Horton finds his range
Guard leads with 18 points as Panthers open ACC schedule with a win
As Ithiel Horton walked away Wednesday night from the Watsco Center court, the stage for his triumphs broadcast before a national television audience for the past hour, the Pitt guard didn’t do so alone.
Television cameras caught Jeff Capel, Horton’s coach, walking briskly behind him, catching the sophomore by surprise as he wrapped his arms around him. Horton had played as big of a role as any player in Pitt’s 70-55 victory against Miami, scoring a teamhigh 18 points and knocking down 3pointers at the kind of rapid rate many had dreamed of entering the season.
It was the support of Capel and his teammates away from those cameras and in times not nearly as joyful that meant the most to Horton. Collectively, those moments were what helped make Wednesday night possible.
Horton’s first ACC game at Pitt was his best outing of the year. All of his 18 points came in the second half, helping the Panthers (5-1, 1-0 ACC) outscore the Hurricanes (3-2, 0-1) by 13 in the second half, turning a tight game at halftime into a relative rout with about nine minutes remaining. He was 4 of 6 from 3-point range, adding a much-needed dimension to the offense.
“Any time you can see the ball go in the basket, that gives you confidence,
that makes you believe in yourself a little bit more,” Capel said. “We believe in him. His teammates believe in him. Ithiel has to believe in Ithiel. His teammates were so excited to see him... we’ve seen it. We’ve seen him run off points like that and shots like that in practice. It was good to see that happen in a game.”
For Horton, it came at a much-needed time.
The Delaware transfer has missed all eight of his 3s in Pitt’s previous two games. It won both contests, at Northwestern and at home against Gardner-Webb, which reduced the sting of those shortcomings but didn’t erase them.
They weren’t isolated instances, either. Through the season’s first five games, Horton had made just 7 of 24 3s (29.2%), a sharp dip from the 40.9% he shot from deep as a freshman, the same figure that gave so many confidence and hope that the Panthers’ outside shooting woes would be a thing of the past.
His teammates and coaches had seen what he was capable of in practice, but nobody was more cognizant of what Horton could do than himself, leading to a sense of aggravation that can be hard to verbalize.
“It’s definitely frustrating because you know what you can do,” Horton said. “If you’re not showing it, you’re not showing it. You’re on the big stage. You’ve got family back home watching you, friends back home watching you. Hell yeah, it’s frustrating. But as long as I’m still alive, I’m going to still keep fighting. I ain’t arrived yet. I just started.”
Early on, Wednesday looked like a continuation of that disheartening trend, as Horton misfired on a 3 in the game’s first 30 seconds. It wouldn’t get better from there. He went into halftime scoreless in seven minutes, having missed all three of his shots, and his team floundered offensively, going into halftime up just two, 27-25.
In the second half, Pitt built a seven-point lead only to watch it disappear in just 1:10, a period in which Miami rattled off eight unanswered points. From there, Pitt countered effectively, going on a 19-2 run to go up 16 and put virtually all doubts about the game’s final result to rest. Nobody was more important in that spurt than Horton, who accounted for eight of the 19 points, two of them coming off of 3s.
From the moment the first of those went in, the game’s complexion changed for good.
“My mind says ‘It’s on. It’s on,’” Horton said. “Whenever I get it, I’m going to look at the rim. If it’s not there, I’m not going to force it, but if I make that first shot, it’s on.”
The win was Pitt’s largest in an ACC game since January 2016 and largest on the road since February 2013. It was just their third conference road victory in the past five years.
It came against a severely depleted Miami team that entered the night with just seven available scholarship players, a group that did not include Chris Lykes, Kameron McGusty and Rodney Miller Jr. When paired with Sam Waardenburg, who is out for the season with a foot injury, the Hurricanes (32, 0-1) were without a group of players that were responsible for 57.6% of their points last season and 50.2% of their field-goal attempts. That misfortune was compounded during the game, as forward Matt Cross went down with a ghastly looking leg injury after a missed layup with 12:09 remaining in the contest and didn’t return.
What it means for Horton and his team, however, can’t be discounted. While improved, Pitt is still not a particularly good team from 3, making just 30.1% of their shots in the first five games. If Horton can hit 3s somewhat consistently, and not even at the rate he did Wednesday, the Panthers offense becomes that much more complete and dangerous.
“When IT’s making shots like that, it opens up a whole lot for everybody,” forward Au’Diese Toney said. “They have to figure out a way to guard all five positions because everybody can go. The whole five can go. With him shooting like that, it opens up a lot for a lot of guys.”
It was the first time this season Horton said he felt as good as he did Wednesday. Even his 15 points against Northern Illinois, the hopeful outlier from Pitt’s non-conference schedule, were only so satisfactory. The game made it seem as though a corner had been turned when, in fact, that wasn’t the case.
“It just didn’t feel right, even though I made some 3s and made some good plays,” Horton said. “It just didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel like my old self, to be honest.”
As for Wednesday night? Did he feel like himself then?
“Hell yeah,” Horton said. “I felt good. I’m going to try to keep it going.”