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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about the transfer question, Pro Day, cornerbacks, baseball and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Fitting the pieces together
The first full week of Pitt basketball’s offseason is in the books, and it’s no surprise that the No. 1 talking point has been transfers.

New names enter the transfer portal every day; a whole bunch of them look like they could fit pretty nicely on Pitt’s projected 2021-22 roster, and quite a few of them have a history with the Panthers, having been recruited by Jeff Capel and company when they were coming out of high school.

Of course, the market for Tre Mitchell and Greg Gantt and Earl Timberlake is going to be even more competitive now than it was a few years ago; Pitt lost the race for those guys back then, and it seems like it will be a battle to get somebody like that now.

If Capel can pull it off, though…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the returning roster for this season. It’s not loaded with all-conference players, but there are a few pretty good pieces that could really carry this team, provided the right players are added this offseason.

I think it starts with the guards: Femi Odukale and Nike Sibande could be a really dangerous duo in the ACC. What we saw at the end of the season is, in my mind, an indication of what those two can do on a regular basis next year. They’ll have to keep working to gel together and find ways to complement each other, but the foundation is there for those two to really set the tone in the backcourt.

There’s the omnipresent question that will dominate this offseason, of course, and that is the future of the Justin Champagnie. But if you allow yourself to consider the possibility that he could come back, then Odukale, Sibande and Champagnie form a really strong nucleus. Toss in Will Jeffress and Ithiel Horton, and you’re in good shape.

You just need that missing piece in the middle.

I wrote about this in last week’s column. I said that Pitt had to answer three big questions this offseason. One question is Champagnie; that’s obvious. Another is the future of John Hugley.

But a huge question is whether or not Capel can land a transfer center for next season. Somebody like those guys I mentioned might be tough to land, but there are so many transfers out there - Pitt has to be able to find a quality big man to step in and anchor this team for 2021-22.

Find one of those and put him on the court with Odukale and Sibande, and you’ve got a pretty solid team. Add in Champagnie and you’ve got a team that should be more than solid: you’ve got a team that should win quite a few games.

Champagnie is the biggest question for the offseason, but getting a transfer center isn’t far behind.

A good Pro Day
Pitt football held its 2021 Pro Day on Wednesday, giving 16 players a chance to work out for NFL scouts. It’s an annual event that, like so many other annual events, was put on hold last year for obvious reasons.

In a typical year, Pro Day largely functions as an opportunity for seniors who didn’t get invited to the NFL Scouting Combine. It lets those guys show scouts what they can do, and it’s pretty valuable, both for the players and the NFL teams.

But this is not a typical year. While having a Pro Day in 2021 is a positive improvement from not having one in 2020, things still aren’t quite what they have usually been since the Scouting Combine itself was canceled. That put even more emphasis on Pro Day, and Pitt had representatives from almost all 32 NFL teams at Wednesday’s event.

What was really unique about Pitt’s Pro Day is that the coaches allowed players from the 2019 roster to come out and participate. Guys like Amir Watts and Saleem Brightwell and Aaron Mathews never got a chance to have a pro day, when they could have showed what they could do in the hopes of getting a training camp invite. So they got that chance on Wednesday, and while I don’t know if that will lead to any camp invites, good on Pitt for giving them the opportunity.

Of the guys who came into Wednesday with a real shot at making a case for the NFL Draft - or improving their draft stock - I think a few definitely stood out.

Jason Pinnock is at the top of that list. He was a good cornerback in college but not one who was regularly discussed as a top corner prospect in the draft class. He has good size and quite a bit of film, so I thought he could help himself with some impressive testing numbers, and he definitely hit some home runs there, jumping out of the building and showing some really good speed.

Damar Hamlin is also on the list of guys who helped themselves on Wednesday. For as much as you hear stuff about how there’s a difference between “combine speed” and “football speed” and that teams want more of the latter, there’s still a high priority placed on the former. NFL teams want guys who are fast - speed without any clarifiers.

I thought Hamlin played pretty fast in college because of his knowledge of the game, but I wasn’t sure how fast he would be in a combine setting. With reported 40 times of 4.59 and 4.6, though, Hamlin answered probably the biggest question about his pro potential. I felt pretty confident that he would have a nice career in the NFL prior to Wednesday, but running like that probably helped him a lot.

I also came out of Pro Day thinking DJ Turner is going to be an interesting one to watch in the Draft. He tested well, and the only thing that really is a negative on his film is that the ball didn’t come to him all that much: he was second on the team in targets in 2020, but nearly half of them came in two games.

Still, the production when opportunity presented itself can’t be denied. There’s enough to like in his film that the strong showing on Pro Day should give him a really good chance of getting drafted.

Wednesday wasn’t all home runs for Pitt players. Paris Ford and Jaylen Twyman probably wish they had another shot at some of the testing drills. But overall, it was a pretty good day for some guys who had a chance to improve their draft stock.

An underrated return
We had a chance to talk to Damarri Mathis this week, and it was interesting to think that, a year ago at this time, he probably didn’t expect to be doing interviews about how Pitt’s 2021 defense was looking and what it would be like to step into a leadership role with the defense.

A year ago at this time, Mathis expected to be doing what his fellow cornerback/fellow class of 2017 recruit Jason Pinnock was doing on Wednesday: working out and testing for NFL teams during Pro Day.

That was the plan: play the 2020 season as a senior in a full-time starting role and make his case as a pro prospect. He probably had a chance to make a good case, too. In 2019, Mathis split time with Pinnock and Dane Jackson and allowed a lower reception rate when targeted than either of those two guys. Mathis gave up a reception once every 17.7 coverage snaps, according to Pro Football Focus, which ranked No. 15 nationally among cornerbacks with at least 300 coverage snaps.

That also ranked No. 5 among ACC cornerbacks in 2019, and given that three of the four guys ahead of him either went to the NFL last season or opted out, Mathis was arguably one of the best cornerbacks returning to the conference in 2020.

Then he got hurt.

Mathis suffered a shoulder injury last summer that knocked him out for the season, and instead of being an NFL player in the making, he was stuck on the sidelines watching his teammates muddle through a truncated and challenging 11-game schedule.

So while I’m sure he was happy for Pinnock and Hamlin and the Pro Day performances they put up on Wednesday, there had to be part of him that thought, “That was supposed to be me.”

The good thing for Mathis is that he’s healthy again and has another year to do what he expected to do last year.

That’s a good thing for Pitt, too.

Rather than having to replace two starting corners in 2021, the Panthers only have to replace one. And since Mathis is arguably a better player than Pinnock, Pitt might actually have an upgrade at corner this season. That makes the position unique on the defense, and while we’ll talk about the year-to-year comparisons in a moment, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to focus in on Mathis.

We’ve talked a lot about Kenny Pickett coming back, for obvious reasons. And the returns of Lucas Krull and Phil Campbell and the other super seniors are important, of course. But Mathis is something of an underrated return - one we probably haven’t spent enough time looking at.

I suspect we’ll have a different perspective on Mathis’ return by the end of the season.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How good has the defensive recruiting been?
We’ll probably spend a lot of time over the next few months comparing the 2021 roster to what Pitt had in 2020. There’s plenty to be said about the offensive side of the ball, but the majority of the turnover, at least on the two-deep, is on defense.

That’s really interesting to me because I think this season is going to be a test, of sorts. The general perception has been that Pitt’s defensive recruiting has been a strength under Pat Narduzzi; well, we’re about to find out just how good it has been.

The main guys who are gone from the defense, like Patrick Jones and Rashad Weaver and Damar Hamlin and Jason Pinnock, even Jaylen Twyman and Paris Ford, who opted out at various points last fall - they were all from the 2016 and 2017 recruiting classes.

Those were Narduzzi’s first full recruiting classes at Pitt, and while there were plenty of misses in those classes - the four-star guys from 2016 didn’t fare so well - there were also quite a few main contributors.

But now roughly half of the defense, all of which came from those two classes, is gone. And that means we’re going to get a look at the guys who were recruited in the classes since then. 2018, 2019, 2020 - they’re up.

Of course, there are still some leftovers from the 2017 class, like Mathis and Deslin Alexandre and Cam Bright, or even the 2016 class with the super seniors like Phil Campbell and Chase Pine and Keyshon Camp. But for the most part, this year’s defense is going to be made up of players recruited in the last three years.

Look at the projected two-deep: Alexandre will probably start at defensive end, but his bookend will likely be Habakkuk Baldonado or John Morgan, who were both in the 2018 class. And between the ends will be some combination of Camp and Devin Danielson, Tyler Bentley or David Green, with those three all being from the 2018 class, as well as Calijah Kancey from the 2019 class.

The outside linebacker spots will be manned by Bright and Campbell, and Pine will see time in the middle, but Wendell Davis (2018) and SirVocea Dennis (2019) will get a lot of action, and some of the guys in the 2020 class will be on the two-deep as well.

At cornerback, Mathis will be paired with Marquis Williams (2018) or A.J. Woods (2019) or Rashad Battle (2020), with the possibility existing for another 2020 recruit or even a true freshman to get into the rotation.
And the top two safeties entering the spring are Erick Hallett (2018) and Brandon Hill (2019), with Judson Tallandier (2018) and Buddy Mack (2020) behind them.

You can see the pattern there. It’s a generational shift in Pitt’s defense this season, and while I’m confident in the defense picking up where it left off, mostly because I’m bullish on the recruiting in those classes, you never know for sure until they get on the field and play.

What’s the outlook for the cornerbacks?
Honing in on one position, in particular, I thought it was relevant to talk about the cornerbacks since we’ve been thinking this week about Damarri Mathis’ return.

You know, I said earlier that in the spring of 2020, Mathis probably had a different expectation of what the spring of 2021 would bring. That’s also true for Pitt: when the Panthers canceled spring camp after three practices last March, the coaches’ expectations for the cornerback position probably looked a certain way.

Specifically, it looked like Mathis and Pinnock. They were two of the top three corners in 2019, when they rotated kind-of-with-and-kind-of-behind Dane Jackson. Mathis out-snapped Pinnock by a fair amount, although Pinnock missed three games, but the real drop-off in snaps at cornerback was after Pinnock (according to PFF):

Dane Jackson - 861 snaps
Damarri Mathis - 651 snaps
Jason Pinnock - 394 snaps
Marquis Williams - 19 snaps

That’s a significant jump, but it speaks to the roles Mathis and Pinnock played in 2019 - and the roles they were expected to play in 2020.

With Mathis sidelined, though, the snap counts had to change, obviously. And they did. Pinnock logged 576 snaps last season - the third-most on the defense - and Williams wasn’t too far behind him with 510. Next was AJ Woods, who played 355 snaps, and freshman Rashad Battle, who logged 81. Safety Erick Hallett also saw 80 or so snaps at corner.

The point is this: Pitt went into 2020 expecting to have Pinnock and Mathis take the bulk of the snaps and then guys like Williams and Woods filling in from time to time. That would have been a really good setup at corner, but it would have created a problem for 2021, when Mathis and Pinnock would be gone and the reserves would be expected to step into starting roles without all that much experience.

Now, because Mathis missed last season and his absence threw the snap counts for Williams and Woods into the stratosphere, relatively speaking, the situation is different. Now, Pitt is losing Pinnock but returning Mathis and bringing back Williams with 500 snaps on his resume and Woods with 300. Even Battle has more career snaps entering this year than Williams had entering last year.

I actually think the situation at corner looks like it should be better in 2021 than it was in 2020, which is not something I expected to say about 2021. Throw in Khalil Anderson, who might be the best overall recruit in the 2021 recruiting class, and I think Pitt’s got a pretty strong roster at corner for this year.

Pitt baseball is the program to watch this spring
We don’t usually devote much space in these columns to topics outside of football, basketball or recruiting. But when the situation merits it, we’ll go beyond the usual parameters.

And right now, Pitt baseball merits it.

In case you haven’t seen, the Panthers are 9-4 overall right now and 6-3 in the ACC. They are fresh off a series win at No. 12 Georgia Tech - who was No. 7 in the country when Pitt rolled into town - and now Mike Bell’s group has a ranking of its own: No. 18 in this week’s D1Baseball.com top 25.

That’s the first time Pitt baseball has been ranked in eight years. To put it in perspective, the last time Pitt baseball was ranked - May 2013 - Paul Chryst was the Panthers’ football coach, Jamie Dixon was the basketball coach, Steve Pederson was the athletic director, the team’s colors were navy and gold and block Pitt was still the thing.

So yeah, it’s been awhile.

How have the Panthers succeeded this season, from an ACC-opening sweep at Florida State to this past weekend’s conquests? They’ve done it the old-fashioned way: with great pitching.

That’s what Pitt has right now in top-of-the-rotation starters Mitch Myers and Matt Gilbertson. Those two have been money this season, and at Georgia Tech, while facing arguably the best hitting lineup in the conference, Myers battled on Friday, going 5.2 innings and scattering 10 hits while giving up two earned runs and striking out seven with just one walk.

On Saturday, Gilbertson took the loss but pitched well, giving up a lot of hits - 11 - but just three earned runs while pitching into the seventh. Like Myers, he sent down a bunch of GT hitters with nine strikeouts and only walked one, making for a pretty strong performance despite the losing decision.

Now Myers and Gilbertson are among the ACC’s top five in strikeouts, and they form one heck of a one-two punch.

Pitt doesn’t have a great hitting lineup - the Panthers lead the conference in strikeouts and rank No. 9 in batting average and No. 10 in home runs - but corner outfielders Kyle Hess (.356/.415/.542) and Nico Popa (.304/.385/.571) provide some nice pop at the top of the lineup and veteran second baseman David Yanni is tied for third in the ACC with five home runs, so there is something to build on there.

Still, it will come down to Myers and Gilbertson, the two former junior-college standouts who signed with Pitt in Bell’s first recruiting class. They’ve been instrumental in building the Panthers’ current success, and if they keep it up, they’ll be fun to watch all season.