Capel turns to freshman late in victory
With 15: 42 remaining Wednesday night in Pitt’s game against host Northwestern, with the Panthers trailing by seven, Abdoul Karim Coulibaly hedged on a ball screen near midcourt and picked up his fourth foul of the game (and third of the second half).
What seemed in the moment like a relatively routine, innocuous play turned out to be fortuitous. It wasn’t the difference in Pitt’s thrilling 71-70 victory, but with the benefit of hindsight, it stood as a pivot point in the game — namely because of
an unconventional lineup it unleashed.
With Coulibaly in foul trouble, freshman John Hugley with two fouls of his own and senior Terrell Brown largely relegated to a limited role, Panthers coach Jeff Capel brought in freshman Noah Collier. The Philadelphia-area native is a long, tall player at 6 feet 8, but not someone in the mold of a traditional big man, especially as he works on tacking on muscle mass early in his college career.
As Pitt looked to stay competitive in the game and cut into its deficit, Capel was willing to experiment. It paid off.
Over the period of 7:05 in which they were featured, the lineups with Collier as the tallest Panthers player on the court scored 19 points on 13 possessions (1.46 points per possession) and made seven of its nine field-goal attempts. For the rest of the game, Pitt had just 52 points on 60 possessions (0.87 points per possession) and made only 18 of its 62 shots (29%).
Offensively, the first of those two lineups — with Collier, Xavier Johnson, Au’Diese Toney, Justin Champagnie and William Jeffress — was particularly lethal, scoring 13 points on seven possessions. The second — which had freshman Femi Odukale in for Johnson, who was dealing with foul trouble of his own — wasn’t quite as potent, but it still had six points on six possessions, an improvement from where Pitt had been offensively for much of the night previously.
It’s fair to question just how much of that success had to do with the relative lack of size and girth. The Panthers didn’t stretch the floor more than they usually do, with Collier and Champagnie lurking relatively close to the basket on many of the possessions. About half of their points in those seven minutes came on 3-pointers — 9 of 19, to be exact — and in some cases, baskets came from players such as Jeffress simply creating something off the dribble.
For as much as Pitt looked significantly better offensively with those lineups in the game, its defense suffered in that same time. During that stretch, Northwestern scored 18 points on 13 possessions (1.38 points per possession), compared to 52 points on its 62 other possessions (0.84 points per possession).
Part of the Wildcats’ success had to do with their opponent’s lineup. Center Ryan Young excelled in that time, getting 5 of his 13 points and regularly having his way with Collier, over whom he had an advantage of 2 inches in height and 35 pounds in weight. Collier, as a byproduct of that matchup, picked up three fouls in his seven minutes on the court Wednesday.
Still, the Panthers didn’t cede any kind of rebounding advantage they would have had otherwise, getting one offensive rebound of their own while only allowing one. In those seven minutes, they outscored Northwestern by one and without a slower big man like Coulibaly or Hugley, they were able to counter effectively against an uptempo team that had thrived in transition and spread the floor in its first two games.
Whether it’s something Pitt continues to use the rest of the season remains uncertain, as matchups and the availability and progression of players are impossible to forecast. But if Wednesday night showed nothing else, it’s that such a non-traditional setup at least has the ability to work.
“It’s unpredictable,” Capel said. “It’s something we practiced before this game. For a couple of days, it’s something we looked at, to go a little bit smaller, to try to spread the floor out a little bit more and to try to allow our guys to be instinctive. It’s something we felt [Wednesday]. It was a suggestion from an assistant. I trusted it. Noah was tremendous.”
More to the madness
It’s worth delving into just how unlikely a Pitt win seemed at many points in that game and just how many things had to break the Panthers’ way for that final result to be possible. It’s pretty startling.
When Northwestern went up, 64-55, with 4:20 left, it had a 93.1% chance of winning, according to win probability figures from ESPN. Three minutes later, even when Pitt had gotten within five points, the Wildcats were still given an 88.8% chance of emerging victorious. The only time the Panthers were projected to win at any point in that contest came after Champagnie’s winning dunk with five seconds left.
There were oddities that made that play possible. How about Boo Bouie, who had made eight of his nine free throws that game and shot 70.8% from the charity stripe last season, missing two free throws right before Pitt’s winning possession? A big part of the reason I got into journalism was so I didn’t have to do math, but I’m going to venture a guess that the probability of that happening is low. Though it wasn’t quite as obviously decisive, Miller Kopp, who was 9 of 11 on free throws in Northwestern’s first two games and who shot 89.6% from the line last season, went just 2 of 4 on free throws Wednesday night, including a miss with 5:19 remaining that could have stretched the Wildcats’ lead to nine.
If nothing else, it may have been the result of a Pitt defense that held its own against a potentially dangerous opponent.
“One of the things we talked about was that we wanted to disrupt their rhythm and we didn’t want them to be comfortable,” Capel said. “I thought we did a pretty good job of that for most of the night.”
Technically speaking
In a game decided by the smallest of margins, Pitt, namely its coach, dealt itself an unforced error in the final six minutes that could have been much costlier than it turned out to be.
With his team trailing by seven, Johnson drove to the basket and hoisted up a layup through apparent contact that went awry, with Northwestern collecting the rebound. Capel, displeased at what he had just seen, stepped a few feet onto the court and made his case to the nearest official, being heard on the game broadcast yelling, “That was a foul!” multiple times.
He was hit with a technical foul, Kopp hit 1 of 2 free throws on the other end and, after it got the ball back immediately after the free throws, Buie made a careless pass that Jeffress stole.
Giving an opponent who had been flailing offensively two free throws in the final minutes of a game you’re trying to come back and win is undoubtedly a mistake. But did it serve a purpose? Aided partially by the Wildcats’ inability to capitalize on the opportunity, Pitt outscored Northwestern following Kopp’s free throw by an 18-9 margin.
Capel, however, didn’t take any kind of credit for it.
“The players played their butts off,” he said. “They’re the ones that deserve the credit.”