Johnson enters transfer portal, reached boiling point with Pitt taken on the South Side (Pitt)

PITT ATHLETICS

Xavier Johnson.

Already reeling from another late-season swoon, the Pitt basketball team saw its starting point guard leave the program Wednesday. Xavier Johnson has entered the transfer portal and won't play the remainder of the season.

The announcement came as a mutual agreement between Johnson and coach Jeff Capel, with both parties seeing it best for the team's point guard for the past three seasons to play elsewhere. The news comes as the Panthers' once-promising campaign continues to unravel with seven losses in the last eight games.

"We wish him the best of luck as he looks to continue his career elsewhere,” Capel said in a statement.

Johnson was averaging 14.2 points, 3.4 rebounds and 5.7 assists in 18 games, 16 of which he started. His 255 points this season made him Pitt's second-leading scorer behind Justin Champagnie with 301. Johnson finishes his Pitt career ranked 30th on the all-time scoring list with 1,152 points.

He put a simple tweet out upon Pitt's announcement of him entering the transfer portal:

Despite scoring surges and some exciting stretches of play, there were signs that Capel's patience had run thin with his junior point guard. A spate of technical fouls and charges had hurt the Panthers' chances in recent weeks.

While Johnson's 5.7 assists per game were the second-most in the ACC, his 3.3 turnovers per game were the most in the conference. 

There were plenty of bright spots, including his 32-point performance in Pitt's 83-72 win over No. 16 Virginia Tech, the program's first win over a ranked opponent since 2019.

But then he also had games like his 13-point performance in the 71-65 loss to Georgia Tech, where Johnson also had seven turnovers and committed a technical foul on his way to fouling out of the game.

Over a stretch of five games that included the Georgia Tech loss, Johnson would commit three technical fouls. The last of which came in the Panthers' 74-73 loss to N.C. State. Capel went pubic with his frustrations after the game.

"Nothing I've said has worked," Capel said when asked about how to get through to Johnson about avoiding technical fouls. "We've been telling him to not be demonstrative, not talk to the refs, for three years. None of it has worked. That's why him and Ithiel (Horton) were benched after their technical fouls in the Notre Dame game, and that's why they were benched to start this game after their technical fouls on Sunday."

This became the point of no return. Capel had spoken in defense of Johnson's turnovers and his tendency to commit charges. The coach was willing to live with some of the issues because of his explosiveness with the ball and how he could keep Pitt in games. But that required Johnson to be contrite about his own shortcomings.

Although Johnson would often say he needed to change or improve his game, words were rarely turned into actions. Johnson finished the season with 56 personal fouls in his 18 games, meaning he averaged more than three fouls per game.

That often led to Capel needing to sit Johnson for large portions of games. Johnson played 20 minutes or fewer in three of his last six games for Pitt because of that foul trouble. For a team that had based much of its early success this season on a big three of Champagnie, Au'Diese Toney and Johnson, that proved costly.

Capel did bench Johnson from being a starter twice this season, each time coming after a game where he committed a technical foul. But what might have delayed the decision to bench him sooner for his mistakes was the lack of a consistent point guard behind him.

Femi Odukale changed that. He became the Panthers' sixth man, and now is the top scorer off the bench with 86 points on the season. He's also seen an increased amount of playing time in February, averaging 21 minutes during those five games compared to the 12 minutes per game he averaged in the team's first 17 games.

Odukale hasn't been the same scoring threat as Johnson, as even in those last five games he's only averaged 5.4 points per game. But he's also only averaged 1.4 turnovers per game during that stretch, where Johnson averaged 3.2.

That might've been enough for Capel to see the need to start Odukale, who's been the best of this year's freshmen. At 9-9 with a 5-8 ACC record, Pitt's chances at an NCAA tournament bid are dashed without a highly improbable run in the ACC Tournament. The rest of this season is about getting ready for the 2021-2022 year, and getting Odukale more experience.

It's also the second transfer of a recruit from Capel's first class within a year. Trey McGowens announced his transfer from Pitt last March. The two were were among Pitt's top-three scorers in both the 2018-2019, and 2019-2020 seasons. 

Still for Johnson, this is an extremely disappointing end to a tenure that started so bright with a strong freshman season in 2018-2019. That year, he averaged 15.5 points and 4.5 assists per game. While he also averaged four turnovers per game, it was seen as acceptable with his potential for growth in the coming seasons.

And back then, Johnson openly talked about not being at Pitt in four years, saying that he felt his talent would 'explode' and take him to the NBA early. 

Well, he was right about not being at Pitt in four years, just not for the reason he predicted.


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