‘It’s always been there,’ says Toney
Career game comes amid struggle
Deep inside of him, Au’Diese Toney carried the pain, ailing him in a way a broken bone, strained muscle or torn ligament never could.
Shortly before the team was leaving for a nine-day foreign tour to Italy in August, the Pitt sophomore forward’s grandmother died. For years, she had been as close to Toney as anyone in the family, a woman Toney said was like a second mother to him. Now, at age 19 and hundreds of miles from much of his family in the South, Toney was left to navigate life without someone who had been such an instrumental part of it.
To those who know him well, the hurt he shouldered was evident. To others, it remained hidden, making Toney’s struggles in the first month of the season a point of confusion or, worse, derision.
The anguish over the loss of a loved one never fully disappears, but the past six weeks have been something of a welcome break for Toney, at least on the court. He has been playing much better, more closely resembling the best of what he showed he was capable of as a freshman for the Panthers — a versatile athlete and excellent defender whose tenacity and determination make him someone who, even on his worst days, will make some kind of positive contribution to his team. In a loss Tuesday at Duke, Toney scored a career-high 27 points while going stretches where he silenced one of the more infamously overwhelming home courts in college basketball.
After the game, he was asked any number of questions, many of which could be summarized as, ‘Where has this been this whole time?’ Toney knew the answer and has for some time.
“It’s always been there,” he said Friday. “I’ve just been going through a lot.”
Toney, like fellow sophomores Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens, carried with him a sense of hope into this season that fed into a larger mood of optimism that surrounded the Pitt program. As a freshman in 2018-19, the top-150 recruit was, as he described himself on several occasions, “a dog.” Playing with an uncommon ferocity, Toney, at just 6-foot-6, led the Panthers in rebounding (5.6 per game) and was fourth in scoring (7.5 points per game).
Early in his sophomore season, however, he bore little resemblance to that younger player. His shot continued to falter, as he made just 28.1% of his field-goal attempts in Pitt’s first seven games, missing looks as easy as breakaway dunks. He was still an adept defender, but his offensive game was suffering, averaging just 4.6 points per game in that time. In those seven games, he played 16 minutes or fewer three times, nearly matching his total from 32 games as a freshman. The final of those contests, a four-point win against Kansas State in Fort Myers, Fla., saw a visibly frustrated Toney play only 10 minutes.
There were other elements at play — namely, trying to do too much to live up to some of the expectations he and his teammates had created for themselves — but above all else, it was the result of a player trying to endure through grief.
His teammates worked to be there for Toney as much as they could in the days, weeks and months after his grandmother died. Even some of his new teammates who had yet to arrive on campus would regularly call him and send text messages, offering whatever support they could. During that time, Toney regularly talked with his coaches, many of whom, head coach Jeff Capel among them, have had to experience the profound pain of losing a close family member.
Eventually, he found some sense of acceptance.
“I just had peace of mind,” Toney said. “I had to accept the fact she’s in a better place. That’s what helped me out a lot.”
There is sorrow that still plagues him, but at a certain point, its impact on the court began to diminish.
In the 12 games since that underwhelming start to the season, Toney has averaged 10.5 points per game and shot 59% from the field, as well as 42.9% from 3point range. Even though it’s diluted by the first seven games, Toney’s shooting percentage (.487) and 3-point percentage (.333) are up .127 and 0.087 percentage points, respectively, from last season.
He has been his best of late, averaging 12.7 points and 5.3 rebounds while shooting 50% from 3 the past six games since returning from an elbow injury that sidelined him for two games. The difference has been palpable, especially to his teammates who watch him daily.
“He’s more positive,” center Terrell Brown said. “He’s more engaged. He’s ready. His attention to detail is very good. He’s locked in, especially on defense. That was a big thing for us. We need someone who can be a stopper like him. That helps a lot. But we also need to help him, too.”
Following the Duke game, one of Toney’s several dunks earned him a spot on ESPN’s SportsCenter’s top 10 plays, as well as any number of congratulatory text messages and phone calls waiting for him at his locker in Cameron Indoor Stadium, a lot of them from numbers he didn’t recognize.
His breakout performance has thrust him into the spotlight after spending parts of his 51 games, productive as he has been, in the background. He entered Pitt as part of a three-man class, one that also featured Johnson, a first-team all-ACC freshman honoree last season, and McGowens, a top-100 prospect who headlined the group of signees and currently leads the team in scoring. It has, at times — and unfair as it may be — led him to be seen as the third of the trio.
It’s a designation over which Toney doesn’t fret. As long as he is producing and his team is winning, all is well. Those same goals made his 27 points against Duke only so enjoyable as they ultimately came in a losing effort. The 12-point defeat was instructive to him, though.
“Games like that, they tell you that you really can play with anybody,” Toney said. “Our team can really play with anybody and beat anybody. That’s what we showed at Duke. We could play with anybody on any level. That’s what [Capel] preaches to us every day in practice. It’s just up to us how we handle that.”
The same could just as easily be said for him.