As Lance White and the rest of the Pitt women’s basketball staff prepared for their 2022 recruiting class, they had a list of needs, the kind of voids that had to be filled if the program were to excel in the years ahead.
Coming off a 2-16 finish in ACC competition last season, those needs were wide-ranging. White wanted what he described as a “true point guard.” He hoped to get older, more experienced players who had “been through the wars.” He aimed to add players who could stretch the floor and shoot, along with long, rangy athletes.
In one single class, White may have gotten everything he desired.
As he prepares for his fifth season as the Panthers’ head coach, White is in the final stages of securing arguably the best recruiting class of his tenure, catapulted by a recent slew of promising additions. What is currently a five-player class of high-schoolers Aislin Malcolm, Avery Strickland and Marley Washenitz, and transfers Gabby Hutcherson and Channise Lewis — with three of those five players committing to the program in the past two weeks — is one that White hopes can immediately infuse Pitt with talent and help it make a long-awaited jump after seven consecutive losing seasons.
“I wanted those players that wanted to compete no matter what that meant,” White said. “When we were evaluating as a staff and talking to them in this recruiting process, we wanted to know that if they were coming here just to score points, that’s not what it’s about. It’s ‘Are you going to do whatever it takes to win? That’s with this group what I’m so excited about. They want to win. That’s going to be fun to add to our team. Their confidence and their skill level is really good, but it’s that mentality more than anything else that we were attracted to. We knew we needed them as a part of our team.”
Each player provides reasons for excitement and encouragement.
A 5-foot-11 guard, Malcolm is a top-100 recruit and three-time Post-Gazette Fabulous Five honoree who helped lead a loaded Chartiers Valley team to a 110-7 record, three WPIAL titles and one PIAA championship in her four years as a starter. Last season, she shot 41% from 3-point range.
Washenitz is a two-time West Virginia player of the year who helped guide her Fairmont Senior High School team to three state championship appearances, one of which it won. Last season, the 5-foot-10 guard, who originally committed to West Virginia as a sophomore, averaged 28.3 points, 11 rebounds, six steals and three assists per game.
Strickland is a two-time all-state selection in Tennessee, where she helped lead Farragut High School to a state championship appearance last season while averaging 17.8 points per game. Like Washenitz, Strickland is a former West Virginia commit.
For a Pitt team that defended well but struggled to score — ranking 12th in points per game, 14th in field goal percentage and 13th in 3-point percentage in the 15-team ACC — they could provide an offensive jolt.
“Bringing in a class that has that ability to move the basketball, who have a high basketball IQ, really understand the next pass, have great shot selection and those type of things…this class really adds that to the players we already have that have done a great job and work extremely hard,” White said. “I think these complement each other extremely well.”
For all the hope the three freshmen bring, the most immediate contributions are likely to come from Hutcherson and Lewis, each of whom will arrive in Oakland with an intriguing background.
Both players were highly touted coming out of high school. Hutcherson, a 6-foot-2 forward, was a five-star recruit who was the No. 12 prospect nationally in the 2020 class while Lewis, a 5-foot-8 point guard, was the No. 55 recruit in the 2017 class. They both ended up in the Big Ten — Hutcherson at Ohio State, Lewis at Maryland — where they were members of teams that advanced to the Sweet 16 in the 2022 NCAA tournament.
Both players faced challenges and setbacks, though. Over the past three seasons, Lewis played in just nine total games, with injuries sidelining her for the entirety of the 2019-20 and 2021-22 seasons. Before suffering a season-ending knee injury in 2020-21, she was averaging nearly 18 minutes per game for a Terrapins team that finished the season 26-3. Hutcherson struggled to live up to lofty expectations with the Buckeyes and entered the transfer portal after a sophomore season in which she averaged 3.3 points and 2.2 rebounds in 10.2 minutes per game.
Coming to Pitt not only offers them more playing time and a larger role, but a chance to restart their careers. Lewis has two seasons of eligibility remaining while Hutcherson has three.
“That’s one of the best things about transfers: You get to start fresh,” White said. “Those players that come in here, now they understand what this whole process and what college basketball is all about. I think they bring a level of maturity a lot of teams are missing. They’ve got something they want to prove. I think we’re a great platform for them to be able to really showcase their skills and talent.”
While they suffered losses — leading scorer Jayla Everett was dismissed from the program on Feb. 20, and leading rebounder Rita Igbokwe transferred to Mississippi — the Panthers return seven of their top nine scorers from last season, a group highlighted by Amber Brown, Liatu King and Dayshanette Harris.
Paired with the five newcomers, it’s a group that could help Pitt make the kind of strides it hasn’t yet under White, who is 32-79 overall and 8-59 in ACC play since taking over for the fired Suzie McConnell-Serio in 2018. Over those four years, the Panthers have never finished a season better than 11-19, which came last season, when they lost 15 of their final 17 games after starting 9-4.
White believes that his program is much closer to its goals than its record indicates, pointing to a handful of narrow losses and games in which Pitt’s opponent pulled away late to turn a close contest into something seemingly more lopsided. With some of the pieces they’ve signed, the hope for the Panthers is that those hypotheticals and regrets from last season can turn into wins.
“We’re still selling the same thing,” White said. “We’re selling an individualized program. We’re talking about skill development. We’re talking about being a part of a family.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: May 9, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: May 9, 2022, 11:44 a.m.
