Enjoying sweet taste of revenge
Omitted from ACC all-freshman team, Champagnie has career-high 31 in win
GREENSBORO, N.C. — In the days before his team opened the ACC tournament with an 81-72 win Tuesday against Wake Forest, Jeff Capel approached Justin Champagnie, his standout freshman forward, with a bit of bad news — he hadn’t made the league’s all-freshman team.
“I don’t want you to be mad,” Champagnie recalled
Capel telling him before delivering the blow.
It stung. Champagnie had finished the season as the Panthers’ leading scorer and
rebounder, and even as his team faltered late in the season, losing its final seven regular-season games, he had played well and kept some of those setbacks from being even more odious. The snub had an effect. The 6foot-6 Brooklyn native is preternaturally calm, with a laid-back cadence off the court and a soft touch on it, but inside him, a sort of rage boiled.
“I kind of felt disrespected when I found out I didn’t make it,” Champagnie said. “But, at the same time, I used it as motivation and I just came out here and showed why I should have been on the team.”
He did just that. With his team in a position in which it had to win to keep its season going, Champagnie was as good as he has been in a season in which he had already been quite good, pouring in a career-high 31 points on 13-of19 shooting to pace Pitt to a win in the tournament opener at Greensboro Coliseum.
The win was its first since a Feb. 8 triumph against Georgia Tech, a game in which Champagnie, interestingly enough, recorded his previous career high of 30 points. The outburst Tuesday marked the fifth time in program history a freshman had scored 30 points or more in a game, with all of those performances coming from players on the current roster — Champagnie (twice), Trey McGowens (twice) and Xavier Johnson.
“That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life,” Champagnie said. “I’ve always been counted out.”
Champagnie scored 14 of his first 16 points in the final 9:38 of the first half, helping the Panthers go from being down eight to down one going into the break. His 3-point shooting, a point of wild inconsistency in an otherwise strong season, was accurate when it needed to be as he made 3 of 7 attempts. On a day in which the Panthers (16-16) scored 42 points in the paint, compared to 28 by the Demon Deacons (13-18), Champagnie stood as the biggest reason, making all six of his layups with an array of crafty finishes, namely a reverse layup he has used to great effect as a way to shield himself from longer defenders on the low post.
“I thought he was the one that really hit the wall the hardest,” Capel said of Champagnie. “This is different for a freshman, when you get to this level and the pressure and these games coming at you.”
Champagnie piloted Pitt to one of its most impressive offensive outings of the season. In a dramatic departure from what they have been for much of the past month, the Panthers, the tournament’s No. 13 seed, were crisp and efficient offensively, making 52.3% of their shots. In six of their previous seven games, all losses, they had shot below 39% from the field. The 81 points were their most in an ACC game this season.
Four others joined Champagnie in double figures — McGowens, with 14 points, and Johnson, Au’Diese Toney and Abdoul Karim Coulibaly, each of whom had 10. Coulibaly matched a career high in scoring and set a career high with seven rebounds. In what has been an up-and-down sophomore season for Johnson, he had eight assists to three turnovers.
The Panthers held Wake Forest to 35.5% shooting in
the second half, including missing its final eight shots, and goaded it into 11 secondhalf turnovers.
“It’s no need to worry about tomorrow or what’s upcoming, because we have to earn the right to get there,” Capel said. “And what we were able to do today was earn the right to play tomorrow.”
Pitt advanced to the second round and will play N.C. State at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
After their 16-point loss March 4 against Georgia Tech, the Panthers didn’t play a game for the next five days. In that time, a team that was visibly gassed got some sorely needed rest. They weren’t just physically tired, but mentally tired. It had gotten so bad that Johnson said he was tired of even seeing basketballs.
“It was just good to get away because I’m pretty sure dudes were tired of seeing each other every day and tired of losing,” Johnson said.
The win might just be delaying the inevitable. If nothing else, though, it gave the Panthers not only a muchneeded positive feeling, but also a chance to keep playing and keep fighting.
“We always were talking about before the game started just to leave it out on the line, like whatever you got and be the better team,” Champagnie said. “We don’t want to go home. Nobody wants to go home, so we’re just going to keep fighting and keep pushing.”