Pitt (6-0) gets an A on first key test
Johnson leads way past A-10 favorite
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — As Xavier Johnson was mid-answer, discussing the pronounced role he played in Pitt’s 75-73 victory Wednesday against Saint Louis, a group of his teammates, no more than 10 yards to his left, started shouting praise his way that reverberated in the hallways of Barclays Center.
“That’s a bad man!” one exclaimed.
“Tell [them] — you called game, huh?” another chimed in. “You called game.”
Johnson stood and smiled, turning over to his teammates and breaking into a grin that sometimes turned into a chuckle. Surrounded in the hallway by framed pictures of memorable performances at the 6year old arena — from Bruno Mars playing guitar to John Cena flying from the top rope to body-slam an opponent — he could stand with the satisfaction of knowing he had turned in one of his own.
Despite early foul trouble, Johnson carried and uplifted the Panthers in their toughest, most competitive game of the season, pouring in a game-high 20 points while serving as the offensive catalyst for a squad that sometimes looked disjointed without him. Because of that, his team earned its sixth and most impressive win of the season, validating a 5-0 start and showing its undefeated mark was more than just the product of a weak non-conference schedule.
“We showed toughness, togetherness,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “We’re getting better. We still have a long way to go, but we’re
starting to figure some things out.”
The symbolism of Pitt moving to 6-0 in a building where, just eight months earlier, it lost its 19th and final ACC game of the season two days before their coach would be fired was lost on few.
Much of that improvement can be tied to impactful additions. Freshmen Au’Diese Toney and Trey McGowens have started in every game this season, and both averaged double figures in scoring entering Wednesday. Sidy N’Dir, a graduate transfer from New Mexico State, has provided valuable minutes off the bench and finished with 13 points Wednesday. And then, of course, there is Johnson, who has scored in double figures in each of his first six games (he was the first Pitt freshman since Jerome Lane in 1985 to do so in his first five games).
The team and the mood around it is, through six games under Capel, drastically different than it was March 6 when it left Brooklyn after being ousted from the ACC tournament.
“We’re all just hungry this year,” said junior Malik Ellison, who had 13 points. “That’s the biggest difference. We’re playing harder. We want to win games. We’re just going out there and competing. We don’t care who we’re playing against. We’ve been successful so far, so we’re just going to continue to do that.”
If Pitt’s first five games of the season, against lesserknown opponents from smaller conferences, amounted to a series of quizzes, its matchup Wednesday against Saint Louis was its first test.
With three Big Ten transfers, three top-100 recruits and a high-scoring graduate transfer who began his career in the SEC, the previously undefeated Billikens were picked before the season to win the Atlantic 10 and presented the Panthers with a level of size, athleticism and talent they hadn’t yet seen this season.
Faced with that challenge, they passed, thanks in large part to Johnson. After scoring just three points and not making a shot in the first half — largely due to being whistled for two fouls in the first 3:32 for the second time in the past three games — the Virginia native poured in 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting in the final 20 minutes. Against a big and physical opponent, even at the guard spots, he provided a spark and, along with Ellison, was able to find ways to the basket against Saint Louis’ zone defense.
His contributions were perhaps most notable late, when he scored six of Pitt’s final 12 points. It needed each one in a game with 15 ties and 12 lead changes.
Grasping on to a 72-70 advantage with 25 seconds remaining and his opponent with the ball, Capel provided his players with a simple instruction on the final possession — if you get the chance, foul No. 11. It was an unconventional strategy, but a statistically sound one.
Entering that moment, Billikens forward Hasahn French had missed eight of his 10 free-throw attempts on the season after shooting just 36.4 percent from the line last season. When French received the ball — strangely enough, near the free-throw line — with four seconds left, Johnson pounced. French air-balled the front end of a one-andone, Pitt got the ball back, and Johnson made two free throws to secure the victory, with Ellison tapping the veins in his forearm after the second went through the net.
“We worked on game situations and some different things; we hadn’t worked on that one exactly,” Capel said. “But for them to be able to take that from a timeout and go out on the court and execute it perfectly, it was really, really good.”
The same could have been said for his first-year point guard. This time one year ago, Johnson was on his way to putting together a decorated senior season at Bishop O’Connell High School and looking forward to playing the next season at Nebraska, with Pitt far from his radar. Now, he has the look of a transcendent, program-changing player for a retooled team built, in some ways, around him.