If Pitt coach Jeff Capel entered the 2019-20 season as the face of his program, as is the case for many of his coaching colleagues across college basketball, Xavier Johnson was its heart.
There was more to the Panthers than just their sophomore point guard, of course, but no player on their roster would have a bigger hand in shaping their successes or failures during that season than Johnson, not only because of his prominent role in the team’s offense, but due to his sheer talent. In 2018-19, his first season of college basketball, Johnson was a revelation, leading the team in scoring and becoming the first Pitt player to ever make the ACC all-freshman team. The three players who received more votes than him for that honor were selected among the top 10 picks in last year’s NBA draft, and the player directly behind him went on to win the league’s player of the year award in 2020.
Whatever hopes and expectations were attached to Pitt coming into the 2019-20 season were affixed, in some ways, to Johnson. By the end of that season, both the team and the player stood in similar positions -- having made some progress, sure, but having largely disappointed or, at the very least, having created a feeling that they could have done more.
“If I was to play a little bit better than I did this year, we would have been way better,” Johnson said after the Panthers’ March 11 loss to N.C. State in the ACC tournament.
His season certainly wasn’t a failure. He was still a productive player who, in some games, showed the same flashes of brilliance that helped define his freshman season. But to get a fuller sense of what went right and wrong for the Virginia native as a sophomore, a closer look is required.
His numbers went down — but that doesn’t tell the full story
Important as Johnson was to his team, his role within it actually decreased in 2019-20. After handling 30.3% of Pitt’s possessions while he was on the court as a freshman, the 50th-highest mark of any Division I player and tied for the highest mark of any Pitt player in KenPom.com history (since 2002), he used 24.9% of them as a sophomore. His shot attempts went down, too, from 11.6 per game to 10.
Part of that came from simply having more help around him. Two of his teammates — Trey McGowens and Justin Champagnie, the former of whom entered the transfer portal last week — used more than 20% of the Panthers’ possessions while on the court. Champagnie made an instant impact as a freshman, averaging a team-high 12.7 points per game. Au’Diese Toney improved considerably as an offensive player, as well.
Johnson’s scoring decreased by about four points per game, a stat that would be easy to highlight as a sign he regressed as a sophomore. Perhaps more than anything, though, it’s a sign of a player whose team wasn’t forced to lean on him quite as heavily.
He was a more inefficient player
Johnson went into last offseason with two primary goals: become a better shooter and improve his decision-making. On the first of those objectives, he came up short.
Over 33 games this season, he shot just 37.3% overall, down from 41.5% as a freshman. His shooting numbers were down across the board. He went 33% from 3-point range, cooling down significantly after a strong first 20 or so games to the season, after going 35.2% from beyond the arc in 2018-19. His effective field goal percentage, which accounts for 3s being worth more points, fell from 46.3% to 42%.
His shooting form remains, to put it gently, unorthodox, but for long stretches it effectively did the job. The bigger problem? The kind of shots he was taking, one of which is particularly troublesome. After 2-point jumpers accounted for 24.3% of Johnson’s shots as a freshman, that number jumped to 38.5% as a sophomore. In a more analytics-driven sport that favors 3s and shots at the basket, mid-range jump shots are increasingly frowned upon. If you’re someone who can consistently knock them down, those critiques lose some of their bite. In Johnson’s case, though, he made only 26.8% of those shots.
It’s an aspect of his game that really needs to be dialed back.
... but he did limit some of his mistakes
When it came to his second goal, Johnson did a better job. Though his turnover rate was about the same as it was as a freshman, his turnovers per game decreased from four to 3.4. There were instances in games in which you could see him wanting to make a tight pass or forcing a play that he would have tried as a freshman, only to pull back. That’s an important step in his development.
Despite handling the ball less than he did as a freshman and Pitt averaging almost two fewer possessions per game (which could partially explain the dip in turnovers), Johnson’s assist numbers stayed strong, as well. He averaged 4.9 assists per game, up from 4.5 in 2018-19, and his assist rate, for the second consecutive season, ranked him among the top 50 players nationally (in fact, he has posted two of the 10 highest assist rates of a Pitt player dating back to 2002, the first year KenPom began tracking them).
The world around him changed, and he was hurt by that
While Johnson didn’t catch opponents completely by surprise as a freshman — there was, after all, film from previous games — he and McGowens both spoke throughout their sophomores about how teams would tailor their defensive game plans around them more than they did previously.
Whether or not it was a product of that, the identity of Johnson’s offensive game changed as a sophomore. Only 33% of his shots came at the rim last season. As a freshman, nearly half of his shots (48.3%, to be exact) came from that spot. He made shots at the rim at about the same percentage in his first two college seasons — 51.9% as a freshman and 53.2% as a sophomore — but he took fewer of them, too often settling for those mid-range jumpers. To be fair, he was sometimes effectively forced into that option. Without a consistent threat from 3, especially once Ryan Murphy’s shooting diminished late in the season, or a capable offensive big man off to whom he could dump the ball, his drives to the basket were often telegraphed — if he was headed there, he was almost certainly going to shoot it, thereby making him much easier to defend.
Predictability hurt him in another, more damaging area. Free throws were a sizable part of Johnson’s offensive productivity and efficiency as a freshman. A young player who shot 75% from the line attempted 6.3 free throws per game and had a free throw rate that ranked him among the top 100 Division I players. As a sophomore, however, his free throw rate — calculated by dividing free-throw attempts by overall field goal attempts — went from 54.6 to 43. His free throw attempts per game fell by two, to 4.3. His fouls drawn per game dropped from 6.1 to 4.5. Though his lack of attempts at the rim can be tied to these changes, the biggest may have been in the way that officials called Pitt’s games. Though not illegal, Johnson and McGowens both excelled as freshmen by exaggerating contact, exercising a bit of gamesmanship. The former would regularly cock his head back after a defender would touch him, even lightly. Referees were increasingly mindful of those tactics in 2019-20 and Johnson was undoubtedly impacted by it.
There’s reason to believe things will get better
Through any of those struggles Johnson may have endured is a justifiable sense of hope. What occurred during his freshman season wasn’t a mirage. This is still a fast, athletic player who can create off the dribble and help keep his team competitive against some of the best squads in the country, something that’s evident over the course of entire games or even in particularly explosive moments.
While Pitt’s roster situation is still fluid, Johnson should theoretically be in a better position next season. McGowens’ departure limits Pitt’s depth and versatility, but playing alongside Ithiel Horton should provide a backcourt partner with a more complementary skill set. Champagnie should only get better and Toney, provided he’s back, will give him another useful wing with which to work. Though he’ll only be a freshman, John Hugley could give him a sure-handed, smart big man who can stretch the floor.
Last week, Johnson dispelled any idea that he wouldn’t be back next season with a tweet affirming his commitment to the program. In it, he wrote about wanting to leave a legacy and, above all else, win. The 2019-20 season was a moment of stagnancy for him, if not a step back. His junior season could very conceivably be a rebirth, a time in which he grows into the player some may have, perhaps unfairly, expected him to be as a sophomore.
And, in the process, he could accomplish some of the things at Pitt he set out to do when he first arrived.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: March 25, 2020, 11:00 a.m.
