Play defense. Play together.
Do those two things, and this Pitt Panthers team will win basketball games in 2019-20, as they did on this frigid, snowy evening at the Petersen Events Center, toppling Rutgers, 71-60 in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, to improve to 7-2 on the year.
Xavier Johnson led the way, registering 20 points on 8-for-14 shooting in 38 minutes of play. His highlight reel from this one is rather sweet:
Trey McGowens tallied 16 points of his own alongside four steals. Ryan Murphy added 15 points — 11 in the first half. Eric Hamilton posted eight boards and three blocks while drawing two offensive fouls. Au'diese Toney chipped in a cool 10 points, three assists and two steals off the bench.
Get the point?
This Panthers squad was dialed in from top to bottom to face the now-6-2 Rutgers Scarlet Knights on Tuesday, and Jeff Capel fully noted the achievement in his post-game press conference. His team was fresh off a championship victory in the Fort Myers Tip-Off Tournament, and a 9 p.m. matchup on a Tuesday night against out-of-conference Rutgers could've represented a letdown. Remember, this team toppled Florida State to open the season, only to fall to Nicholls State in its follow-up appearance at home.
So after that tournament win, the Panthers were primed to regress, to disappoint — only they didn't. At all.
"I'm proud of my team," Capel said at the podium after the win.
Johnson was a little more direct with the parallel, pointing right back to the Florida State win as a learning experience for this team.
"The team has matured from after that game," Johnson was saying. "We learned that [after] a big game, you have to take every team the same. You gotta give every team the respect."
For a fleeting moment, though, it looked like that flop was imminent in this one. Pitt led, 35-27, at halftime, but quickly found itself in a tie game — 37-37 — with 15:31 to play in the second half.
Timeout, Pitt.
This was inexcusable. Not only was Pitt on its way to blowing a lead at home but ...
"At halftime, he [Coach Capel] told us that they're a good team in the second half," Johnson said when I asked him what Capel shared during that timeout. "From our mentality, we didn't come out with the right mindset, and on that timeout, he yelled at us, told us 'you gotta get it together' and the team got it together and we started playing our defense and playing together again."
Solid but vague, right? I followed up with Capel:
"Well, we talked about that, in watching them, in scouting them, they've been really good in the second half," Capel began. "It's actually, I knew it, but I was going through some of my notes before the game and that was the last thing I saw before I left. I started studying the box scores again, and I saw that, so I was able to mention that at halftime."
Yeah, but then ...
"I didn't like the way we started the second half," he began. "I didn't think we had pop. I didn't think we had energy. I saw it when we were warming up. And the very first play, we actually get a stop and we come down and we execute, and we blow a layup. And right away, I knew, and so, during that timeout, we just talked about getting back to getting stops. Rebounding the basketball. Being smart on offense. Finishing plays."
Basics. Just like playing defense and playing together.
Sensing the theme with these terms? Pitt isn't striving for some fancy, intricate form of basketball. They're looking to maximize the current talent on their roster and to deploy everyone as a unit that is, above all, tough to play against. That happens when it's five playing as one. This team doesn't have to win games as much as they need to force the opponent to lose. It's an interesting distinction, but it's one that's become obvious in tracking this team through nine games this year.
All that said, Capel wasn't quite done with my question yet. And here, it got juicy:
"I mean, that's one of the reasons I got upset with X [Johnson] early in the game and we took him out, because, you know, he's going in and he's not going strong," Capel said. "And then he comes back and he goes and he dunks it. That's who he is. That's who he has to be. And he's not going to be this guy that's some finesse guy. He needs to be a little pitbull, and I think he did a better job of that. And I thought in the second half after that timeout, we were able to regroup from their run and then we were able to make our run and get control back of the game."
Capel may have singled out Johnson, the team's leading scorer on this night, but this was the most complete, team effort of the year. You could see it in the ball movement, which led to a 47 percent (27 for 58) shooting performance.
"We're passing it and moving it," Johnson said. "The ball's not just stagnant in me and Murph or Trey's hands."
You could see it in the squad's ability to create turnovers — and then capitalize on them — registering 28 points off 20 Rutgers turnovers in all.
And, of course, you could see it in this: 71-60, Pitt, a final score that gave them half of the 14 wins they achieved all last season just nine games into the year.
"I think we've had a challenging schedule for us, for where we are at our program," Capel was saying. "I think this is, what, the fifth game against a Power Five conference out of [nine] games? So fifth out of nine ... It's forced us to grow up. We've had to learn, and we've had to learn [while] going through the gauntlet a little bit for where we are as a program. I'm proud of how we've recovered."
That recovery started with defense and togetherness. The rest is slowly falling into place.
• First bullet goes to this guy:
That's Devlin "Duck" Hodges, starting quarterback for the Steelers, getting what might've been the largest pop of the evening out of this crowd at the Pete. That's including a standing ovation for Brandin Knight, who currently serves as an assistant coach for Rutgers and who received a nice video package honoring his time at Pitt, and Dick Groat, who was also given a shoutout on the jumbotron.
Hodges, though ... Man, is this guy soaking it all in or what? My tweet of this exact video from the stadium has over 1,200 likes at the time I'm writing this. Duck Mania is real. What a time to be alive in the Steel City.
• Murphy opened the game hot, hitting Pitt's first basket, a three, and ended the half with 11 points on 5 for 9 shooting.
He finished the game with 15 points on 6 for 16 shooting, though, a considerable downturn from that stellar first half.
Doesn't matter.
Murphy helped jumpstart the team, and Johnson and company took over late. Murphy's role early on was massive.
"Look, we have not shot the ball well, so if we can see the ball go through the basket, that's important," Capel was saying. "I don't care who it is. Certainly, Murph was able to make some shots early."
Murphy also received a bizarre technical foul for "kicking" a Rutgers player on a jump shot attempt. Murphy flailed, thinking he was fouled, and his foot rose near defender.
It was a weak call. Rule or not this season, that's a weak call. Capel protested, but it stood. After the game, he was asked if he was satisfied with the explanation the referees gave him, to which he responded:
"No. I don't know if I got an explanation, so ..."
Yeah. Weak call.
• Capel used a seven-man rotation tonight — the starting five down below plus Toney and Terrell Brown. And Brown played just 10 minutes, registering four points, three rebounds and two blocks.
Those seven played defense and played together, though, so Capel didn't see the need to mix it up. It worked.
• Hamilton, after finding his groove in recent games, kept rolling, getting six points on 3 for 8 shooting alongside eight rebounds, three blocks and a steal. Capel applauded his ability to take charges and to affect the game inside the paint in that way, and he also threw some love Hamilton's way in discussing a crucial halftime adjustment No. 0 made in this one.
"I thought Eric rebounded the basketball better," Capel said. "He had one at halftime, I got on him, [and] he had seven in the second half."
The team will need plenty more of that moving forward from Hamilton. A strong run for him adds another chapter.
• Meanwhile, Justin Champagnie's own stretch of success — including tournament MVP honors down in Fort Myers, Fla. — came to a halt. He went 0 for 6 from the field with five rebounds, four fouls and a turnover. That's it. No points. And his body language was not ideal throughout. Capel noticed.
"He has to have his head in the game. That's the bottom line," Capel said. "There's no help. He should have his head in the game. He's a freshman, and so you go through that. He's a really good player and he'll learn from it and he'll get better from it."
Want proof of that last part? Champagnie stayed after the game, taking shots on the court by himself while the workers at the Pete tore down.
Can't ask for anything more than that in response to a brutal performance.
• Go back up to the tippy-top of this article and watch that highlight reel of Johnson's play. That last crossover? Where the defender, Caleb McConnell, winds up on the hardwood? It sent the crowd into a frenzy.
But Capel's take was just a little different:
"Well, we went down and we gave up a three on the other end," Capel said of the play. "So I wasn't pleased with that right after that play. I thought we admired it a little bit too much and we go down and give up penetration and they get a corner three. It was a big-time move, big-time play. We should expect it though and move on to the next play and go down and finish it. We can celebrate it afterward. Certainly, it gets the crowd in it, the crowd was excited. It was a nice play. [But] I think it would've been a great play if we would've gone down and gotten the stop then we could've celebrated afterward."
• On the other side, Myles Johnson posted a 14-point, 14-rebound double-double, while Ron Harper, Jr. had one of his own with 14 points and 10 boards. Geo Baker, the team's best scorer, however, struggled with just nine points — that after quickly getting Rutgers' first five.
"I thought our defense was good again, especially on their better player," Capel said. "Baker was their leading scorer, led them in assists, and we held him to 3 for 11 and turned him over five times. So I thought that was a big key to the game."
• The 51 combined points from Johnson, McGowens and Murphy marks a season-high for the backcourt trio.
• With Toney adding 10 points to that total, Pitt logged four double-figure scorers for the sixth time this season.
" ... I thought it was his [Toney's] best game [of the year]", Capel said. "He stepped up and really made some big-time plays."
"Au'diese was big," McGowens added. "Especially starting off, beginning of the game, he was getting boards, getting assists. He had a kick out to X. That was big, because he was kind of in a slump then he started coming out of it when we were in Florida. So when he's rolling, I mean, that helps us out a lot. He hit another big three to kind of ice it, then he hit the free throws, so that was also big."
• Johnson hit 20 points or more for the 10th time in his career and went over 600 points total as a Panther.
• Gerald Drumgoole, Jr. is still out with an ankle injury. He will not suit up against Louisville on Friday, and his status beyond that is TBD.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE STARTING LINEUPS
For Capel's Panthers:
Xavier Johnson, guard
Trey McGowens, guard
Ryan Murphy, guard
Justin Champagnie, forward
Eric Hamilton, forward
And for Pikiell's Scarlet Knights:
Ron Harper, Jr., guard
Montez Mathis, guard
Caleb McConnell, guard
Geo Baker, guard
Myles Johnson, center
THE SCHEDULE
Can Pitt parlay this momentum into the ultimate upset against top-ranked Louisville on the road Friday? I'll be driving to Kentucky to find out. That one starts at 9 p.m.
"We're going to let this win soak in until 12 o'clock — it's almost 12 o'clock — but we're going to let it soak in, then we're going to get ready for it tomorrow," Johnson said of facing Louisville.
THE COVERAGE
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