Admittedly, Jared Wilson-Frame knows most people on Pitt’s campus haven’t yet gotten to the point where they can identify him as a member of the men’s basketball team if they see him in public. After all, he, like 10 of his teammates, has only been at the school for a handful of months and has never played a game for the Panthers.
For those who do recognize him, though, there’s at least one question he gets every day that goes something along these lines — so, how good are you all going to be this season? His answer, once almost rehearsed, has gradually changed.
“At first I was telling them we’re going to be good, but after the first month, I got kind of tired of hearing that,” the junior forward said Monday. “So I just told them to come to the game.”
A team cloaked in mystery will remain that way for some time, well beyond its scrimmage last Saturday against Villanova, beyond its exhibition Saturday against Slippery Rock and likely well into its first few weeks of the season. With what amounts to a completely new team, it’s almost unavoidable, both the uncertainty about the team and the external curiosity it generates.
For weeks, one of the few givens has been coach Kevin Stallings’ feelings about his players. He likes their attitudes, their intensity and their willingness to be coached and learn. That much seems unimpeachable. But, to answer the question Wilson-Frame so often receives, how will that translate to a win-loss record? This team competes, but can it be competitive?
His coach believes so.
“We’ll get knocked on our head a few times, but these guys I’m pretty sure are going to compete,” Stallings said. “There’s enough talent there that eventually we’ll be a good team. We’ll be a good team. There will be some growing pains. I don’t know where they’re going to be coming. It could be Saturday. Jiminy Christmas you see people losing left and right to people you would never expect to. If that happens, that happens. But we’ll come back.”
Much of the confusion comes not only from fans who don’t know the players, but also how those players will fit together. Though it’s part of a continually evolving process, Stallings has provided occasional details since the team opened practice in early October. Now, that rotation is beginning to take shape.
On Monday, the second-year Pitt coach said freshman Marcus Carr has created separation with senior Jonathan Milligan in the race to be the team’s starting point guard. Wilson-Frame, freshman Parker Stewart and freshman Khameron Davis form what he described as “a tight group of three” vying for minutes on the wing. Down low — alongside written-in-pen starter Ryan Luther — Kene Chukwuka and Shamiel Stevenson are in a tight battle still being sorted out, while fellow big men Terrell Brown and Peace Ilegomah can, at this point, provide the team with a fourth or fifth player to build depth on the low post.
Carr, in particular, has impressed. The highest-rated recruit of Pitt’s seven freshmen, the Toronto native has shown to be more advanced than Stallings expected and has proven to be just as tough and level-headed, a freshman with a rare ability to survey the court and quarterback his team.
“Today in practice, I think he was trying to go down the lane and he got tripped. He should be focused on not hitting the floor that hard, but threw a no-look pass to me,” Wilson-Frame said. “I’m in the corner like, ‘How’d you even see that?’ Coach stops it because he fell and got hurt, but I’m just wide open with the ball in my hands.”
Similar praise could be given to Chukwuka, a little-heralded junior-college transfer who Stallings said, nearly three weeks into practice, was shooting about 70 percent from 3-point range in live action. That high of a number will naturally decline, but other elements of his game, based on what coaches have seen, aren’t likely to do the same.
“What we got is, and I hope I can say this in the most favorable sense of the word, we got a savage who can really shoot. I mean that in a good way,” Stallings said. “He plays so hard that he raises everybody else’s intensity level because he only has one speed.”
While questions about the team’s ultimate success go beyond its tenacity and admirable mindset, it can sometimes be tough to separate the two. In the closed-door scrimmage last weekend against Villanova, a preseason top-10 team, Stallings saw a group that, above all else, rebounded surprisingly well.
The expectations surrounding his team are expectedly low, with Pitt picked to finish last in the 15-team ACC in the preseason poll. What Stallings saw against the Wildcats, though, provides him with a level of belief.
“The effort level and level of physicality it took for us to compete on the boards with them was considerable,” he said. “It wasn’t like two guys who were sort of evenly matched were going out and competing with each other to go get a rebound. Our guys just fought. That gives me tremendous hope.”
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NOTE — Davis left the Villanova scrimmage about 10 minutes in after re-aggravating a heel injury, according to Stallings. The 6-foot-4 guard will be reevaluated Tuesday by a team trainer and could “easily” be back Thursday. Stallings, however, said he will be conservative with Davis’ return.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
First Published: October 30, 2017, 11:40 p.m.