After getting Pitt's first commitment through the NCAA Transfer Portal Monday in Oakland forward Daniel Oladapo, Jeff Capel followed that up with another commitment late Tuesday night.
Texas Tech junior guard Jamarius Burton announced on his Instagram he had chosen Pitt as his new team:
The addition brings another veteran player to Pitt's roster after losing five players to the Transfer Portal at the end of the 2020-2021 season.
Burton is a 6-foot-4, 205 lbs. guard who averaged 4.3 points and 1.2 assists in his 23 games played as a junior last season. His best performance came in a ten-point, three-rebound non-conference game against Grambling. He averaged 19 minutes per game coming off the bench last seson for Texas Tech.
That year was interrupted by an injury on Feb. 20 that kept him out for a month. He returned to play in Texas Tech's two NCAA Tournament games against Utah State and Arkansas. But he only averaged 8.5 minutes in those games, scoring a single basket in only one of those games.
Burton already transferred from Wichita State to Texas Tech after his sophomore season when he averaged 10.3 points per game and led the Shockers with 103 assists. Even though those numbers obviously did translate with his first transfer, it's reasonable to question how much his growth a new team was stunted with no offseason and a bumpy season during the pandemic.
However that first transfer could mean he needs a waiver of this transfer to be eligible to play next year. The NCAA's new transfer rule that allowed players to forego the normal transfer process because of the pandemic wouldn't apply to him because of that.
If nothing else, Burton's prior success at distributing the ball with assists could make him a solid replacement for Femi Odukale to keep up the flow of the offense for solid bench minutes. That would further add to a backcourt with Odukale, and fellow transfers Nike Sibande and Ithiel Horton.
