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Pitt guard Xavier Johnson gets a shot up against Miami guard Isaiah Wong in the second half Feb. 2, 2020, at Petersen Events Center.
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2020 Pitt basketball exit interview: Xavier Johnson

Matt Freed/Post-Gazette

2020 Pitt basketball exit interview: Xavier Johnson

Pitt has six players from its 2019-20 team returning next season. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is speaking with each of them to discuss last season and what awaits for the program and themselves:


While discussing the expectations he had for his Pitt team heading into last season, the words flowed freely for Xavier Johnson, almost as if he were reciting a list.

Following a somewhat surprising six-win improvement in 2018-19, his freshman season, Johnson believed the Panthers would finish “at least” in the top five of the ACC standings. If they were fortunate enough, his biggest goal was to win the conference outright. He thought his team was ready to make the NCAA tournament, a significant step for a program that went 8-24 the season before his arrival.

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When it came to his personal expectations, though, there was a brief pause. For a normally succinct individual with a quick cadence like Johnson, it was revealing. He was about to tread on fragile ground.

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“I’m gonna keep it straightforward — my goal was to have a good year and go to the next level,” he said last month. “As I saw it, though, I’ve got more stuff to work on than I thought I did.”

Like millions of others, Johnson is experiencing the realities of a life he could have scarcely imagined two months ago. He didn’t expect to be away from campus in April, taking classes remotely and practicing on a recently purchased hoop outside of his parents’ house rather than Petersen Events Center. Before the start of his sophomore season, he also expected these weeks and months to be the spent preparing for the NBA draft, the alluring prelude to a lifelong dream.

Instead, the past several weeks have been spent reflecting on Pitt’s underwhelming 16-17 season and his role in it. The aspirations he had for both himself and his team never came to fruition. Those months didn’t provide him with what he once hoped they would, but it wasn’t as if he got nothing from them. In some ways, the lessons he gained in that time were more valuable than whatever it was that success could have brought him.

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“One thing I saw was, I wasn’t really ready,” Johnson said. “I didn’t have the year I was supposed to. I didn’t have the year I was expected to.”

Johnson hasn’t always been guarded about his plans beyond Pitt and how those plans would impact or shorten his time at the university.

In February 2019, near the end of a season in which he earned ACC all-freshman honors, Johnson told reporters he didn’t see himself being at Pitt for four years. He wasn’t the only one that felt that way; he said his father and his AAU coach held the same belief.

Those words hung over him for much of his sophomore season, shaping the way virtually every shot, pass and dribble was viewed. As a freshman polishing off one of the best seasons for a first-year player in program history, those words were a sign of earned confidence. As a sophomore who struggled at times, they became a source of ridicule, reflective of a young player with premature visions of grandeur.

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“I said last year that I didn’t know what I was going to be,” Johnson said. “I didn’t know if I was going to be a two-and-done. I didn’t know what I was going to be. I was still young and I wasn’t really thinking about what I said. I was just happy about the year I had. Just coming off this year, I still see a lot of stuff I have to learn. I have to learn those things. Next year, it won’t be the same year as my sophomore year.”

While Johnson’s second college season was disappointing in some respects — namely when measured against whatever expectations his first season created — it represented progress in others. His assists per game rose while his turnovers per game dipped, the latter of which can be partially explained by Johnson handling the ball less, though that makes the former figure more impressive.

Still, by the end of the season, Johnson stood as a player who had improved in some areas and regressed or, at the very least, stagnated in others. There was the possibility to test the NBA draft waters, a relatively harmless undertaking in which a player can declare for the draft and receive feedback from teams without hiring an agent and forfeiting their remaining eligibility. Johnson, however, didn’t even want to explore that option.

“There was a thought, but I told my parents I didn’t want to really go through it,” Johnson said. “I mean, I wanted to, but I didn’t really want to go through it. I just felt like with the year I had, it taught me a lot. I know I wasn’t ready for it and I wasn’t about to waste my year of going through that. Because if I do it next year, I would have to just leave and I don’t want to do that.”

The answers he was seeking from NBA teams, after all, were ones he already knew. Johnson still possesses traits that make him an effective college player and an alluring professional prospect, but areas of obvious improvement remain, beginning with his shot.

Last season, his field goal percentage fell by four percentage points, all the way down to 37.3%, and his 3-point percentage dropped to 33%. Johnson noticed what he described as inconsistencies with his jumper, though his unorthodox form isn’t something he’s aiming to tweak — “My form isn’t really too bad,” he said. His goal for the coming weeks and months will be shooting as much as he can, namely working on his stand-still jump shot, which would be a new wrinkle for a player who primarily pulled up off the dribble in his first two college seasons.

With that work will come trying to successfully apply the lessons of last season, ones that go beyond the realization he wasn’t ready for the next level. Assistant coach Milan Brown, who works closely with Pitt’s guards, stressed to him the importance of establishing a close relationship with the team’s big men, the same people who set screens for him, defend off screens for him and who try to block the shots of players who may get by him. As the team’s leading returning scorer last season and as one of just four players in the Panthers’ nine-man rotation who had at least a year of experience with the program, Johnson’s adjustment to team leader was sometimes awkward. That, too, is something he is looking to sharpen.

“I learned the way I pushed my teammates, you can’t approach them all the way yelling,” Johnson said. “You can’t approach them all the same. Some of them, you’ve got to ease into it. Some, you’ve got to get on them.”

Those desires to get better are balanced, and sometimes fueled, by a different kind of feeling — anger. The way last season ended, with Pitt losing eight of its final nine games, elicited something visceral in Johnson, a sting he said he still carries and still guides his offseason training. He wasn’t the only one who felt it, either. Even players such as Ithiel Horton, who was sitting out last season after transferring from Delaware, were visibly irritated as the losses accumulated.

“He didn’t really play, but he was kind of mad to see some of the other players,” Johnson said. “I’m not going to say what he said.”

There’s reason to believe that frustration may dwindle, if not disappear, next season.

Some of the shortcomings Johnson experienced last season could be tied to a Pitt roster that had talent, but not necessarily talent that fit logically together on the court. Lacking both consistent outside shooting and steady production on the low post, the Panthers were too frequently one-dimensional, which limited Johnson’s effectiveness as a speedy, athletic slasher. With Horton, who shot 40.9% from 3 in his lone college season, and the addition of freshman big man John Hugley, Pitt could very well have a group of players around Johnson that enhance his game better than last season’s squad did. As he sees it, he’ll have better teammates, which will lessen the immense load he has often had to carry.

There’s anger over how last season transpired, yes, but there’s also a sense of hope for what may come next that pushes Johnson in the offseason.

“One thing I don’t want to go out as is a loser,” Johnson said. “It all goes into the work. It just makes you work harder now.”

Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG

First Published: May 8, 2020, 9:00 a.m.

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