Off-court values matter to Pitt basketball’s new-look team as much as talent on court
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When Guillermo Diaz Graham is asked about the second season of what he hopes will be the steady reincarnation of Pitt basketball, he speaks first of values off the court.
“We stay together. We show up every day. We make no excuses. Also, we are family,” the sophomore from the Canary Islands said.
Those are elements every successful team needs, and Pitt had them in abundance last season on its run to a 24-12 record, including an impressive 14-6 mark in the ACC and 2-1 in the NCAA Tournament.
Players enjoyed being around each other and their coaches.
But Diaz Graham is also smart enough to understand the practical aspects of winning basketball: the shooting, dribbling, defense and rebounding. No matter how strong the bonds of friendship become among teammates, they better be good players.
Which is why he’s happy to report, “We have guys who can dunk on anyone.”
The 2023-24 season gets underway officially Monday night when the Panthers welcome North Carolina A&T to Petersen Events Center.
Now that Pitt reached the NCAA Tournament last season, the bar has been raised. Fans won’t accept anything less than a second consecutive march into the college game’s grandest spectacle. If it happens, Pitt will have put NCAA appearances back-to-back for the first time since the 2012-13/2013-14 seasons.
Coach Jeff Capel has no inclination to speak of the postseason before his team plays its first game. That’s speculation meant only for fans and media. But he does have expectations.
“I expect us to keep getting better, just like we did last year,” he said. “I expect us to grow. I expect us to have some adversity at times, hopefully not a lot, but to learn from each situation.
“I really like my team. I enjoy being around them. They want to be good. They want to be coached. They’re gym rats.”
Yet the team has a distinctly different makeup, with four of the top five scorers from a year ago — all guards — exhausting their eligibility at the same time. There were 10 players who played at least 10 minutes Wednesday in the exhibition against Pitt-Johnstown, but five were on other teams in 2022-23, and a sixth, William Jeffress, missed the entire season with a foot injury.
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One of the subjects of scrutiny will be point guard Bub Carrington, a 6-foot-5 freshman who scored 13 points and handed out six assists against Pitt-Johnstown.
“I consider myself a great decision-maker,” he said. “If I have to pass first and I have to look to score, coach trusts me to make that decision. And I trust myself enough to make that decision.”
Carrington was joined in the starting lineup that night by Blake Hinson, who led the team in scoring last season (15.3 points per game); 6-11 center Federiko Federiko; guard Ishmael Leggett, a transfer from Rhode Island; and High Point (N.C.) transfer forward Zack Austin.
A rotation that might grow as large as 10 deep includes Diaz Graham’s twin brother Jorge, Jeffress, freshman guard Jaland Lowe and a third transfer, Michael Hueitt Jr., a 25-year-old veteran guard who has played at Catawba, UNC Greensboro and Old Dominion.
Austin brings athleticism to the forward position and a desire to test himself at a power conference school. He doesn’t want to reveal any specific goals, but he said he’s eager to play “in front of the Zoo, these fans, playing ACC, playing for a good team. This is new to me, playing for a good team.”
Before Pitt can wear that label, it must journey through a difficult gauntlet of games in the next two months.
After Monday, Pitt plays Binghamton, Florida Gulf Coast and Jacksonville before joining the Preseason NIT field that includes Florida (Pitt’s opponent Nov. 23) and either No. 20 Baylor or Oregon State two days later. Both games are at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
After that, there will be games against Missouri, Clemson, West Virginia and Syracuse through the end of 2023. Missouri and Clemson won 25 and 23 games last season. Longtime Pitt opponents West Virginia and Syracuse present interesting challenges without their respective legendary coaches Bob Huggins and Jim Boeheim.
Diaz Graham said Pitt’s aim this season is to grow the program beyond what occurred a year ago.
“I feel like last year was more like building the basement,” he said, “and now we’re still building that basement — those roots, those values — but now we’re working on top of what we had last year.
“We still want to keep our roots and build on top of them, so we can have a strong structure to last a long time.”