Pitt, senior Jamarius Burton confront adversity with new faces, injection of confidence
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Anyone with a TV or access to the internet knows the state of Pitt basketball.
Over the past six seasons, the Panthers lacked scoring, quality depth, proper locker room chemistry and, in the end, enough victories to uphold the tradition of winning created at the turn of the century by Ben Howland and maintained by Jamie Dixon.
Here comes coach Jeff Capel taking his fifth stab at rebuilding the program, and his confidence and that of his players is remarkably high.
“Fired all the way up,” said point guard Nelly Cummings, a Lincoln Park graduate and one of four players who joined the team as transfers this year.
Cummings, teammate Jamarius Burton and Capel appeared, along with representatives from every conference team, on the ACC Network on Wednesday.
How high is Cummings’ confidence after a five-year career at Bowling Green and Colgate?
Said Cummings: “I think if you start the season off not seeing yourself in the championship, then what’s the point of starting it off?”
Of course, after winning 21 of 74 games in the ACC over the past four seasons, the road to the NCAA Tournament — forgetting, for a moment, any title aspirations — is a long one.
Perhaps made even longer with highly touted freshman Dior Johnson facing five criminal charges that include aggravated assault, strangulation and false imprisonment in connection with a domestic incident last month. Johnson is the third Pitt basketball player in the past 21 months to face criminal charges. He has been suspended indefinitely from team activities and will have a hearing Oct. 20 in Pittsburgh Municipal Court.
Despite all that has unraveled inside his program, Capel remains optimistic about what his new group of players, including five holdovers, can accomplish.
Capel’s optimism stems from the experience carried into Petersen Events Center by graduate seniors Cummings, Burton, Greg Elliott (Marquette) and Blake Hinson (Iowa State and Ole Miss) and redshirt senior Nike Sibande, who missed last season with a knee injury. Of that group, Burton, Sibande and Cummings have scored more than 1,000 points in their college careers, most of them outside of Pitt.
Plus, center John Hugley, one of the conference’s best big men, returned for his junior season.
“We put (the team) together with him as the anchor,” Capel said.
Hugley currently is hampered by a knee injury.
Burton shouldered the mantle of leadership last season, but it was his first season at Pitt and he missed part of the preseason after hurting his knee.
“Even when he came back, individually, he had a pretty good year,” Capel said, “but there were a lot of times where he couldn’t practice. He’s healthier now. The guys we have around (Burton) are more of a team.
“This year, he’ll be an even more impactful leader because I think the guys around him will be more willing to be led. They will be more willing to hear the message, not just how it’s delivered, but to hear what it is and to see his passion just about winning.”
Burton joins Hugley as Pitt’s only returning starters, and he came back for the most basic reason — he liked playing for Capel.
“I’ve never played for a coach at any of my programs (Texas Tech and Wichita State) that instilled as much confidence as he has, not only in myself, but the team,” Burton said. “To me, that was big … knowing I have a coach like that that’s fighting for me and is by my side.
“I felt like at any given moment, even when we were losing and we were down and out, he always instilled confidence in us. I never heard him bad-mouth anybody, diminish anybody’s confidence.”
Burton averaged 12.4 points last season (second to Hugley’s 14.3), but scoring was Pitt’s biggest problem.
The Panthers finished last in the ACC with a 61.5-point average.
Capel believes Burton and the transfers can help ease the scoring burden on Hugley.
“One of the things we tried to be intentional about in recruiting as we put this class together is shooting,” Capel said.
In addition to Cummings, who comes with a reputation as a scorer and distributor, Capel hopes Elliott and Hinson will help ease. Elliott is a 40.9% 3-point shooter, and Hinson averaged 9.1 points over two seasons at Ole Miss.
“We knew we needed more shooting. (Hugley) got doubled, he got tripled last year,” Capel said. “Two games, he fouled out two whole front courts. I’ve never seen that.
“We feel with the shooting, it’s more difficult to guard him. We also know he turned the ball over because he was getting doubled. He was getting doubled before he had the ball. So, he got frustrated at times.”
Thanks to the new faces, Burton believes not just the scoring — but the program’s culture — will improve.
“To experience a season like last year, to experience the level of defeat that we experienced, it does nothing but make you hungrier.” he said.
“Ain’t nothing worse than losing.”