With just over two minutes off the clock, sophomore Jaland Lowe picked up his second foul and Jeff Capel turned and pointed to Brandin Cummings to enter the game and the rest will go down in history as the true freshman scored a career-high 30 points to lead Pitt to a dominating 96-56 victory over Eastern Kentucky.

Cummings grew up just 29 miles away from the Petersen Events Center in Midland, Pa. He grew up dreaming of attending Pitt and getting to play in this arena. That all came while watching his brother, Nelly, lead the Panthers to the NCAA tournament just two years ago. So, with his brother calling the game on the sideline for ESPN and his team needing him to step up in Lowe's stead, Cummings said he felt "at home." Boy, did it show.

Cummings, who's been described by his teammates as an exceptional scorer, rose to the occasion, shot 8-of-10 from the field and hit six of his eight three-point attempts while going 4-of-6 from the charity stripe. Cummings scored Pitt's first 12 points of the game:

You could see the confidence and the swagger start to emerge from the young scorer and Cummings would later admit that he knew it was going to be his night.

"As a scorer, you know whenever it's your night and whenever I first touched the rock tonight, I knew it was going to be my night," Cummings said.

The exceptional thing about Cummings' performance on this night was that it all came within the flow of the game. Capel mentioned there was maybe one shot that Cummings forced from the right corner in front of the Pitt bench and he said he let Cummings know about it. Other than that, Cummings' performance was something that Capel always knew his freshman guard had in him. 

"Beebah's been confident since the first time I saw him," Capel said. "He's a really really confident kid and the confidence comes, I think, because of the work. He's a gym rat, he's one of the most low-maintenance guys that I've coached, he's an unbelievable teammate and he's a sponge. He wants to learn. He wants to be really good and he puts the time in."

Since Damian Dunn went down with a thumb injury against Wisconsin in the Greenbrier Tip-Off tournament, the Panthers have needed different players to step up at different times. Zack Austin stepped up in their win over Ohio State, Lowe, who tallied a double-double with 11 points and 12 assists on this night, delivered against Virginia Tech on Saturday and Cummings answered the call on this night, just like his teammates always knew he could.

"He's one of the best scorers I've played with," Austin said.