Horton works to provide more punch
Sophomore guard is the 4th-leading scorer on the team
Only about 15 minutes after Pitt’s 75-65 loss Tuesday night against North Carolina, Ithiel Horton emerged from the Petersen Events Center’s northwest tunnel. There was work to be done.
Pitt’s sophomore guard had played well enough, scoring 12 points and finishing as only one of two Panthers players in double figures, but his larger goals go beyond a single game. He worked on his dribbling, controlling a ball in each hand. After making just two of his six shots inside the 3-point arc against the Tar Heels, a player known primarily as an outside shooter was trying to refine the rest of his offensive game, firing off a series of dribble pull-up jumpers.
“I’m really working to stop trying to be one-dimensional, to stop shooting the ball every time I get it,” Horton said.
Horton’s efforts have a purpose beyond personal improvement.
Through its first 12 games, Pitt is leaning heavily on its top three scorers, a triumvirate of Justin Champagnie, Au’Diese Toney and Xavier Johnson that is collectively averaging nearly 50 points per game. It’s production that has carried the Panthers effectively enough, including over the past four games, when they have averaged one point per possession or better in each contest.
Beyond those three, though, exists a sizable gap. Horton, the team’s fourth-leading scorer, is averaging 8.6 points per game, more than five fewer than Johnson, the next-closest player above him. After Horton, there’s not a player that averages more than 5.3 points per game, making Pitt the only ACC team without at least five players averaging more than six points per game.
For now, things are working. But how sustainable is it over the course of a season, particularly for a team that has fallen apart late in each of the past two seasons?
“I think it has a great chance to be successful,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “I think if you look at most teams, they have two or three guys that maybe score more than the other ones. Some teams are a little more balanced, but I think those three guys are our three best players and we need them to play well.”
Conceptually, Pitt isn’t an oddity. Stars are stars for a reason. They score points, dish out assists and pull down rebounds at a rate higher than most or all of their teammates and, because of that, their teams come to rely on them. Success for them generally means success for the entire group, with teams riding those players to wherever it is they may lead them.
Within their conference, however, the Panthers are an outlier. Every team depends on its best players, but Pitt does so just a bit more.
This season, 67.1% of the Panthers’ points have come from their top three scorers, the highest mark among ACC teams (taking into account only active players). The next-closest squads — one of which is Notre Dame, Pitt’s opponent Saturday — are at 61.4%.
When those three players are performing up to the standard they’ve set for themselves, or at least are close to it, Pitt has been fine. When they haven’t, problems have emerged.
In the loss to North Carolina, Toney and Johnson were a combined 5 of 18 from the field (27.8%). Defense, not offense, was the Panthers’ biggest weakness that night, but Toney and Johnson’s production has a large say in how their team fares in a given game. While Champagnie, the team’s leading scorer, has been a model for consistency and excellence, there’s been more variance with the two scorers below him. In Pitt’s four wins against major-conference opponents this season in which all three of its top scorers played, Toney and Johnson combined to average 33.3 points per game. In its two losses in such situations, they’ve averaged 20 points per game, more than nine points below their cumulative season average.
At times, the Panthers’ other players have shown they’re capable of picking up the slack. Horton’s 12 points against the Tar Heels nearly matched Toney and Johnson’s combined total of 15, helping keep Pitt’s offense afloat on a day it scored 65 points on 62 possessions.
After him, though, the Panthers’ reliable offensive options dwindle. Abdoul Karim Coulibaly has shown considerable improvement as a sophomore, but he has scored more than seven points just once this season, and his execution near the basket is usually slow. Freshman forward John Hugley is indefinitely suspended. Freshman guard Femi Odukale has seen his role increase over the past month, a time in which he has averaged 7.6 points per game, but he has often been too inefficient, shooting 41.5% from the field, 16.7% from 3 and a ghastly 38.2% from the free throw line this season. Senior Nike Sibande was projected to give Pitt an experienced scorer in the backcourt, but his impact has been fairly muted. In the past four games, he has averaged 1.5 points and 1.3 shot attempts in 7.5 minutes per game.
Two of the team’s other freshmen — William Jeffress and Noah Collier, who have each started in a game this season — haven’t played in each of the Panthers’ past three games.
“Guys have to earn playing time,” Capel said. “This is not high school or AAU where everyone gets the same amount of minutes. If those guys practice better, they’ll earn playing time. We need them.”
Even Horton has some drawbacks. He has demonstrated his effectiveness beyond being a fourth scorer, with at least 12 points in four of Pitt’s past seven games, but he has faded in other moments, like his two points in 18 minutes in last Saturday’s loss at Wake Forest and his six-point effort in a Dec. 22 loss to Louisville in which the Panthers were without Champagnie and Toney.
Still, he has made the Panthers’ backcourt more wellrounded and provided them with some of the outside shooting they so plainly lacked last season.
Horton overcame whatever rust encumbered him early in the season, when he was playing in his first games in 20 months. After missing 17 of his first 24 3s this season, he has shot 15 of 40 (37.5%) from beyond the arc in seven ACC games this season.
While it hasn’t always come with obvious success, he has started to diversify his game, too, becoming something closer to the three-level scorer his teammates touted him as while he sat out last season. In the past three games, only 10 of his 21 field-goal attempts have been 3s after those shots accounted for 54 of his 80 attempts in Pitt’s first nine games.
As time has passed, he has understood his role that much more.
“It’s definitely always in the back of my mind to want to be that fourth guy,” Horton said. “I know I can be that fourth guy. But I try not to put too much pressure on myself. As you guys see, from game to game, you don’t really know what to expect from me.”
As he noted, his role in Pitt’s offense has fluctuated, which isn’t especially odd for a team’s No. 4 scorer. In three of the past five games, he has been a crucial component, attempting at least 11 shots in each of those contests. In the other two, a win against Duke and the loss at Wake Forest, he has been more subdued, attempting 10 shots in those games.
If Horton can maintain his pace from Pitt’s seven ACC games, when he has averaged 10.9 points per game, what was a languishing offense earlier in the season should continue to do well. But much of his team’s success will ultimately be tied to the same familiar faces.
“We need Ithiel to be consistent shooting the basketball. We need Karim to play well,” Capel said. “But those three guys are our three best players. That’s who we are.”