DAYTON, Ohio -- The core which has led Pitt to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in seven years came together in an unorthodox fashion with respect to construction and timing.
A blend of transfers from the portal, freshmen from afar, and veterans which believed in Jeff Capel's vision despite a rough rebuilding period has gotten Pitt to this point. Once seen as the 14th-best team across its own league, the Panthers had to endure trouble from all angles -- including those from self-inflicted decisions -- and rise above being pigeon-holed into irrelevance.
They did that. And then some.
And tonight, for the first time since 2016, they dance.
Capel won the ACC's Coach of the Year award. Jamarius Burton became one of the best players in the ACC and is the calming voice for a contender. Nelly Cummings is a hometown hero set on completing a mission to restoring the program which he grew up watching to glory. Blake Hinson is here to rectify lost time after missing two seasons of basketball. Federiko Federiko -- should he play -- has the chance to show the national stage that he is, in fact, one of the best centers in the nation.
The date was October 9, 2022, when Capel's team first came together on the Petersen Events Center floor, a little later than most teams would like to get their start together. The above players are just a handful of the characters which cast the Panthers, which have a date with destiny in the form of Mississippi State at 9:10 p.m. tonight inside UD Arena in the First Four of the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
"We've had a really good season," Capel said Monday at UD Arena. "Our guys have fought. We've been unbelievably together. We've been resilient. We've been tough. That's led us to have an outstanding season. We've had several guys step up after a tough start, and we were trying to figure out who we were after some injuries and a suspension that really changed kind of the direction of our team from when we started. But I'm really proud of how we stuck together. We kept fighting. We were able to persevere and able to turn it into an outstanding season."
The fans have shown in droves this season, and they are here in Dayton. Just look at the above photo. That is Hinson stopping to interact with and give a young fan an autograph, just as a few of his fellow teammates made rounds following the open practice session Monday evening.
Recall the scene from the Panthers' final home game against Syracuse Feb. 25:
The scene just before tip-off.
— Corey Crisan (@cdcrisan) February 25, 2023
Well done, Pittsburgh. #Pitt pic.twitter.com/4EJChOwhZY
Those were the moments before the Panthers tipped off for the final time in this storybook season on their home floor in front of a sold-out 12,508 congregated Panthers faithful.
And, from the faithful which continued to show up into the postseason:
🫶🫶🫶@OaklandZoo pic.twitter.com/IkzBPoogJs
— Pitt Basketball (@Pitt_MBB) March 8, 2023
The Petersen Events Center got its beloved Oakland Zoo back in full force, and they were in Greensboro, N.C. for the ACC Tournament and surely will make the four-hour drive from western Pennsylvania to western Ohio to support their guys.
The same guys which embody toughness and have embraced all of the twists and turns which has made this ride all the more special.
"I think for us, we want to go out there and show that we're a really tough team, a really together team and a really experienced team who is going to battle through whatever adversity we face," Cummings said.
Cummings would know above all what this means for Pitt. The Midland, Pa., native was a scoring machine for a few years at Colgate before transferring home to play his final season of college basketball. Back in October at the ACC's media day, he described the transfer process to me as a "speed dating" game.
Capel was his match. Home was his match.
"I know that it kind of wasn't a big deal when I was growing up for Pitt to be in the Tournament," Cummings said. "It was a pretty big deal when they advanced. I think for me, remembering that they advanced a lot of times in those Tournaments, they didn't just come to the Tournament to be in the Tournament. They took it as an opportunity for them to go out there and win games. I think we're trying to adopt that same type of thing they had going."
It was not enough for Pitt to just get together in early October, as a result of transfer portal logistics. The snowballing started, so we thought, when top frontcourt defender Will Jeffress broke his foot in the preseason and subsequently had to have surgery on it in December. Then came the court case against former top recruit Dior Johnson, which had to take four months to go through legal proceedings as a result of a domestic incident before at last returning to the team, only to end up taking a redshirt.
Then came what was perceived as the worst blow of all, in the loss of John Hugley IV, the team's leading scorer and rebounder from a season ago. Capel hit the transfer portal -- some would say out of desperation in order to prevent a fifth-straight losing season and a potential pink slip to go with it -- to put complimentary pieces like Cummings, Hinson, and Greg Elliott around the forward, only for him to play eight games while battling a preseason knee sprain and personal, mental-health matters to go with it.
Hugley will not be on the floor Tuesday, but there is a rising frontcourt there to pick everything up. Federiko has surged as one of the best defensive centers in the ACC, and Guillermo and Jorge Diaz Graham have continued to blossom with each game after entering Capel's program with international experience from playing ball in their native Spain.
"It's amazing. It really is," associate coach Tim O'Toole told me. "John's personality is so dominant. When you miss him, all of the sudden, what's going to happen? They've picked up the slack in a big way, and Blake is a forward, but he's more of a guard because he can shoot it, but his energy alone always lifts everyone and those three guys. It's been amazing. It really has been, because they've gravitated to it, their attitudes are spectacular, and even to this day or yesterday -- we're not sure if we're playing in this or not -- their attitudes in practice was s good as it was in the first day, which is rare. But it shows you a little bit about their mindset, and I think that's kind of why they've all been able to adjust well, especially since John hasn't been here."
Hugley played his last game Dec. 10 and was officially ruled out for the season Jan. 14. Originally thought to be returning next season, Hugley announced Tuesday morning he would be entering the transfer portal.
As Pitt's best player exited, a new best player entered.
The calm, cool, and collected Burton is somewhat of a cult hero in Pitt lore now. That is more to be said about how he carries himself off the floor compared to his actions on it, which are superb in their own rights.
A first-team All-ACC player who at every turn kept the Panthers focused and centered around the next. The phrase "put the battery in each other's back" has come forward ad nauseam from Burton and his teammates. That means picking up a teammate whenever the going is unfavorable.
Burton is the very definition of a leader. He is the leader Pitt needed once Hugley went down.
He is the leader which the other 67 teams in this NCAA Tournament field would love to have. He is, as Hinson says:
"Somebody that does what they say or don't say anything at all and just do a lot of 'do,'" Hinson said. "It's more do than it is talk. ... Vocal leaders, probably the only one is probably JB and there's plenty of 'do' behind him. Yeah, just more 'do' than 'talk.' That's what it takes to be a leader in my eyes."
Mississippi coach Chris Jans called Burton a "throwback" player when I asked about Pitt's captain Monday.
Capel had similar words for his captain.
"JB is the more serious (leader)," Capel said. "JB is the one that's -- JB is an old soul. He should have been, like, a 1980s basketball player. Just a physical mid-range guard that's tough, that's competitive, no nonsense, straight to the point. You don't see him smiling much. You don't see him -- but he shows up every day, he works, he gets his stuff in, he talks, he says stuff, but in a different way than (Cummings and Hinson), and it works."
The deck was stacked against Capel. The deck was stacked against Pitt. The deck was stacked ... period.
Capel found a way. Though, it did not come easy.
Those early-season absences contributed to a 1-3 start which put a damning tone on what the rest of the year could have been. Included in that was a 25-point beatdown on home floor at the hands of West Virginia, only to be outdone in the next game five days later in a 31-point no-show against Michigan on a national stage in Brooklyn, N.Y.
One more loss came after that to fellow NCAA Tournament team VCU, but Capel stuck his players together through the uphill climb.
The Panthers would rally off 10 wins in 11 games, which included a shutdown of Northwestern, a gritty ACC opening win over NC State, and back-to-back home wins over No. 25 North Carolina and No. 11 Virginia which rocketed the ship back into the right direction. Three of those four teams are in the NCAA Tournament, with the outlier being the preseason No. 1 North Carolina which has hit rock bottom by that program's standard.
Then came wins over Wake Forest and ACC regular-season champion Miami which launched the Panthers ahead and into national relevance. By the end of January, Pitt had built steam as a "surprise" in the ACC.
"Surprise" came again. Pitt carried itself into the final week of the regular season in first place in the league -- a one-game lead over Miami.
Maybe that was not much of a "surprise" by that point?
Adversity struck again at the end of the regular season in the form of losses to Notre Dame in its coach's final home game at that school in his 23-year tenure, followed by a two-point loss to the Hurricanes which was settled on a missed 3-pointer to decide one of the ACC's co-champions in the regular season.
The Panthers were inches away from hanging that banner. While a '2023' will be slapped onto the banner already in the rafters of the Petersen Events Center to commemorate making the NCAA Tournament, just making it into the national block party that is March Madness is not enough.
Now, it's back to business. Mississippi State is here for a reason, just as Pitt is, and the Bulldogs are defensively sound and present a powerful challenge to a Panthers team with unfinished business in mind.
"Yeah, prior to us figuring out our opponent, we just had high energy on the defensive end, understanding that in order for us to advance, we're going to have to key in on that side of the basketball," Burton said. "And then once we found out our opponent, just locking in on the tendencies, looking at the homework and seeing what they do well and what they don't. For us going into this game, having a lot of energy on the defensive side, we trust our offense."
By the way, how poetic is it that Pitt returns to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in seven years, only to face the program which longtime Panthers coach Ben Howland just left?
Make no mistake about it. Pitt does not plan on letting this be the end of its story. There is a beauty to having to crawl out of the basement and being able to look up at sunshine.
The clouds are clearing up for this program. There are more sunny day ahead.
Just don't forget to stop and smell the roses.
"Yeah, it's really, really cool," Capel said. "I've missed it. I hadn't been here in five years in this type of environment, and you realize like you should never take this for granted. This is the greatest tournament in sports. Like I said (Sunday), and I told our guys, we get a chance to be a part of it. Like, you earned that. They don't just give those out; we earned it. I want them to embrace everything that comes with it. When we pulled up at the hotel, the unbelievable people that were there to greet us and what they've done to the hotel just to make the experience great. When we pulled up here, you're walking in and you see all the stuff everywhere. When they go out to the court, they'll feel it even more. It's unbelievably special. It's something that we don't take for granted, and we're going to cherish every second we get a chance to be in it."
