A stop to losing
Improvement in rebounding has led to fewer chances by opponents
Defense has been a big part of Pitt’s 6-2 start this college basketball season.
The minutes after Pitt’s 6360 victory last Wednesday against Syracuse was a time to celebrate. The Panthers won a game they led for all of eight seconds and had just a 4.4% chance of winning with 3:36 remaining, when they trailed by nine. By securing that improbable victory, they snapped a seven-game losing streak to one of their longesttenured rivals.
That moment of revelry was also one of reflection, not just of what transpired that night, but of the months and even years leading up to it. Pitt coach Jeff Capel spoke of the traits and principles around which he’s trying to build a program, ones so closely aligned with the Panthers long before he came to lead them.
Au’Diese Toney talked in an aspirational way about successful Pitt teams that last took the court when he was just 13 years old, long before he would ever set foot on campus or even think of it as a possibility.
While providing a hopeful vision for what’s to come, the comments were meant to provide some explanation as to how the Panthers got to this point, at 6-2 overall and 2-1 in the ACC, despite playing their past two games without their best player. Embedded in the subtext of Capel and Toney’s words was perhaps the biggest reason why Pitt has had the success it has — it’s tough and tenacious, sure, but it can defend. And do so quite well.
In the win against the Orange, in which they neutralized what had been one of the ACC’s most potent offenses, the Panthers further established themselves as one of the best defensive teams in their conference statistically. They rank 34th among 357 Division I teams in adjusted defensive efficiency, which measures the number of points a team gives up per 100 possessions. Pitt hasn’t finished among the top 40 teams in that category since the 201314 season which, perhaps coincidentally, was the last time it won more than 21 games in a season.
If the Panthers maintain the 92.6 points per 100 possessions they’re currently allowing, that would be their lowest mark since the 2012-13 season and would stand as their fifthbest season defensively going back to Jamie Dixon’s first season as coach in 2003-04.
The answer of how it got to this point is multi-layered.
Capel begins by saying he believes his first two teams were good defensively.
There’s some truth to that. In Capel’s first season at the school, in 2018-19, the Panthers went from 166th nationally in defensive efficiency to 70th, improving by more than six points per 100 possessions. Those marks came with largely different teams, as a handful of players transferred during the coaching transition or were relegated to smaller roles once Capel took over, but he was still relying primarily on freshmen to carry the defensive load.
Last season, however, was a disappointment, as Pitt, with a more experienced squad, finished 91st and gave up only 0.2 points per 100 possessions fewer than the previous year.
This season, at least to this point, the difference has been easily measurable.
The Panthers’ opponents have an effective field goal percentage — which accounts for 3-pointers being worth more points by giving 50% more credit for made 3s — of just 44.7% this season, which makes them the 19th-best Division I team. In eight games this season, Pitt’s foes shot 39% from the field. In all of their other games, those eight teams shot 44.1%.
That overall improvement has come because of some much-needed changes. Maybe the biggest has been the progress made on defensive rebounding. With three big men in Pitt’s rotation — which doesn’t even count the injured 6-foot-6 Justin Champagnie, its leading rebounder by far — the team is collecting 73.8% of opponents’ misses.
While that doesn’t even put it in the upper third of Division I teams, it’s a significant step from where the Panthers were the previous two years. In those seasons, they secured defensive rebounds on just 65.5% (in 2019-20) and 67.2% (in 2018-19) of opponents’ missed shots, ranking them 349th and 323rd, respectively, in Division I.
“I think being able to finish a possession, that’s the biggest thing,” Capel said.
Then there are the additions Capel has made to the roster. The four freshmen who are a part of Pitt’s rotation this season are all at least 6-foot-5, with an average height of just over 6-foot-7. That length and versatility has made the Panthers much more formidable defensively.
Two of those freshmen, guard Femi Odukale and guard/forward William Jeffress, have been particularly impactful. Both are rangy and athletic players who can defend multiple positions and have shown themselves to be capable of working through or around screens opponents throw at them.
Jeffress was responsible for ending a number of Syracuse possessions, either by poking the ball away from a player on the break (as he did to Alan Griffin early in the first half), drawing a foul or forcing a turnover because of his ability to work through a screen.
And it’s not limited to the newcomers. Toney, now in his third year with the program, is the team’s best defensive player, who, at 6-foot-6, is also capable of guarding a number of different positions. Abdoul Karim Coulibaly hedges well on ball screens and does a decent job protecting the rim. Senior Terrell Brown is a capable shotblocker. Xavier Johnson, while prone to occasional lapses and carelessness, is a pesky, in-your-face defender who forces turnovers.
“I think being older, with Xavier, with Au’Diese, even guys like Justin and Karim have been in our program for a year, Terrell, it’s his third year, so having some older guys, I think that helps,” Capel said. “Then with the length and athleticism with some of our new guys, I think it’s all of those things.”
Its success on that end of the floor is helping mitigate the struggles of a streaky, middling offense that is 127th nationally and last in the ACC in adjusted offensive efficiency.
It’s a notable development not just for Capel’s team, but Capel himself, whose track record as a coach isn’t one of a defensive maestro. Of his previous 11 teams as a head coach, four of them finished in the top 60 in defensive efficiency. Three of those teams were his first three teams at Oklahoma, but his next two Sooners squads finished 181st and 183rd in that category, one of a number of factors that led to his firing in 2011.
Like their coach, though, this Pitt team has shown an ability to change. In its first two games of the season, a loss to Saint Francis and a win against Drexel, it allowed 154 points on 142 possessions (1.08 points per possession). In their next six games, a period in which they went 5-1, the Panthers gave up 358 points on 415 possessions (0.86). The only team to average more than one point per possession in a game during that time was a top-20 Louisville squad and that came in a game in which Toney was sidelined with an ankle injury.
Those numbers are boosted somewhat by the quality of competition — two of those opponents are outside the top 200 in offensive efficiency — and some fortunate circumstances, like Miami being without three of its top scorers for Pitt’s 70-55 win on Dec. 16.