GREENSBORO, N.C. — Pitt’s remarkable season came to an end with an 84-73 Sunday afternoon loss to an exceptional Xavier team in the second round of the NCAA tournament at Greensboro Coliseum.
While the ending brought tears and emotion for a team that finished 24-12 on the season, the Panthers felt pride in their efforts this season as they spoke in their postgame press conference and in the team’s locker room.
Instead of this edition of our good, bad and ugly series focusing on the final game of the season, we’ll use this to analyze the year as a whole. The Panthers have a lot to look back on, from the rises and falls to the best moments of a season that redefined what Pitt basketball could look like moving forward.
Good
More than anything, Pitt won this year through the players on a team with four starters being first-year transfers but playing like they’d been teammates for years.
“I'm so proud of my team,” coach Jeff Capel said after Pitt’s Sunday loss. “You know, everyone in our program and especially our players have just done such an amazing job this year. For me as their head coach and for all of our coaching staff, I am so grateful for the journey that they have taken us on, they've allowed us to be a part of.”
Capel assembled his roster with major transfer portal additions in seniors Nelly Cummings and Greg Elliott, as well as junior Blake Hinson and sophomore Fede Federiko. Add in seniors who transferred to Pitt in years prior like Jamarius Burton and Nike Sibande, and you have the core of the Panthers’ 2022-23 team.
But while Burton was the team’s top star who made first team All-ACC, what built Pitt’s best qualities was how the team came together and didn’t rely on one or two playmakers to carry the team. The Panthers’ best wins came because of overall team play and a healthy, team-centric approach from its players.
“The bond that we were able to develop has been tremendous,” Burton said after the game. “It's something we're all going to take for the rest of our lives. Each war that we've all been in has taught us lessons, and it's going to be something that we can teach our kids one day.”
Part of what showed Pitt’s togetherness was how the stats added up. The Panthers finished fifth in ACC rebounding margin this season, but none of the players individually finished in the top 10 of the conference in rebounding stats. Those numbers didn’t come from a center who averaged 12 rebounds per game like DeJuan Blair did in 2009 but from a group determined to work together to create those numbers. Hinson averaged 6.0 per game, Federiko had 5.3, Burton had 4.8, Sibande had 4.1 and Elliott had 4.0.
The Panthers’ 325 made 3-pointers this season were the most by an ACC team, but it was from a healthy spread between four primary players. Hinson led the way with 97, third-most by a Pitt player in program history, but he was buttressed by Elliott making 77, Cummings adding 61 and Sibande coming off the bench to help with 43 more.
The chemistry showed on the floor for Pitt this season played a major role in Jeff Capel’s well-earned ACC Coach of the Year award. The environment he cultivated, comprised of several players who were new to the program, served as a prideful example of the recent rise in success for Pitt athletics.
“They were undeterred in their focus to stay together,” athletic director Heather Lyke said. “Their selflessness is what brought them together. The strength of this team is the team. Incredibly proud of this coaching staff.”
“They're really, really good teammates, and they all wanted to be a part of something,” Capel said of his seniors. “They all had healthy egos, not ego problems. And they all had the ability to believe even when something maybe didn't look strong. I think they understood, in order for [the season] to become what it did become, it had to be together.”
Bad
The worst parts of Pitt’s season came when its team chemistry came apart and the team didn’t have answers to pull everyone together. Individual player performances rarely made up for that lack of chemistry, and in some tough moments, the Panthers let winnable games get away from them.
Pitt’s defense was its calling card for most of the season, as the Panthers allowed just over 67 points per game in their first 26 contests. But in the last seven games of the season, the Panthers allowed over 81 points per game and didn’t find defensive answers against ACC opponents. That contributed to a 2-3 finish to the regular season, where one more win would’ve clinched the program’s first-ever regular season ACC crown.
Make no mistake: Pitt’s players had several leading moments this season where they won individual matchups to boost their team in crucial moments — Burton’s game-winning shot in Pitt’s 60-59 NCAA tournament win over Mississippi State; Cummings’ 5-0 run opening the Panthers’ second half in the NCAA tournament win over Iowa State; or the two steals by Burton and Elliott that led to the Panthers’ final four points in a 71-68 win over No. 20 Miami.
But against Xavier, Duke and some lesser teams throughout the year, those moments didn’t come often enough for the Panthers to boost their NCAA tournament resume higher.
Ugly
The ugliest part of Pitt’s final scene of the season was the fate that befalls 67 of the 68 teams who make the NCAA tournament every year — the sudden, abrupt end.
“When you get to this part of the season, you know, it's cruel,” Capel said, “The ending is cruel because you're together, you're doing all these things, and then for everyone except for one team it comes to an abrupt end. I know our guys are hurting. There is a game that we really wanted to win, and we had a chance, but we just came up short.”
While Pitt’s seniors are proud of the job done by the team to outperform expectations and get Pitt wins on big stages, the younger players expressed the remorse that they’d played their last game with the leaders who mentored them all year.
“They’re amazing guys,” freshman Guillermo Diaz Graham said of Pitt’s seniors. “That’s why I’m so hurt — because they’re leaving. ... They’ve been so good to me. I’m so grateful for them. But we still have a couple guys here who we have pretty good bonds with.”
Even for players like Aidan Fisch, who worked his way from being a team manager in 2018 to being a walk-on in 2020 and eventually being tackled by his teammates after he made the final basket of his last home game against Syracuse, the pain of the abrupt end couldn’t overshadow the triumphs of a team he worked hard to be part of.
"The fact we [put together] a great season was unbelievable,” Fisch said. “These seniors, I can't say enough good things about how great teammates and leaders they are. The fact we were able to put Pitt back on the map means everything to me.”
Christopher Carter: ccarter@post-gazette.com and on Twitter @CarterCritiques
First Published: March 20, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
