Champagnie can't be stopped by injuries or zone defenses

Nothing can get in Justin Champagnie's way to a dominant season.

The only thing that looked like it could stop him after he had two games with 20 points and 20 rebounds was a knee injury that was supposed to sideline him for 6-8 weeks.

He made it back in under four, and you could feel that something special was going to happen when Pitt tweeted this picture of him before Saturday's game vs. Syracuse:

Then Champagnie delivered, leading Pitt with 24 points, tying his season high, and 16 rebounds in its emphatic 96-76 win over Syracuse. It was like he never lost a step since playing his last game a month ago against Miami.

"It was great to have Justin back," Jeff Capel said. "We kind of knew for the past few days that he was going to be able to play. He’s been able to practice and has been chomping at the bit. I knew that if he was going to be able to play, I was going to start him.  Didn’t know how many minutes (he would play), but he’s done a heck of a job of working, of doing everything he can to get back for this moment."

You could tell Champagnie was ready to play as he was a huge part of Pitt's offense and defense throughout the game.

"It was exhilarating," Champagnie said. "I was really happy to be back on the court with my guys. I was just, I don't know, [I] had the weirdest amount of energy."

Pitt needed that energy after another slow start. Syracuse jumped out to an 8-1 lead as Pitt was ice cold from the floor, hitting only one of its first 11 field-goal attempts.

But Capel thought the Panthers were getting good looks and that eventually the shots would start to fall. As the game went along, Pitt's offense looked confident against Syracuse's zone defense.

"I thought we actually got off to not a bad start," Capel said. "We just couldn’t make a shot early. I thought we got into a good rhythm. (I told them to) keep moving the basketball, keep having player movement, keep ball faking and keep taking shots. We have confidence in you. Be strong and be confident."

Pitt found that confidence as it kept working the ball around the court, looking for its best shots. Champagnie was a huge part of that, as you can see when he takes this ball in the post and quickly turns it into a layup:

“I think that the main thing is that we listen," Champagnie said about how Pitt beat Syracuse's zone defense. "We listen to each other, and listen to coach. We have some lapses when they score and they keep going, we try to evolve in our own way. Share ideas about what we've got to change, then everybody listened to everybody (and was) open minded. And that plays a big part in us changing around the momentum of the game.”

Capel said that Champagnie was in the locker room at half time during Pitt's 63-60 win over Syracuse on Jan. 6, talking the players through struggles against Syracuse's zone while he was injured and unavailable. This time he was on the court leading that charge.

But he wasn't alone, as Pitt's starters came to ball.

Ithiel Horton finished with 20 points, his most this season, along with six rebounds and shooting 5 of 10 on 3-pointers. It was the third time in his last four games in which he converted at least four 3-pointers.

"It felt really good," Horton said. "The chemistry out there was definitely there. Guys knew where they were on the court, not stepping on each other's toes and our spacing was correct. It felt really good to play with a team that has a flow like that and an energy that hopefully we can keep going against Duke."

Horton's 3-pointers weren't just him firing them up at random, they were well-executed possessions that helped Pitt break Syracuse's zone defense.

Watch how Pitt sets up this open look for Horton with Terrell Brown setting a screen for Xavier Johnson. Syracuse players converge on a driving Johnson, who kicks out the ball to a wide open Horton.

Johnson finished with an impressive game as well, scoring 23 along with seven assists.

Pitt also saw freshman Femi Odukale come off the bench to provide five points and eight assists of his own.

"I thought we did a heck of a job executing against their zone," Capel said. "For our two point guards to have 15 assists and only two turnovers is big time. For Femi to have, as a freshman, eight assists and no turnovers against their zone was huge. Xavier, seven assists and only two turnovers." 

"Earlier in the game for whatever reason, we would get defensive rebounds and throw the ball to Ithiel," Capel continued. "We don’t want to do that. We want to get the ball to X or Femi, if he's in the game. If those two are together you can get it to either one of those two guys. But these other guys need to be finishers, and I thought we did it. We made that adjustment and did a good job there.”

Au'Diese Toney also came to play with 18 points and five rebounds of his own.

But again, this was Champagnie's show.

He's Pitt's leading rebounder with 74 on the season after this game, and he came up with several second-chance opportunities. Once Pitt started to stretch out Syracuse's zone with solid possessions and buckets, Champagnie found the holes underneath to grab rebounds and dunk like this:

You can see the energy he brings to Pitt as the whole bench rises to its feet.

Even when Syracuse managed to get a body on Champagnie and box him out, he continued to find ways to get rebounds and score off those chances. Watch how he gets the ball over Alan Griffin, a decent rebounder himself with 73 rebounds on the season, and then converts it into points quickly with a contested left-handed shot that goes in:

He was on fire.

"I kept asking him ‘are you okay? Are you tired?’ and he’s laughing, like, ‘no,’" Capel. "He’s a unique kid in the fact that he’s got great genes and that he’s been able to heal quickly."

"He’s had two tough injuries since he’s been here and both times, he’s been able to heal very fast. But when he’s out there, maybe the fact that he trusted it, like when you have an injury, especially with a lower extremity, one of the biggest things is trusting it. He’s done that in practice, but you don’t know how a guy is going to be when the lights come on, and obviously he trusted it fully today.”

His teammates were feeling his presence, too.

"To be honest, he surpassed the guy I thought he would be coming back," Horton said. "He had two put-back dunks and flowed right back into the offense like he's been there with us even when he wasn't. He definitely went past my expectations. He's put the work in and he gave us energy. You saw us, our whole bench was hyped from the managers to the coaching staff."

Once Pitt's offense got going, Syracuse couldn't stop it. After shooting 1 of 11 to start the game, Pitt would hit 30 of its next 56, finishing the game with a 46.3 percentage from the floor.

Then Pitt started turning defensive stops into quick points on fast breaks, and Champagnie was part of that, too.

Watch Champagnie just rip the ball right out Griffin's hands and go coast to coast to finish with a one-handed dunk:

He was back like he never left.

Champagnie's return reunited Pitt's big three, with Johnson and Toney, and they combined for 65 of Pitt's 96 points. The Panthers (7-2 overall, 3-1 in the ACC) are coming off their most complete win ahead of Tuesday night's clash with Duke at the Petersen Events Center.

• After the game, Capel declined to address freshman forward John Hugley's being charged with three felony counts stemming from an incident last summer. Hugley is facing two counts of felony criminal conspiracy and one count of receiving stolen property, according to criminal complaint. It alleges Hugley was one of two men who entered a car without permission on July 19 while the person responsible for the vehicle was sleeping. The car was reported stolen before it was recovered on Aug. 4.

The Panthers suspended Hugley indefinitely Friday.

“I’m not able to talk about that," Capel said when asked about Hugley. "I’m not going to talk about that. I’m going to talk about our game and our win and our next opponent if anyone wants to ask about that.”