Good news about Justin and Karim being effective in the high post against the zone, like many of us predicted.
The ironic part here Drew....
Many Pitt fans were quite sour with Pitt's 2019 class (and still are) because it was ranked 11th in the ACC per 247 sports and some people used a meaningless all star game on this board to tell people Champagnie and Coulibaly were not good players. And they couldn't be more wrong.
Both of these recruits were in the Top 100 previously and fell for zero reason what so ever. Champagnie was voted a 5th Team high school All American last summer in AAU and Coulibaly and Mali were pretty dominant at Fiba and Coulibaly was also the prep player of the year in his division for the #1 prep team in the country most of the season. Murphy has actually exceeded my own expectations so far but I need to see more on defense with Murphy.
But its good to see the overall opinion becoming more positive on these players by some people here. I just strongly disagree with some people on this forum about certain things and that is ok.
Pitt's defense is what is going to carry Pitt this season. The length and athleticism added by our new players is night and day in comparison to last year. The defensive efficiency is going to get a huge boost in comparison to last season when you have Drumgoole and Coulibaly both pushing 7 foot wingspans and Champagnie being a great athlete which is a monumental difference from the players Pitt lost . Pitt's defense this year should be pushing Top 30-50 Nationally in the entire country and possibly better. It should be quite good and our best defensive players last year were freshmen.
Pitt ate this team alive today with steals and on the defensive end (Drumgoole had 7 steals with that wingspan I keep talking about). And the defense played well in the first game too. The competition wasn't that good the 2nd game, but that is what you want to see is good solid defense.
This 2019 recruiting class is significantly underrated nationally. Ive been saying that since December about some of these players. This isn't about "me". This is about getting people to see the facts that these players are far better than these rating services gave them.
But back to what you mentioned.. Both Justin and Karim have the raw skill sets needed to be very effective against a zone. Both are so much better than a player like Malik Ellison its almost silly to compare. And for as good as Frame was on offense, he was terrible last year on defense just like Chuk. These players are not going to be missed at all. Capel has this program headed in the right direction, trust me on this one. Better players have arrived. And if some people cant see that yet, they will come November.
