Each week through the end of the 2020-21 season, Craig Meyer, the Post-Gazette’s Pitt basketball writer, will answer reader questions about the Panthers. And some other stuff, too.
If you want to submit a question, you can email Craig at cmeyer@post-gazette.com or hit him up on Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
Barry: Did you ever think that when Marcus Carr played for Pitt that he would develop into the player that he has become?
Craig: As much as I would like to say I always knew he would blossom into a potential All-American on one of the top teams in what’s very likely the best conference in college basketball, I can’t say that was the case.
I did, however, see promise in him. Much of the criticism of him in his one season at Pitt was misguided. Getting emails and tweets from people saying he wasn’t an ACC-caliber player was absurd then and it’s clearly that much more absurd now. It was a contention I would even hear from some of my colleagues in the media. Carr’s biggest problem at Pitt was the situation into which he was thrust. As a freshman, he was tasked with piloting an offense that lacked anyone else who could consistently create for themselves, something that was compounded significantly by the Panthers’ lack of experience. As the point guard, Carr was handed the keys to a jalopy and was asked to drive it among a group of sports cars. And, despite those challenges, he played pretty well.
He wasn’t the only player who became unfairly engulfed by the larger mistakes of those around them with the 2017-18 Pitt team — and the intense criticisms that came with those missteps. Parker Stewart played well for his late father at Tennessee-Martin and, after leaving as a graduate transfer, became a coveted player who recently committed to Indiana. Jared Wilson-Frame became an important part of the Panthers’ six-win improvement in 2018-19.
I don’t think a lot of people understand just how much of a burden it was for the players on that team to go out on the court for months knowing, at a certain point, that they were at such a drastic disadvantage for reasons partially out of their control. I’ve always respected those players, and while I go about my job and cover this program dispassionately, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t cool to see Carr become the player that he has.
Victor: Is the panthers lack of size in the frontcourt (playing a 6’6 power forward and a 6’8 center, with Toney even playing PF at times), a product of them making the best of not having size, or is this just the style of basketball Capel prefers to play regardless of personnel?
Craig: Part of it comes down to the fact that college frontcourts, outside of a handful of exceptions, generally only get so big. At Pitt, that has been the case. Since Gary McGhee graduated back in 2011, the Panthers have really only had two heavily used players taller than 6-foot-9 — Steven Adams (for one year) and Terrell Brown. Before them, Pitt had Aaron Gray and Chris Taft, but beyond that, this isn’t a program that has relied much on particularly big players since the start of Ben Howland’s tenure in the late 1990s.
Capel, though, does seem to like long, athletic and versatile players, even if he doesn’t have a tightly defined system. He’s going to need to get in better shape and refine some of his skills, but at 6-foot-9 and 240 pounds, I really do think John Hugley is eventually going to provide some of what the Panthers got from their big men in some of their most successful years.
Rich: I remember one of the big things Jamie Dixon looked for in a recruit was that he played on a winning high school team (usually a state champion). Is that element still relevant or overrated?
Craig: This might be an oversimplification, and I’m sure there are some notable exceptions to this that aren’t coming immediately to mind, but I think it’s a red flag if a player being recruited to be a difference-maker on a major-conference college basketball team wasn’t able to do enough to will his high school team to be successful. That player would either have to be a late bloomer or would have to have been contending with some seriously imposing obstacles and limitations as far as their teammates, the type of school they attended or the level of competition in the area.
If you look at Pitt’s roster, most of the scholarship players were a part of successful high school teams. Au’Diese Toney and Nike Sibande both led their teams to state championships in basketball-mad states. Xavier Johnson guided his team to a top-five ranking in Virginia. Though he was more of a complementary piece alongside the likes of Isaiah Stewart, Gerald Drumgoole went to national powerhouse La Lumiere, which made it to the finals of High School Nationals his senior year.
Mr. B: How is Jared Wilson-Frame doing in Europe?
Craig: Good timing with this question, as he was just signed last week by Charilaos Trikoupis Mesologiou of the top league in Greece. He spent much of last season with Limburg United in Belgium, where he averaged 16.2 points and knocked down 40.2% of his 3-pointers while being voted to his league’s all-star game.
His success there earned him a spot with Raptors 905, the Toronto Raptors’ G League affiliate. He only played two games with them, however, before the G League season was suspended and ultimately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dan: What premier league manager would capel be most like?
Craig: I’m going to go with Brendan Rodgers. They’re about the same age — Capel is 45, Rodgers 47 — and their coaching careers have followed a relatively similar arc. They both became head coaches at fairly young ages and worked their way up in that world by succeeding with relative upstarts (Capel at VCU, Rodgers with Watford, Reading and Swansea City). Their accomplishments there earned them a bigger job — Capel at Oklahoma, Rodgers at Liverpool — where they had one really good season, but things eventually fell apart, leading to their ousters. Their successors at those places, somewhat coincidentally, have both been very good.
After being fired, they rehabbed their careers elsewhere — Capel as an assistant at Duke, Rodgers with Celtic — before being given the opportunity to take a blue-and-yellow team desperate to return to the fairly recent glory it once enjoyed — Capel (obviously) at Pitt and Rodgers with Leicester City.
I wasn’t totally sure of the comparison at first, but I got the coveted seal of approval from my colleague and noted Liverpool fan Johnny McGonigal on this.
Corey: What have been your go-to shows to watch during this quarantine? Both new discoveries and also re-watches?
Craig: Like a lot of people, I consumed an unhealthy amount of TV in those first few weeks of the pandemic, but even as the weather got nicer and I got outside more, my wife and I would still go through some shows that intrigued us.
There’s a ton I watched — some of it, like Tiger King way back in March, was bad — so I’ll spare including every last show, but some ones that really stood out: What We Do In the Shadows, True Detective (Season 3), Schitt’s Creek, The Last Dance, Ted Lasso, The Queen’s Gambit, Ramy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Little Fires Everywhere, The Undoing, Dave, The Flight Attendant, Mrs. America, The Plot Against America and After Life.
After reading through all that, I’m still probably watching too much TV.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: December 29, 2020, 5:01 p.m.
