No quick fix handy for rebounding woes
To Jeff Capel, rebounding ability is measured less by inches than it is by heart.
Over the course of basketball history, as the first-year Pitt coach sees it, the best rebounders are seldom the tallest players, though height can help. Often, they’re the ones who play with a constant motor, priding themselves on the relentless pursuit for the ball whenever it is available, playing with the kind of energy and intensity that make it a nightmare to box them out. It is, in short, something instinctive, not so much a skill as it is desire and ferocity.
From that evaluation comes a problem as the Panthers prepare for their 24th game of the season. Outside of freshman guard/forward Au’Diese Toney, it’s not really something Capel sees among his current group of players.
“It’s not a knock; it’s just the reality,” he said Monday. “We don’t have guys that naturally, instinctively have that.”
The gang rebounding of which Capel often spoke heading into the season, a tactic his team would have to use to try to mitigate its lack of effective size, hasn’t materialized in the way he would have hoped.
In 11 conference games, Pitt has allowed its opponents to get offensive rebounds on 37 percent of their missed shots, comfortably the worst mark in the ACC (Georgia Tech, at 33.7 percent, is the next-closest team). Among the 75 programs in college basketball’s six major conferences, only South Carolina, at 37.4 percent, gives up offensive rebounds at a greater rate in league play.
It has been especially pronounced in the past two games, when the Panthers allowed 38 offensive rebounds on 75 missed shots (50.7 percent) in losses to
Wake Forest and N.C. State. Those teams got 25 secondchance points off of those boards, which, in games decided by a combined five points, is no small thing.
Strangely enough, Pitt is fairly good at getting offensive rebounds, as it has collected 32.3 percent of its misses in ACC games, ranking sixth among the league’s 15 teams. It’s perhaps a sign that all is not lost for Pitt in that facet of the game.
“That’s just a collective thing,” senior Jared WilsonFrame said Saturday after a 79-76 loss against N.C. State. “That’s something we hold ourselves accountable for — being there for your brother. With something like that, we know we’re not the biggest team. We know that other teams have bigger players. It’s got to be a gang rebound type of effect. We’ve got to rebound together. All five guys have to rebound, trying to hit a body.”
Some of the players have been able to make an outsized impact in rebounding, even if they’re not the most imposing figures.
Toney, at 6 feet 6, leads the team in rebounds per game this season (5.9) and is second in rebounds per minute in conference play. Malik Ellison (6-6), Jared WilsonFrame (6-5) and Khameron Davis (6-4, albeit with a 6-10 wingspan) have shown themselves at times this season to be capable rebounders.
The rebounding woes, however, are emblematic of a fundamental problem — as much as Capel has overhauled the roster and improved the talent pool, there was only so much he could do with big men. He simply doesn’t have them right now.
Pitt has only two players taller than 6-6 that have played more than four minutes per game this season, both of whom have shortcomings that impact them down low.
Terrell Brown, the team’s tallest player at 6-10, is arguably the Panthers’ best rebounder, but he doesn’t play with intensity on a consistent basis and he has relatively weak hands, which makes it tough not only to bring in a rebound, but to hold on to it and keep it away from defenders reaching in once he gets it under control.
Kene Chukwuka, at 6-8, provides a tenacious presence but isn’t particularly athletic, meaning he only rises so high for the ball, and he is too easily out-muscled by opposing players fighting for position under the basket.
That height shortage on a team that lost two players to transfer earlier in the season can be tied in some ways to depth.
Forward Shamiel Stevenson, for example, got 16.8 percent of available defensive rebounds last season while averaging 23.8 minutes per game, a rebounding percentage that would rank him third on this season’s team, not even a full percentage point behind the leader (Brown, at 17.7 percent). Stevenson, 6-6, transferred in December after appearing in only four of the team’s first 11 games, ultimately ending up at Nevada.
For now, there’s one solution to what is one of the Panthers’ most glaring weaknesses.
“We have to recruit,” Capel said. “We have to recruit guys like that [instinctive rebounders].”
• NOTE — Capel said Monday that Ellison’s playing status for the game Tuesday at Boston College is uncertain after he missed the loss Saturday against N.C. State with an undisclosed injury in the overtime loss at Wake Forest earlier in the week. … Gerald Drumgoole, a 6-foot-6 forward, committed to the Panthers. A native of Rochester, N.Y., Drumgoole is rated as a four-star prospect by 247 Sports and is ranked as the 107th recruit nationally in the 2019 class.