 12 seniors have decided to return and play one more year. Here’s how I rank those 12.

12. Keldrick Wilson - This isn’t meant as a slight on Wilson, but the transfer from Hampton really didn’t do much during his first year at Pitt. He played 76 snaps over six games last season, with nearly half of those coming against Austin Peay. Wilson also didn’t line up on special teams, so his playing time was pretty limited. He’ll provide depth on the offensive line in 2021, but probably not much beyond that.

11. Jake Zilinskas - A former quarterback-turned-tight end-turned-linebacker-turned-fullback, Zilinskas hasn’t done it all since he transferred to Pitt from John Carroll in 2017, but he has done a lot. This past season, it actually turned into playing time, as he saw more than 80 snaps on offense and even caught a 14-yard pass on fourth down late in the win over Virginia Tech. His playing time will probably be limited in 2021, but whenever Pitt needs a fullback on the field, he’ll get the call.

10. John Petrishen - The former Central Catholic standout who transferred to Pitt from Penn State two years ago is about to embark on his seventh year of college football (the NCAA granted him a sixth year of eligibility due to previous injuries - he used that year in 2020 - and he’ll use the free COVID year in 2021). Last season, Petrishen played 51 snaps on defense, which isn’t much, but he logged more than 200 snaps on special teams, and that’s where he’ll make his contributions.

9. Cal Adomitis - Sure, Adomitis is a long-snapper and that’s not a glamorous position, but I’ll tell you what: having a guy who can make that position something the coaches don’t have to worry about is pretty valuable. And I think it’s true that the coaches don’t really worry about Adomitis as the long-snapper; how many bad snaps can you remember? There aren’t many that come to mind. Getting one more year of worry-free play at a position where inconsistency can lead to big plays out of nowhere seems like a good thing.

8. Tre Tipton - Cue the jokes: Tipton has been at Pitt so long that he’s working on his doctorate. Tipton has been at Pitt long enough to be a parent to one of his teammates. Tipton was at Pitt for the last global pandemic. It’s true, Tre Tipton has been at Pitt a long time. 2021 will be his seventh season, which is pretty wild - and made even wilder by the fact that the Panthers will have two seventh-year players with Tipton and Petrishen. Tipton’s impact has been minimal over the last six seasons, with 35 catches for 369 yards and two touchdowns. But he’s a good leader and the kind of player you can get behind.

7. AJ Davis - Davis and the next player on this list have a lot in common. Both are veteran players who have seen a lot of snaps over the years, including 2020, but neither has really distinguished himself. Davis has just 236 rushing attempts in 32 career games, and he has exactly one 100-yard rushing performance to his name (103 yards on 16 carries at Syracuse in 2019). He has also scored just six rushing touchdowns over the course of those 32 games and 236 carries. In 2020, Davis fell behind sophomore Vincent Davis and he’s probably unlikely to ascend to the top of the depth chart, but he’ll provide a veteran presence in the running backs room.

6. Chase Pine - Unlike AJ Davis, Pine actually moved into a starting role in 2020 after Wendell Davis, who opened the season as the starting linebacker, suffered a knee injury in the second game. Pine started the final nine games and recorded a total of 43 tackles; that was the seventh-most on the team, but middle linebackers haven’t always piled up stats in Pitt’s defense under Pat Narduzzi. Pine did have seven tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks, but with Davis back on the field - Wendell, that is, not AJ or Vincent - it seems like Pine will probably return to a backup role. Still, it’s not a bad thing to have an experienced sixth-year player at middle linebacker.

5. Taysir Mack - Mack probably didn’t expect to be on this list. He probably thought that in January 2021, he would be in Mobile for the Senior Bowl or something like that. But his 2020 season was less than what he was likely shooting for, as he caught just 23 passes for 305 yards and two scores, pulling in less than 50% of the targets he saw in eight games. So Mack will enter the 2021 season with something to prove, and while 2020 may have been disappointing, he’s still got good downfield catching ability and can make plays that way.

4. Keyshon Camp - Camp can play; I don’t think there’s any question about that. The problem is, of course, that he can’t seem to stay on the field. The defensive tackle played in just six games last season, only one game in 2019, seven games in 2018 and 10 games as a redshirt freshman in 2017. When he has been active, Camp has made an impact; in 2021, he just needs to stay healthy so he can make an impact in more games.

3. Lucas Krull - This is going out on a limb, but I’ll do it. I expected Krull to have a big season in 2020, potentially putting up the best numbers by a Pitt tight end since Scott Orndoff in 2016 and resurrecting a position that had been dead ever since. Instead, Krull missed the opener with an injury and was done for good after an injury when he did get on the field against Syracuse. And those rare snaps he played didn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence: Krull was targeted five times, dropped two passes and caught one that gained six yards for a first down. So there’s not a lot to go on, but I’m still holding out at least a little bit of belief that he’ll make a positive impact at tight end.

2. Phil Campbell - Kenny Pickett was the biggest surprise to return, but Campbell isn’t far behind. Like Pickett, Campbell participated in Senior Day in November, so it seemed like he was set to leave. For whatever reason, he decided to come back, and that means Pitt is returning every linebacker who played significant snaps in 2020. Nothing wrong with that, and I think Campbell is a pretty solid player, so it’s a win-win.

1. Kenny Pickett - This is obvious, right? I don’t think there’s any question that Pickett is the most important returning senior, the most important returning player overall and, if you want to phrase it this way, the most important addition to the 2021 roster. There aren’t a lot of four-year starting quarterbacks in college football, but Pitt will have one this season. That’s huge.

Where is Pitt in the portal?
No, I’m not talking about Pitt getting players from the transfer portal. The Panthers did that when they added Maryland offensive lineman Marcus Minor and Kentucky defensive back MJ Devonshire.

I’m asking about Pitt players in the transfer portal, because there aren’t many of them.

Actually, there are hardly any at all. As far as we can tell, only four players from Pitt have put their names in the transfer portal as of this week: receiver Michael Smith, running back Paris Brown, linebacker Gusty Sunseri and punter Jared Campbell.

That’s it.

Three walk-ons and a scholarship upperclassman who was a medical exemption this past season.

I don’t have the exact numbers, but I’m fairly confident that only having four players in the portal puts Pitt on the low end of schools in the Power Five conferences. If you narrow the focus to scholarship players, I’m not sure anyone can really compete with Pitt’s grand total of just one - and that one comes with an asterisk of not actually being on the team anymore.

So what gives? Why aren’t Pitt players looking for greener pastures?

I think there are a few things at play. One is that there most likely will be at least a few Panthers who enter the portal after spring camp when the depth chart comes together a little more and players get a sense of where they stand. That’s the natural course of things, and it makes sense, particularly at positions like running back where Pitt has a lot of bodies and a pecking order that is very much un-established, at least from my perspective.

But I think there’s more to it than just players waiting a few months. I think having so few transfers at this point does reflect, to some extent, on the culture at Pitt. It really seems to me that this coaching staff is, by and large, honest with the players.

Whether it’s during the recruiting process or after they get to campus, I think the players who are either recruited by Pitt or suit up for Pitt have a fairly concrete idea of where they stand. I don’t think that’s always the case, and I think you could get a honest survey of players who have entered the transfer portal, you would find that quite a few of them did so after feeling like they were misled, either during the recruiting process or when they join the team.

That could mean a lot of different things, and I don’t mean to say that this staff has a perfect track record, but they seem to have done a good job of staying on the level with the players. You’re never going to keep 110 college kids happy; it would be a fool’s quest to even attempt it, and if you did try, you would probably create more problems than you’d solve.

But what you can do is be honest. You can tell kids where they stand and what they need to do to get where they want to go. Look at the bulk of the recruiting articles we write: kids who commit to Pitt - and a bunch of them who don’t - often comment on how Pat Narduzzi and his staff make a habit of “telling it like it is” or “keeping it real” or whatever other cliché you want to choose to say the same thing:

They don’t B.S. At least, not too much; recruiting is sales, after all, so there’s always a bit of salesmanship, but not so much that the recruit might feel like he was misled a few years later.

I think that kind of honesty extends beyond the recruiting process to when guys get to campus, and I think the result of it is that they’re all pretty comfortable with the staff and pretty happy to be at Pitt.

Like I said, I’m sure we’ll see some post-spring movement as the depth chart comes together a little more and pecking orders at various positions are established. But I think that the overall lack of Pitt players in the portal reflects pretty well on Pitt’s staff.

ONE PREDICTION

There will be spring
Okay, this isn’t a bold prediction, but guess what? Last week in this column I predicted that the Pitt basketball team would win its next three in a row. Since then, they have lost their first two of those three games, so that worked out pretty well.

As a result, I’m going in the opposite direction with something far less daring, far less bold. I’m going to say that Pitt football holds a full spring camp this year. Last year, of course, they got cut off after three practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We all saw what happened after that, as the entire sports world got turned upside down and the result, six months later, was an upended fall schedule that was completely different from what it was supposed to be.

But while the schedule got changed around more than a few times in the fall, the teams kept practicing. The ACC ditched everyone’s previously-set eight-game conference schedule and replaced it with a 10-game slate, but the teams kept practicing. The league also told each team that it could only play one nonconference game, and the teams kept practicing.

Games got postponed, games got moved and games got canceled, and the teams kept practicing.

If they could practice in the fall amidst the games and the travel and everything that came with last fall, then I think they’ll be able to practice in the spring, where everybody will be stuck in one place and safe operating procedures have been fairly well-honed. It should be doable.

And certainly it will be valuable for Pitt. The Panthers have a dozen midyear enrollees, with two transfers and 10 early-graduating high schoolers. Not all 12 of those guys will get on the field in 2021, but the transfers - Marcus Minor and MJ Devonshire - will be expected to contribute to varying degrees, and probably a few of those freshmen will, too.

Holding 15 spring practices for those guys will be big, whether it’s getting someone like Minor ready to step into the starting lineup or giving a freshman like Malik Newton a chance to establish himself in the running back room.

I don’t know how much things will return to normal over the course of the next year. I don’t know when recruiting will open back up again, I don’t know what the season will look like, at least as far as attendance, and I can’t imagine there will be a publicly-attended spring game. But I do believe Pitt will get its 15 practices, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s pretty much the most important thing the Panthers can do this spring.