Toney enters transfer portal
Guard is second to leave this week
It took Jeff Capel only 39 days to secure his first freshman recruiting class at Pitt in 2018, a trio of talented players that gave the Panthers their first top-40 haul in five years.
Three years later, it took only 25 hours for that class to disappear.
One day after point guard Xavier Johnson entered the NCAA’s transfer portal, junior guard/ forward Au’Diese Toney did the same, the program announced Thursday. As it was with Johnson, Toney’s departure was described by Pitt as a mutual agreement.
“We appreciate his efforts the past three seasons in our program and wish him well as he looks to continue to grow on and off the court,” Capel said in a statement.
This season, Toney was averaging 14.4 points and 5.9 rebounds per game, ranking him second on the team in both categories. He was also Pitt’s best defender by a substantial margin, regularly
being assigned to mark the opponent’s top offensive threat.
That defensive prowess was paired with a much improved offensive game. Toney’s scoring average rose by nearly five points per game from last season to this season, while his shooting percentages also enjoyed slight upticks. He was a much more active part of the Panthers’ plans on that end of the court, too, taking about three shots per game more than he did as a sophomore.
“It’s been an interesting week, to say the least,” Capel said Thursday night on his radio show on 93.7 The Fan. “We wish those two well. They’re both good kids. As I’ve said all year, this has been an incredibly difficult year with everything that’s going on and the pandemic and stuff with mental health and pressures and the things they feel. As I’ve said all year, I hope people don’t judge these kids, both on and off the court for decisions they make. There are a lot of factors that go into these decisions.”
With Toney out, what was already a late collapse resulting in a lost season has become that much more painful. More than that, though, his departure raises pressing and piercing questions about the Pitt program and the direction in which it is heading.
Like Johnson and fellow 2018 classmate Trey McGowens, who transferred to Nebraska after last season, Toney was an integral part of Capel’s program-building efforts and vision for what the Panthers could become under his watch.
He started in 68 of the 79 games in which he played over his three seasons. A former top- 150 recruit who played high school basketball in Capel’s hometown of Fayetteville, N.C., he embodied qualities that endeared him to a Pitt fan base that saw parallels between him and some of the most beloved players from the program’s glory days earlier this century.
With Toney and Johnson no longer on the roster, the Panthers have no members of their 2018 recruiting class remaining. In Capel’s first two classes, he brought in seven players who had multiple years of eligibility remaining. Four of them have now left before that eligibility expired.
Toney’s exit stands as much more of a surprise than Johnson’s. After Pitt’s 79-72 loss Saturday to Florida State, a game Toney missed after suffering a concussion from a car accident two days earlier, Capel spoke about how important Toney is to the team. Capel added Thursday night there was “a good chance” Toney would have missed the remainder of the season while nursing that concussion.
The timing of the move,
coming one day after Johnson’s and with three regularseason games remaining, prompts concerns about what is happening with a program that was 8-2 after a win Jan. 19 against Duke. The Panthers, now 9-9, aren’t just losing games now; they’re losing players. And they aren’t just losing players; they’ve now, in consecutive days, lost two of their top three scorers.
Where, exactly, does the team go from here?
As he puts together a season that has him among the favorites to win the ACC player of the year award, there’s a looming possibility that Justin Champagnie could declare for the NBA draft. In a piece released Wednesday by Sports Illustrated, the 6-foot-6 forward was listed as the No. 24 prospect in a draft that has 30 first-round picks.
Even if he returns, the cupboard is relatively bare.
Pitt has no recruits committed or signed for the 2021 class, the only ACC program for which that’s the case. Only nine of the top 100 prospects on Rivals.com haven’t committed to or signed with a school — and only one of whom, five-star center Efton Reid, is considering the Panthers. The highest-ranked player from their top-20 2020 recruiting class, 6-foot-9 forward John Hugley, is indefinitely suspended from the team while facing three felony charges related to a car theft last summer.
“Long term, I don’t see any effects, to be honest with you,” Capel said on his radio show of the recent moves. “That’s not doing anything or saying anything to diminish them. We have to recruit. We have to get guys. We have to continue to develop the young men within our program. That’s what we plan to do. I look at it that it gives us two more scholarships to go out and get guys who really want to be here and be a part of what we’re doing, along with the guys we have.”
Circumstances can improve, of course, making the developments of the past two days more of a nadir than a harbinger of impending doom.
For now, though, there’s only uncertainty.
How Pitt does in these next two weeks, the obligatory finish to a season that derailed long ago, is largely immaterial. What it does in the months that follow could determine the immediate fate of the program and its coach.
A future that seemed so bright barely one month earlier now looks dismal.