While you were sleeping, the Pittsburgh Panthers’ men’s basketball team has taken the college basketball world by storm.
No, seriously.
It’s hard to imagine that just one year ago, there were so few people attending Pitt games that you could hear the Pitt players conversing on the bench.
Just one year ago, Pitt had lost their sixth straight ACC game in a row, en route to losing 18 straight conference games, plus an ACC tournament game on March 6, 2018 for good measure.
Just one year ago, Pitt had no toughness. No consistent aggressiveness. Players had decided to transfer, such as Cameron Johnson, now starring for North Carolina. Kevin Stallings, who was in his second year as head coach, was yelling at the top of his lungs at his players, but I believe it fell on deaf ears.
Pitt, in its first three seasons in the ACC, was 66-37 (28-26 in-conference), with NCAA Tournament appearances all three seasons. In the Kevin Stallings era (2016-17 and 2017-18), Pitt was 24-41, with just four conference wins in 2016-17 and none in 2017-18.
Thus, after Pitt defeated No. 11 Florida State, 75-62, on Monday night, Jan. 14, at the Petersen Events Center in Oakland, it’s proof that the college basketball world has their eye on the Panthers.
The win on Monday night was their second win in the ACC this year in four tries (they defeated Louisville in overtime on Jan. 9). It was their 12th win of this season overall (four more than all of last year), and they were within range of beating then-No. 15 N.C. State, but fell in the final minutes, 86-80, Jan. 12, in Raleigh.
So how did Pitt turn this thing around so fast? First things first. Heather Lyke, the Pitt athletic director, promptly fired Stallings, and hired Jeff Capel, the first African American head coach in Pitt men’s basketball history. Capel commands respect. He was a star player at Duke University. He was a head coach in a high-profile position at Oklahoma, where one of his players was NBA All-Star Blake Griffin. He’d spent the last years as an assistant under Duke coach Mike Krzyewski (pronounced Sha-Shef-Skee for all my non-sports fans). All Coach K is, is the greatest college basketball coach of all-time, in my eyes.
Since Capel’s reign at Pitt, some players decided to leave the program. Others decided to stay. Some decided to sign on the dotted line, such as Xavier Johnson, Trey McGowens and Au’Diese Toney.
If you’ve been drinking the “Will Antonio Brown be a Steeler next year” kool-aid so much that you couldn’t spell Pitt if I spotted you the “P” and the “T”…then wake up.
Pitt is good again.
“We got some fighters, we got some competitors,” Capel said postgame after his team’s 13-point win over Florida State, Jan. 14. “We feel like we’re gonna fight every time we play.”
The ACC is tough as steel (pardon the pun). I’m talkin’ about No. 1 Duke, No. 4 Virginia, No. 9 Virginia Tech, the aforementioned No. 11 Seminoles, No. 13 North Carolina, No. 17 N.C. State. That’s six ACC teams in the Top 25 rankings. More than the SEC or Big Ten conferences. We’re talking the best college players in the country that Pitt must encounter from now until the end of the season.
They’ve shown me that they’re ready for the wild ride. It all starts with McGowens. He never backs away from a challenge. He will drive on you. He will dunk on you. He will take your contact. He will go to the free throw line. He will get his points.
“I’m fearless, I guess,” McGowens told the media after he scored 30 points Monday night, Jan. 14, in the win over the Seminoles. “No matter how big, I’m just going to compete and we’re just going to have to make a great play. That’s what coach says: ‘make them make a better play.’ That’s really what we’ve tried to do.”
Add the X-man, Xavier Johnson, in the mix, and I’m not sure who’s Batman and who’s Robin. The fellow freshman slasher can put a move on you that will have you on Sportscenter for all the wrong reasons; he can knock down a three-pointer from the top of the key; he can somehow get an acrobatic shot to go from down low. To be fair, he’s turnover prone, but his good far outweighs his bad.
Toney isn’t a top scorer on the team, but he might be the team’s best defender. Plus, this guy has never heard of the phrase “body fat.” The 6-foot-6 sculptured, tatted-up guard from Huntsville, Ala., is not afraid to get in someone’s grill, and I ain’t talkin’ Foreman. He’ll take a charge, he’ll block shots, he’ll dive for loose balls.
“One of the things I loved about them as we got to know them during the recruiting process, and I have said this from the beginning, is that all three of them are competitive,” Capel said after the Florida State game about his three freshmen. “You don’t find that a lot. They are very competitive, which means that they have a toughness about them. And they aren’t afraid. Not one time this year have they been afraid—I don’t think my team has been afraid. We are trying to develop that and make that the culture of this program—toughness, togetherness and fighting every second you are out there.”
So, there’s 14 ACC games left in this regular season for the Panthers. Coach Capel has his players’ undivided attention, and the players are giving their coach their all. I’m not Miss Cleo—I don’t know how many more games Pitt will win this season, or if they’ll even make the NCAA Tournament. But one thing’s for sure. You can no longer look on a college basketball map and not find Pitt. They’re making their presence known.
“With as many young freshmen that they have on their team, for them to be as focused as they are says a lot about the coaching staff and how hard they’re working with them to give them a level of confidence that it takes to go out and compete,” Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton said about the Panthers. “I think the people in Pittsburgh should be very happy that they have a guy (Capel) who’s come in and kind of brought that swagger back that Pitt’s been accustomed to for over a number of years.”
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