Pitt’s most ballyhooed player entering the 2019-20 season has, through three games, been its most befuddling.
Expectations were high, and deservedly so, for sophomore guard Xavier Johnson on the heels of a freshman season in which he led the Panthers in scoring and assists. He also made the ACC’s all-freshman team, an honor for which only three of the eventual top seven picks in the NBA draft received more votes.
The improvement that was almost assumed from his freshman to his sophomore season hasn’t quite shown itself, at least not yet.
He is averaging 10 points per game, 5.5 fewer than he did last season. He is down almost a full assist per game. He is averaging nearly as many turnovers per game as he did last season, when he led all ACC players in that category.
And while his rebounding numbers are up by nearly two per game, his shooting, which was already a point of concern, hasn’t looked better, as he’s making just 30% of his shots (his 3-point percentage, for what it’s worth, is up to 37.5%, more than two percentage point above what it was last season).
The issue isn’t that Johnson has played poorly. But what’s distressing for his coaches is that they know he is able to do so much more.
“I think he would even tell you he hasn’t played as well as he’s capable of playing and as well as we know that he can play,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “We need him to do that.”
The reasons for the early shortcomings vary.
Four of the players in Pitt’s eight-man rotation are in their first seasons with the program, so there’s still a sense of familiarity and comfort being established. Johnson hasn’t gotten to the free throw line as regularly as he did last season, which helped bolster his offensive game. Opponents, with a year’s worth of film to study, are defending both him and fellow sophomore guard Trey McGowens differently, pressing up on them more and playing them tighter to either make them uncomfortable or prevent them from getting an all-important head of steam.
There’s also the problem of working with a small, potentially misleading sample size, but there’s also the increased attention that comes with the heightened hopes that surrounded him, which has included his name being featured in several NBA mock drafts.
“I’m not saying he’s doing it, but no player can get caught up in the noise or thinking that you’ve arrived because the moment that happens, you’re beat,” Capel said. “The thing that you have — Xavier has, Trey has, all of our guys have — is hunger. If you allow that to be gone, then you’re not as good. That’s one of the things that has made him really good.”
The influence of social media — where a young player can turn with the touch of a thumb to their phone to digest all the praise they receive after a good game and the vitriol directed at them after a bad game — is something with which Capel didn’t have to grapple during his playing days, making the plight of his players, Johnson included, more challenging than what he faced in college more than 20 years ago (and at somewhere as pressurized as Duke, no less).
“As much as you tell them, ‘Don’t pay attention to it,’ that’s what they’ve grown up with,” Capel said. “They look at mentions. They look and see. It affects them what people say. It’s hard for me at times to understand as an adult, but I think it even affects adults. It is different. It’s very different.
“But you have to be able to adapt and adjust and be able to communicate and get young people to understand that they need to be in our moment and listen to the voice inside of our locker room.”
Such consternation over Johnson’s early stumbles may very well look foolish or premature as games continue, whether that’s by the end of the season or even the end of the month. There have been good signs, even amid some of the disappointment.
Capel praised his play late in a tight win against Florida State to open the season. He also looked much better and more in control in the second half of Tuesday’s win against Robert Morris, with five points and four of his game-high seven assists coming in the final 20 minutes, all with no turnovers.
Against West Virginia and its full-court press Friday, the Panthers will need their best player and primary ball-handler to be a better version of himself. Part of overcoming some of these early difficulties can, in the eyes of other teammates shouldering expectations of their own, come from solutions that are simple, but perhaps easier said than done.
“There’s a lot of pressure we put on ourselves,” forward Au’Diese Toney said, “but we just have to relax and play ball.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: November 15, 2019, 12:28 a.m.
