Trey McGowens could recognize the smile.
Last season, McGowens was greeted by Pitt coach Jeff Capel on the Panthers’ bench after scoring 33 points in a win against Louisville. In that moment, he couldn’t help but beam. Last Saturday, as Justin Champagnie walked off the court in the final seconds of Pitt’s 73-64 victory against Georgia Tech, a game in which he scored 30 points, the freshman forward approached his teammates and coaches with a grin that stretched across his face.
“It was good to see that,” McGowens said Monday.
There’s much about Champagnie’s freshman experience with which McGowens and fellow sophomore guard Xavier Johnson can relate beyond an occasional jubilant smile.
Twenty-four games into his freshman season, Champagnie has emerged as a force for the Panthers, averaging 12.6 points and a team-high 7.3 rebounds per game. He has been even better of late, averaging 17.2 points and 9.2 rebounds per game while shooting 52.6% from the field and 36.8% from 3-point range in the past six games. In his first season of college basketball, he is, quite possibly, the team’s best player.
Last season, the position Champagnie is in was one that Johnson and McGowens occupied, albeit to a more extreme extent, as freshmen upon whom their team leaned in a meaningful, even demanding way. Having lived through it themselves, the sophomore duo, as well as sophomore forward Au’Diese Toney, exist as a resource, helping navigate Champagnie through his rapidly evolving world.
“For those three guys, last year, they were thrown in the fire,” Capel said Monday. “They didn’t have an older guy to talk to them what it was about. The oldest guy we had was Jared [Wilson-Frame], but those guys came in and right away, it was looked at that they’re three of our better players. I think they can help Justin. They can talk to him about some of the things they went through.”
The advice they dispense is usually straightforward enough. Get in the gym consistently beyond scheduled practices and workouts. Don’t become too enamored with the highs and too bogged down by the lows the season will invariably offer, especially when it comes to feedback, both good and bad, that exists on social media.
They’ve seen Champagnie act on those words. McGowens said that on Saturday night, mere hours after his 30-point performance, Champagnie was back at the team’s facility getting up shots at 1 a.m.
For all the commonalities that exist, the parallels between Champagnie and the previous season’s freshmen only extend so far.
In 2018, Johnson, McGowens and Toney were joining a team that finished 8-24 the previous season and, between a rash of transfers and graduations, had lost five of its top six scorers. There existed a massive void that they had to fill the moment they stepped on campus, forcing them to learn the nuances of college basketball in a very public and consequential way. For Champagnie, with those three sophomores and a handful of older contributors (Ryan Murphy, Terrell Brown and Eric Hamilton, all of whom are juniors or older), there’s more of a support structure in place. The Panthers need him to help, but they don’t necessarily need him to carry the team on a nightly basis.
“The core group, at the beginning of the season, me, X and Diese, we kind of brought it upon ourselves,” McGowens said. “Coach had conversations with us, telling us to kind of lead. The older guys who were ahead of us, they taught us a lot, too, but they didn’t teach us as much as a regular freshman because they didn’t win as much. We kind of had to learn on our own and just listen to coaches and learn from there. We tried to get everybody on board. They were really receptive.”
Champagnie’s experience being easier, however, has also helped make the sophomores’ lives easier, particularly Johnson’s. Though his per-game scoring numbers are down, it’s due in some part to Johnson having to handle the ball much less. After using 30.3% of Pitt’s possessions while on the court last season, the 50th-highest mark of any Division I player, he is using just 24.5% of possessions this season.
The extra help around him, whether it’s Champagnie, Murphy or others, has been incredibly beneficial. Despite handling the ball less, Johnson is averaging nearly a full assist more per game and he’s again among the top 60 Division I players in assist rate. McGowens, whose possession usage has gone from 23.2% to 24.9%, has benefited, as well, averaging two more assists per game than he was as a freshman and seeing his assist rate nearly double. For both players, it’s a welcome change that elicits a common feeling.
“It’s a sign of relief, for real,” Johnson said. “Last year, it was just me going. It’s my game, but I don’t want it to be like that every play. This year, it’s a relief. Diese is shooting the ball. Justin is shooting it well. We have Murph, when he comes back. We have shooters.”
“It’s a big relief,” McGowens said. “Coming into the season, of course you want to lose yourself in the team, but there’s always a pressure that if you don’t do good or score because you feel like your team relies on you so much and that’s your role that if you don’t score, your chances decrease by a lot. Just having Justin playing well, it takes a lot of stress off us, where we can just pass and not force things.”
Because of that added talent and balance, Pitt’s offense, shaky as it still is for long stretches, has improved noticeably. This season, the Panthers are 101st of 353 Division I teams in adjusted offensive efficiency, averaging 106.5 points per 100 possessions, after finishing last season 168th and averaging 104.9 points per 100 possessions. With the arrival of Champagnie and Murphy, as well as the offensive improvement exhibited by Toney, neutralizing Pitt’s offense requires more than just honing in on its two guards.
At times, when Champagnie has been at his most prolific — with four performances of at least 20 points in the past 12 games — it has been a unit that has been explosive. Champagnie’s recent outbursts even have McGowens thinking that his freshman single-game scoring record, the one he notched that fateful day last season against Louisville, might be in jeopardy.
“I think Justin is going to break it with how he’s playing,” McGowens said, with a smile.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: February 12, 2020, 1:00 p.m.
