Pitt needs leaders to step up if its basketball program is going to show real progress this season.
I said that in Thursday morning's H2P Podcast on the DKSports Radio Network, and Jeff Capel said the same thing when he spoke during his Thursday afternoon media availability.
It can't just be Justin Champagnie being Superman every game as he posts double-doubles on his way to an almost weekly ACC Player of the Week award. The Panthers must see Xavier Johnson, Au'Diese Toney and others come up big and be leaders during practice to set the tone for the team.
Pitt has seen a tighter rotation of players getting playing time in the past month, as freshmen like William Jeffress and Noah Collier haven't played in the last three games. Meanwhile, Champagnie, Toney, Johnson and the starters have earned extended minutes.
When asked if the starters can carry the team, the coached expressed confidence.
"I think it's a great chance to be successful," Capel said Thursday. "Most teams have 2-3 guys, maybe some score more than the others but there's still a balance. Those three guys are our three best players and we need them to play well. We need other guys to play well also; we need Ithiel (Horton) to be consistent shooting the basketball, and we need (Abdoul Karim Coulibaly) to play well. Those three guys are our three best players, that's who we are. We've shown we can be successful with those guys playing well, we just need to be consistent doing it."
That didn't happen against North Carolina on Tuesday as Champagnie carried Pitt with 24 points while Johnson finished with seven, Toney with eight. Pitt has been at its best when all three have scored in the double digits, feeding off each other's success. When multiple players are hot on offense, defenses have a harder time focusing on stopping one of them, opening up more opportunities for the others.
Primarily, Pitt's bench minutes have come from Femi Odukale, Terrell Brown, and Nike Sibande. In fact, the only player to get time off the bench over Pitt's last three games was Max Amadasun, and that was just for two minutes against North Carolina on Tuesday.
One obvious absence is John Hugley. He's suspended indefinitely while awaiting a preliminary hearing on Apr. 8 for his two felony charges of criminal conspiracy and one count of receiving stolen property.
Collier and Jeffress are a different story.
"Guys have to earn playing time," Capel said when asked why neither had played since the team's 96-76 win over Syracuse on Jan. 16. "This is not high school or AAU where everyone get the same amount of minutes. If those guys practice better, they'll earn playing time. We need them."
That was my suspicion when a subscriber asked about Jeffress' and Collier's lack of playing time in my Wednesday Live Qs. Capel was adamant after the loss to Wake Forest that his players had a terrible week of practice and needed to be more mature about their approach to practices during a win streak.
Usually, when guys are sitting after the coach makes statements like that, you know they're probably who he's talking about. Capel made nothing complicated over why he was playing certain guys over others.
"Just depends on what guys are doing in practice and how guys are playing," Capel said. "In certain games, depending on what's going on, if we have a lineup that's working I stick with that. Unless a guy gets tired or there's foul trouble, we'll stick with what's working. I don't go into a game thinking I'll only play seven or eight guys. It's about what I feel from seeing them in practice. It could be something I see in walkthroughs too, it could be a feel that I have. But I don't go into games thinking I'm tightening anything up or expanding, it's just what we've seen for that particular game."
And for Capel, what he needs to see is his players taking each practice, each opponent more seriously.
"We need to be prepared, period," said Capel, who's team hosts Notre Dame on Saturday. "We need to respect the game. Notre Dame is a good team who's struggled, and they're going to be desperate to win. They're a very proud program. Last Saturday we played a team whose record wasn't good, but they were better than their record and they'd gone through more adversity than anyone in our conference in terms of COVID. So we have to be prepared, period. We have to be a team that plays with an edge, is prepared, goes out and follows through on the things we worked on and the things that allow us to be a good team."
'Respect the game' is a phrase I've heard Champagnie say after the loss to North Carolina and a common sports phrase from coaches. It just means showing up each day, taking each practice, film session, and game as an opportunity to get better. For at least Thursday, Capel felt his players delivered during practice.
"I thought we did today," Capel said when asked if he thought his players practiced with an edge. "I saw it today. Today's the first practice since we played Tuesday. Per NCAA rules we need a day off, so that was yesterday. I've always felt I've been part of some really good teams as a player and a coach. And the really good teams I've been part of, they've had leadership in the locker room."
That's something else, too. Coaches can preach from the highest mountains all the messages they want, but it won't matter if their players, specifically their leaders, don't hear them and promote them among their teammates. That's where Champagnie, Johnson and Toney could truly come up big for the team off the court.
Capel shared a story from his days playing at Duke about how leadership from players can truly make the difference:
"I tell my guys this story all the time," he said. "My freshman year of college, we were very good. But we got beat in the ACC Tournament in the semifinals by Virginia. We went back to the hotel, coach was furious with us so we went to his suite for a meeting. It wasn't pretty. As a freshman, and a point guard, I took the brunt of a lot of stuff, which I could deal with. We got on the bus to drive back to Durham, but coach wouldn't come with us because he was so angry. And I remember the older guys, the seniors on that team called a meeting on the bus. They said, 'Cape man, we need you. You can't let coach and the stuff he's saying get to you. We need you.' So, the really good teams do that."
And if you're wondering how good that 1993-1994 Duke team was, it won the ACC regular-season title and Capel helped the Blue Devils get all the way to the championship game of the NCAA Tournament. Capel averaged 11.7 points per game during that March Madness.
"The really good teams have guys in the locker room who understand the importance of winning and the importance of the things that go into winning," Capel continued. "We are a program learning how to do that. We didn't handle last week well. That's no disrespect to any opponent, but we didn't handle a little bit of success well. Hopefully, we handle it better this week."
Capel will be looking for his leaders to step up and create stories of their own.