Mystery surrounds departures
Johnson, Toney leave gaping holes
The past several days have been the most turbulent of Jeff Capel’s nearly three full years as Pitt’s head coach, a time when a lateseason skid that saw the Panthers lose seven of eight games devolved into something more volatile.
On Wednesday, Xavier Johnson entered the transfer portal and one day later, Au’Diese Toney did the same — moves that were described in slightly different ways as mutual agreements between the players and the program. In the span of just 25 hours, Pitt lost two of its top three scorers, both of whom were three-year starters and among Capel’s first
three recruits, the ones tasked more than anyone else with rescuing the Panthers from the lowest point in the program’s recent history.
The departures turned the ACC’s 12th-place team into a subject of interest in college basketball nationally. They raised questions, some of which Capel was presented with Friday in a scheduled media availability in advance of Pitt’s game Sunday at N.C. State.
Some answers offered more detail and insight than others. Capel, for example, declined to delve into what led to Toney and Johnson’s decisions.
“Those things will remain private, at least from our side,” Capel said. “Everyone felt like it was in the best interest of everyone, our program and those guys individually, to move on.”
But why now, with three games remaining in the regular season?
“I don’t know,” Capel said. “It was just the best decision for everyone right now.”
Capel said the decisions were not due to any kind of impending disciplinary measures, putting to rest any of the more far-fetched possibilities that could have explained what happened.
A rift between Capel and Johnson had become increasingly obvious, particularly after the Pitt coach chided his point guard after a Feb. 17 loss to N.C. State by saying “Nothing I’ve said has worked” when it comes to addressing Johnson’s repeated technical fouls. Toney, however, presents a different, more puzzling matter. After the Panthers’ loss Feb. 20 to then-No. 16 Florida State, a game Toney missed with a concussion, Capel said what a big loss the junior guard/forward was and how much they missed him.
So what changed in five days?
“I’m not going to get into the details of the conversations that were had between Au’Diese and his family and me and Xavier and his family and me,” Capel said. “It was a mutual decision. I’m going to leave it at that and I’m going to concentrate on the guys we have in our program right now.”
Johnson and Toney’s exits came during what was already a tumultuous time for Pitt, which is 9-9 overall and 5-8 in ACC play after being 82 and 4-1, respectively, Jan. 23. Capel said that the factors that led to the transfers could be tied to the ones that have led to Pitt’s struggles over the past few weeks, but added that would be an overly simplistic explanation.
“Not one or two people are to blame,” Capel said. “We’re all to be held accountable for that. Look, we weren’t winning. That’s the
bottom line.”
Sudden as these moves seemed, Capel said it didn’t surprise him, nor was he sure that his remaining players were caught off guard. Nothing, he said, surprises him in college basketball anymore.
It did have some kind of effect on him, though. For the better part of three years, Capel spent time developing Johnson and Toney. Johnson started all but three of his 84 career games, earning all-ACC freshman honors in 2019. For some of the mistakes he made and frustration he elicited at times, he remained an important piece. He was second in the ACC in assists per game and seventh among all Division I players in assist rate. Toney has been Pitt’s best defensive player from virtually the moment he arrived on campus in 2018 and had grown from an offensively raw freshman to a much more polished product, second on the team in scoring at 14.4 points per game.
“Sometimes, when situations like this happen, it can be a gut punch,” Capel said. “But you’ve got to move on.” To what is unclear. Justin Champagnie, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, will have a decision to make at the end of the season about whether he wants to enter the NBA draft. He was No. 24 on a big board released Wednesday by Sports Illustrated and No. 52 on a board Friday from The Athletic. The draft has 60 overall selections divided into two rounds of 30. Capel said he has had discussions with Champagnie’s parents about his future and that,
together, they’ll make a plan of what they’ll do after the season. Beyond that, Capel doesn’t know if there will be any other players leaving the program.
“You guys follow college basketball,” he said to reporters. “You see a lot of things happen. You never know.”
When it comes to adding players, he said Pitt will “look everywhere” and that he anticipated having open scholarships, something he planned on “the whole time.” The Panthers are the lone ACC program without a player committed or signed for the 2021 class, though they’ll have the opportunity to get commitments from transfers and players who reclassify from 2022 to 2021. Still, the competition to land transfers, especially those who can make an immediate impact at the major-conference level, is fierce.
He discussed how common transfers have become, with the number of players shifting from school to school increasing every year. Attrition isn’t just a feature of the sport. It’s something that programs like Pitt come to expect every offseason. Nonetheless, a team losing two of its top players before the regular season ends is unusual. For those departures to come on consecutive days? Well, that’s even more peculiar.
At various points this season, Capel has talked at length about the burden of playing in the middle of a pandemic and the effect it can have on players. “I hope these kids aren’t judged right now because of some decisions that are made,” he said. “We wish them the best, the absolute best.”
In what have been long, difficult days, Capel has been encouraged by what he has seen from his remaining roster. Practices have been upbeat. Players have been spirited. He has felt a sense of excitement. Both on his radio show Thursday and in Friday’s news conference, he talked about the thrill that comes with the possibility of a comeback, both for the remainder of this season and what awaits after that.
These haven’t been the most challenging days of his career, not when that included the end of his tenure at Oklahoma, when he said he spent the last of his five years with the Sooners knowing he was going to be fired. But when it comes to his current predicament, Capel believes there’s a way back for himself, his players and the Pitt program.
“For me individually, me personally, does this affect me? Yeah, it affects me,” he said. “But I’ve lived through the thing I feared the most back when I first started, which was being fired. I’ve had bad articles written about me. I’ve had people say I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve had a fan base saying that. None of that stuff affects me.
“My job is to do the best I can for our players, for our program and to try to put us in the best position possible as a program to forward and try to accomplish what we want to accomplish. I feel very confident we’re on the right path to doing that. It may not look like it right now, but I feel very confident in what we’re doing and I feel very confident in the guys we have in our program, and I feel very confident about the future of our program.”