The 3-2-1 Column: WR concerns, the spring game, hoops transfers and more

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about the Blue-Gold Game, the receiver position, Pitt basketball's transfers and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Spring game observations
A few things that stood out to me from the Blue-Gold Game last Saturday.

1. They certainly didn’t show anything. That’s definitely the case on offense, and I would say the defense was pretty guarded, too. No surprises there; Pat Narduzzi is a football coach’s football coach, with all the desires for secrecy and control that come with it. If a piece of information exists - any piece of information, regardless of its relevance - it is best to keep that in-house. Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to steal your signals.

2. There were some things to see, though. We saw Phil Jurkovec and Christian Veilleux throw the ball for the first time in a game setting, so that was something. I thought Veilleux did a nice job of taking what was there on some high-percentage throws, while Jurkovec made two pretty good plays himself - a close-quarters no-step throw to a wide-open Bub Means and then a pass in traffic that gave Means a chance to make an athletic play (which he did). Both were strong throws from Jurkovec.

3. The running backs were fine. They averaged less than four yards per carry, but I don’t think my perception of that position group changed one iota this spring. They need a home run hitter to emerge; that seems to be the one thing lacking, and I’m not sure who it might be. C’Bo Flemister could have that potential, but Rodney Hammond is the workhorse.

4. Means needs to take a big step this season. His physical skills are impressive; he’s got size, speed and athleticism. Now he just needs to complement those traits with some honest-to-goodness receiver abilities. If he does, he can be a big-time playmaker.

5. The new era of Pitt’s defensive line was on display, with the linemen - almost all of them new starters or new to the rotation - putting up three sacks and 5.5 tackles for loss. That included a slick move by Samuel Okunlola for a sack and some genuinely disruptive play by Sean FitzSimmons.

6. The linebacker depth was laid out with the rotations: Shayne Simon flanked by Bangally Kamara and Solomon DeShields on the first team, Brandon George between Braylan Lovelace and Nick Lapi on the second team. Simon, Kamara, DeShields and George (who played both Money and middle linebacker) make for a solid top four, but there are a whole lot of question marks after that.

7. The coaches have options at safety. A bunch of options, largely due to Javon McIntyre and Stephon Hall being trained to play both field safety and boundary safety. That creates flexibility, and we saw some of that on Saturday with a number of different pairings. I think there will probably be some growing pains at safety this season, which can be especially painful because mistakes at safety can lead to points. But McIntyre, Hall, Phillip O’Brien and Donovan McMillon all look pretty good, and I imagine the coaches will mix and match those four a decent amount.

8. Honestly, I can’t say I came out of the spring game - or spring camp as a whole - with too many different thoughts/expectations than I had going into it. The defense has six starters to replace, but five of those are scattered across the two position groups Pitt has recruited better than any others. The offensive line is strong. The running backs should be fine. The receivers are a big question mark. And it will all come down to Phil Jurkovec. Just like last year, Pitt’s success - or lack thereof - in 2023 will hang on the arm of the quarterback.

We knew that before spring camp. We knew it during spring camp. And we know it after spring camp.

Now we wait to find out whether Jurkovec is the right guy to run the offense.

Nothing I saw in Saturday’s Blue-Gold Game changed any of that.

A transfer leaves
I can’t say Pitt is losing a lot with the transfer of Myles Alston.

That’s not meant to be disrespectful to Alston himself. He was always good when we spoke during the recruiting process, and when he did the second - and, as it turned out, final - interview of his Pitt career earlier this spring, he did a solid job.

But that interview was 262 seconds long, giving him about 230 more seconds of camera time than he got snaps on the field.

That didn’t work as well as I hoped it would, but you get the point. Alston simply didn’t play at Pitt over the last two seasons, logging just 31 snaps on offense last season and running a pass route on 15 of them, according to Pro Football Focus. And despite the depth situation at receiver, which is dire, it didn’t exactly look promising for Alston to make an impact this season either.

He did work with the first-team offense in the Blue-Gold Game on Saturday, but that came with a caveat, because he was the No. 2 receiver only after two other guys presumably ahead of him were unavailable due to injury.

Add in the fact that Alston moved to the slot in three-receiver sets and the other outside position was taken by freshman Israel Polk, and it’s not hard to imagine that he probably felt like he was drifting down an already-short depth chart.

If Alston didn’t see a path to the two-deep and actual playing time, then he probably made the right decision. We’ll see where he ends up.

For Pitt, a dire situation wasn’t made any less dire by losing Alston, even if he didn’t have much on his resume (and maybe his horizon). The sky isn’t falling and they’re not shutting down the program because Myles Alston is leaving, but it certainly doesn’t help things.

Pitt came into spring camp with nine scholarship receivers (including Alston), of which exactly two caught a pass for the Panthers last season.

To wit:

Konata Mumpfield
Bub Means
Daejon Reynolds
Myles Alston
Jahvante Royal
Addison Copeland
Che Nwabuko
Lamar Seymore
Israel Polk

That was the entirety of the receiver roster entering spring camp. Mumpfield and Means played sizable roles for Pitt’s offense last fall, but Reynolds was at Florida. Royal was at defensive back. Copeland and Nwabuko were redshirting freshman. And Seymore and Polk were in high school.

Given all of that, Alston’s 31 offensive snaps look positively voluminous, at least by comparison.

Regardless, it looks like Alston didn’t see a path to playing time, and now he’s off looking for a better opportunity. Chances are, Alston’s departure doesn’t change a whole lot of your perspective on Pitt’s receiver room; it didn’t change anything with my expectations. But it does speak to the situation with the receivers this season that removing Alston, who has zero career production, could actually be seen as weakening the room.

If nothing else, it takes away one more player who could possibly break out as a contributor this season. Now, the list of potential breakout candidates - which is to say, the list of guys who haven’t done anything but might this year - is down to Royal, Copeland, Nwabuko, Seymore, Polk and the other two incoming freshmen, Kenny Johnson and Zion Fowler.

Yeah, it’s not a great situation, and it’s pretty clear that Pitt needs to land another transfer or two at receiver this offseason. That was the case before Alston left, and it’s still the case now.

The situation at receiver
Following up on that last topic…

How did Pitt get here?

How did the situation at wide receiver end up being as dire as it is in 2023?

The answer, as always, is recruiting.

Brief aside: I have said this for years. Literally years. Back in the first decade of this century, when it was still chic among decidedly non-chic sportswriters to disparage recruiting coverage, I would occasionally hear something along the lines of, “Why do people follow recruiting? Talk to me when they get to college.”

The first answer, as always, was that the “people” in question are fans, and they are fans of the most passionate sport in America. So naturally, they’re going to want as much information and coverage as they can get.

The second answer, which I thought added something academic to the discussion, is that so many questions about a team and program can be answered with a thorough knowledge of recruiting. Recruiting provides crucial context for a team’s current state: why is the team good or bad? Recruiting. How can a good team stay good and a bad team start being good? Recruiting. Why did things take a turn for the better or worse? Recruiting.

So much time is spent talking about clock management and fourth-down decisions and other game day minutiae when all of those things can be overcome with recruiting.

The answer is always recruiting.

As we turn our attention to Pitt’s receiver situation, then, we continue to find our answers in recruiting.

Consider, if you will, the following recruiting classes that should, by definition, constitute the current roster of upperclassman receivers for your University of Pittsburgh football Panthers.

2019 - Will Gipson, Jared Wayne
2020 - Jordan Addison, Jaylon Barden, Aydin Henningham
2021 - Myles Alston, Jaden Bradley
2022 - Addison Copeland, Che Nwabuko

I probably don’t need to elaborate on that list; you can see it just as well as I can.

There is one guy from the first three classes there who is still on the roster, and he’s playing linebacker.

To be fair, Henningham moved to linebacker from receiver and Jahvante Royal, who was in that same class of 2020, moved to receiver from defensive back. So that balances out.

And it keeps the total the same:

Three recruiting classes have produced one player on the current roster.

We could even stretch back to 2018 since those guys conceivably could still be here due to the Covid year, but this is a situation where we don’t need to reach very far to find the damning evidence. And one player from three classes is pretty damning.

That doesn’t necessarily mean all the recruits in those classes were bad. Addison obviously wasn’t and Wayne had a great finish to his Pitt career. Barden and Bradley showed promise, too, although each kind of bombed out in his own way.

But the sum total of those classes is why Pitt’s top three receivers entering spring camp 2023 all started their college careers at schools other than Pitt. The coaches had to get transfers to fill in the roster for this season, and like I mentioned above, they’re going to have to do it again. I just don’t see how they can go into the 2023 season with the current receiver roster as it is.

Now, the future does have a chance of being a bit brighter. The 2023 recruiting class is a big one, which was important. Tiquan Underwood and the offensive coaches needed to rebuild the foundation of the receiver room, and they did so by signing four pretty good prospects.

I’m guessing the 2024 class will need to be a bit bigger, too, just to continue in those efforts.

The current struggles can be tied to recruiting, and if Pitt is going to dig out of those struggles, the eventual success will be tied to recruiting, too.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How does the newest transfer fit?
Jeff Capel’s hit rate is pretty good this offseason.

He’s two-for-two.

Two transfers came in on official visits. Two transfers have committed.

The most recent player to join that list is Ishmael Leggett, a guard transferring in from Rhode Island with two years of eligibility.

Leggett fits into a space where Pitt needed another player. The Panthers have Dior Johnson returning as a redshirt freshman and Jaland Lowe and Carlton Carrington coming in as true freshmen, but that’s the extent of the back court depth. The coaches needed another guard, and if that guard happened to be a productive, veteran player, then that would be a real bonus.

Leggett looks like that bonus.

He played in 88 games over the last three years at Rhode Island and started all 71 games in the last two seasons. He was the Rams’ fourth-leading scorer two years ago but when the three guys ahead of him in that category left, Leggett stepped up to the big chair.

The result was a stuffed stat line: he averaged 16.4 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game while making 39.3% of his 400 field goal attempts, 32% of his 150 three-point shots and a sparkling 84.5% from the free throw line.

Only one other player on Rhode Island’s roster averaged double-digit scoring. Only one player grabbed more rebounds. And only one player had more assists than Leggett. He led the team in virtually every other category: points, minutes (he was the only Ram to play 1,000+ minutes), field goal attempts, field goal makes, three-point attempts, three-point makes, free throw attempts, free throw makes and steals.

That’s a really, really long way of saying Leggett did it all for Rhode Island last season.

Coming to Pitt might be a bit of a relief for him. The Panthers will need some of that production from him, but they might not need all of it.

I actually think the Pitt coaches are kind of banking on the idea that, if Leggett has a little less pressure on him to carry the team like he did at Rhode Island, he might be able to settle in and possibly improve his efficiency.

He has a history of being a really good three-point shooter, hitting 42% from beyond the arc as a freshman but then seeing that percentage drop 10 points when his volume doubled - and doubled again - over the next two seasons.

If he doesn’t feel like he needs to score every point for Rhode Island, maybe he can get a little closer to that 42%. It might not be 42%, but 35-38% would work for what Pitt needs this season.

Leggett joins Zack Austin, who is transferring to Pitt from High Point, giving the Panthers a pair of perimeter players that more or less fills out the lineup. Leggett can work in tandem with Carrington at the off-ball guard spot and Austin can be the small forward (calling him a wing is probably a better term for his role); the additions of those two pretty much give the coaches a solid two-deep at every spot.

Now, some of those positions are going to be relying on inexperienced players. That’s certainly the case at guard where Carrington, Lowe and Johnson have played exactly zero college games. But I think the staff is confident in those guys and their collective ability to be ready to play at the ACC level.

I’m sure the coaches would like to get another veteran guard to go with the group - more on that in a minute - but for now, they have added two pieces who seem to fit well with what they need. It will be a different kind of roster than what Pitt had last year, but it looks like one that is coming together nicely.

Can you sell it?
With Leggett and Austin joining the roster in addition to the three incoming freshmen, Pitt sits at 11 projected scholarship players for the 2023-24 season. That means there are two open spots, and while teams rarely go 13-deep in a season, Jeff Capel probably doesn’t intend to keep those last two scholarships in his pocket for a rainy day.

As such, the Pitt coaches are still pursuing additional transfer options. Noah Thomasson from Niagara is one such option who emerged this week; as a veteran guard who averaged 19.5 points per game while shooting nearly 50% from the field last season, Thomasson would be a great addition to the Panthers’ back court.

Naturally, Pitt isn’t the only team interested in landing Thomasson, and therein lies the issue Jeff Capel and company are facing right now.

If a transfer is looking at the Panthers’ roster right now, they’re probably going to see something like this:

Four guards, four wings and a bunch of forwards.

A guard like Thomasson is going to see the transfer guard Pitt already landed, the redshirt freshman who was considered one of the best guards in the country coming out of high school and the two highly-touted guard recruits coming in.

While we all like to talk about embracing competition and not being scared away by depth and earning your spot and all of that, a player with options is going to consider all elements of those options, and a player like Thomasson is probably going to see that there is a clearer path to significant playing time than what Pitt has to offer right now.

I’m not saying Pitt definitely won’t get Thomasson; I’m just saying that it’s a tough sell.

Far tougher than last year, to be sure.

Last year, Capel and company were able to land Nelly Cummings and Greg Elliott from the transfer portal - efforts that were aided in no small part by the low number of guards on the returning roster. Pitt had Jamarius Burton and Nike Sibande coming off an injury, and that was it. There were minutes aplenty to offer to Cummings and Elliott, and both guys saw the opportunity.

The path is less clear this year. Thomasson averaged 36 minutes per game at Niagara last year; it’s not at all difficult to imagine him looking at Pitt’s current back court and saying, “Am I going to even get 28 or 30 minutes here?”

Again, I’m just using Thomasson and the guards as an example; we can apply this to just about every position.

Take the front court. Pitt returns Blake Hinson, Jorge Diaz Graham, Guillermo Diaz Graham and Federiko Federiko. If you’re a big in the portal and you’re looking at Pitt, you have to be asking yourself where the minutes will come from, because you’ve got the team’s leading scorer from a year ago and three guys who became key pieces of the rotation by the end of the season all coming back.

It’s not that the Diaz Graham twins and Federiko - and the young guards, for that matter - are unbeatable in a competition for playing time; it’s that the good players in the portal are likely to have options where less competition exists.

That’s not running away from competition. It’s making a business decision.

Of course, Pitt shouldn’t need a star center or star guard to fill out the roster. After all, we’re talking about the 12th and 13th scholarships here. Last year, Cummings was a necessity, but at this stage in the process, Capel doesn’t exactly have necessities. So the coaches don’t need to press; they can take their time and see how things shake out over the next few weeks.

And maybe they’ll surprise me by landing a guy who averages something close to Thomasson’s numbers. If so, it will be a pretty major testament to Capel’s salesmanship.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will be a better rebounding team
One of my continuing thoughts about the 2022-23 Pitt basketball team is that they weren’t particularly good at rebounding.

I think that’s true, but the numbers are kind of not entirely supporting the notion.

For instance, Pitt averaged the fourth-most rebounds of any ACC team last season; that’s a volume stat, but it’s still worth something, as is the Panthers’ +1.53 rebounding margin, although that number comes down in ACC games, when Pitt was -.30 per game.

The Panthers were seventh in the conference in offensive rebounds per game and fourth in defensive rebounds per game. That last one is particularly surprising to me, since it felt like they gave up a lot of offensive rebounds. To that point, Pitt did rank 10th in the ACC in defensive rebound percentage and 12th in defensive rebound percentage in conference games.

That’s not a great stat, but overall, the Panthers don’t seem to have been as bad at rebounding as I thought. They did get out-rebounded in 14 games, though, but that’s 14 out of 36, so less than half. And even if we narrow down to games against ACC opponents, Pitt got out-rebound nine times in 22 games.

Again, not great but also not terrible. Or, at least, not as bad as I thought. And they were actually 5-4 against ACC teams when they got out-rebounded (6-8 against all opponents).

Still, I can’t shake the overall perception that Pitt wasn’t a good rebounding team, and I need to maintain that perception to make this prediction:

Pitt will be a better rebounding team this season.

Most of this - actually, almost all of it - is based on the additions of Zack Austin and Ishmael Leggett.

Last season, Pitt had two players average more than five rebounds per game: Blake Hinson (6.0 rpg) and Federiko Federiko (5.3).

In the same season, Austin averaged 5.4 and Leggett averaged 5.8 - both would have had higher averages than every player on Pitt’s roster other than Hinson. And that includes three guys who are damn close to 7-feet tall.

Two years ago, Leggett only averaged 3.1 rebounds per game, but in that same season Austin led High Point in rebounding with an average of 8.0 boards per game. So I’m willing to bet that both guys are likely to be closer to - or above - their averages from this past season.

If they both hit for more than five rebounds per game, that would be at least one rebound per game more than Pitt got from each of their respective positions in 2022-23.

On top of that, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that Federiko Federiko and Guillermo Diaz Graham will be more effective rebounders this season with a lot of game experience and a little bit of added strength.

With better rebounders on the perimeter and improved rebounders in the front court, I think Pitt can turn the glass from a weakness - a perceived one, at least - into something closer to a strength next season.