You couldn't blame Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens for feeling a little jealousy toward Justin Champagnie.
I mean, just compare their paths: Johnson and McGowens entered the unknown during their freshman seasons at Pitt in 2018. There was a new coach in Jeff Capel. There was the lingering stink of the old guy, plus angry fans at every turn. Capel strolled into a mob, and Johnson and McGowens were called to flank him on the frontlines.
They showed off, too, emerging as two bright spots on a 14-19 squad that went just 3-15 in ACC play. It looks bad — and it was — but the team went just 8-24 with an 0-18 mark in conference play the year before under Kevin Stallings.
And yet, the strain on Johnson and McGowens was real, even bleeding into various performances this season. At times, the now-sophomore guards will barrel into the lane, over-dribble or ignore an easy pass in favor of a heroic, trying-too-much shot attempt. It's plagued the team at times.
It's also slowly coming to an end — and a huge reason for that is the continued progression of Au'Diese Toney, the arrival of Ryan Murphy and, of course, the rapidly rising star of the freshman Champagnie.
"It's a sigh of relief, for real," Johnson said of his new teammates on campus at the Pete. "Because last year, it was just me going and that's my game, but I don't [want to do that] every play. This year, it's relieving because now Au'Diese is shooting the ball. Justin's shooting it well, and we have Murph when he comes back. So we have shooters, dudes who are ready to catch and shoot."
It's not like Johnson and McGowens weren't up to the task last year, either. Johnson led the team with 15.5 points per game and 4.5 assists per game in his freshman campaign, while McGowens averaged 11.6 per contest, just behind senior Jared Wilson-Frame's 12.7 points-per-game clip.
This year, though, the team has four players averaging double figures — McGowens, Champagnie, Johnson and Murphy — and that fact is fundamentally changing the way this Pitt offense operates.
"I mean, that's a big relief coming into this season," McGowens was saying. "Of course you want to lose yourself into the team, but there's always the pressure that if you don't do good or score — because you feel like your team's going to rely on you so much and you feel like that's your role — that if you don't score, the chances [of winning] are decreased by a lot. So just having Justin playing well, it just takes a lot of stress of us where we can just pass, not force things, stuff like that."
Champagnie isn't just "playing well," though. He's slowly becoming a bonafide star in the ACC. He's won ACC Freshman of the Week honors three times, his latest coming after Pitt's most recent seven-day stretch that saw him put up 20 points and 11 rebounds in a loss at Notre Dame then bounce back with a career-high 30 points against Georgia Tech in a win at home.
That 30-point mark is special, too, not just for the roundness of it all, but for the significance. Only three freshmen in the team's history have hit the mark ...
... and they're all players on this team, recruited by Capel and company. The point isn't lost on McGowens who offered the following response with a laugh when probed on the subject:
McGowens did it twice last year and owns the overall record at 33, a mark he set in a January win over Louisville. He did again just five nights later, scoring 30 in another victory against Florida State. Johnson, meanwhile, hit 30 exactly in a late-January loss to Clemson that kicked off the team's tailspin to close the year.
"They really didn't just beat us — they destroyed us," Johnson said.
This year's Pitt squad is better equipped to handle the Tigers, though. They're 15-9 overall and 6-7 in conference play, an improvement over last year in both metrics with seven games to play before the ACC tournament in Greensboro, N.C. Fittingly, Clemson's next up, as they'll come to the Pete Wednesday night for a 9 p.m. tip.
Besides the reinforcements from a personnel standpoint, McGowens says he expects his own personal development and the lessons learned through hard times last year to pay off this time around.
"The biggest thing for me and X is just getting off social media," McGowens was saying when I asked him how his experience is showing itself this year. "I know [last year] we just liked to look at it just to see what people were saying about us, and a lot of it was negative. So I feel like that kind of affected us a lot. Rather than talking to coach when we were like really down, I feel like that might've put us more in the slumps than we actually put ourselves into, just seeing a lot of negative things and feeling like we had to do better.
"So when coach talked to us about, just losing ourselves and getting off everything, that just really helped a lot. Because now we're just playing, getting our teammates involved and then when we feel that we need to attack here or try to take over a game here, it just makes it a lot easier because we're in the flow of the game, in a rhythm."
That rhythm comes a lot more naturally when there's a three-point threat like Murphy or an all-around scorer like Champagnie to dish to, though. Champagnie scored 50 combined in his last two games, but it's not exactly an outburst that's come out of nowhere. He's put up 20-plus three other times this season (21, 21, 22) and he's flirted with it two other times (17, 18). The dude can score. And even though he was one of two highly touted, top-150 Capel recruits coming into the season, McGowens admits it's been better than expected.
"I knew he could score and get rebounds, but I mean, a 30-point night, and he consistently puts up 20-point games — so, I mean, I didn't really expect that," McGowens said. "I was expecting like 15 here and there, maybe one or two 20- or 30-point games. But he's starting to do it consistently, so that just shows how much work he's putting in."
And how much work is he putting in exactly, Mr. McGowens?
"After the 30-point game, he was in the gym like at 1 o'clock in the morning, just working still."
Add it all up, and the difference between Champagnie's freshman experience and that of McGowens and Johnson is almost laughable.
No, wait. It's literally laughable.
"Yeah, he really does [have it easier]," Johnson said with a chuckle. "But I don't look at that. I just try to get everybody motivated and keep everybody happy and just try to keep going because that's one of my main jobs, is being a leader ... "I don't think we rely on each other. I just think we trust each other."
“I feel like it's easier on us [now] just with him doing all that, so, I mean, there's a lot less stress than last year," McGowens added. "We got players that coach brought in and players just worked hard this summer to be able to compete at a high level."
These Panthers are certainly competing at a high level, now ranked No. 8 in the conference and within reasonable striking distance of fourth-place Syracuse (14-9, 7-5 ACC), who they will play again, this time at home.
"There's a whole lot more confidence," McGowens was saying of the chief difference between Year 2 and Year 1. "That's just a sign of maturity from this summer and just the confidence coach has put in us to where he'll say what he has to say in the huddle and then we'll go out there and execute, settle down, not really force things or feel like we gotta make a big play. We understand it's one possession at a time. We just have to take that approach."
Do that — continue building this season brick by brick — and the team might just give fans a tournament berth to celebrate.