Looks like our backcourt tore up Georgetown. And Carrington did a lot of damage along with Lowe and Ish.
Pitt wins secret scrimmage over Georgetown 78-64, Scrimmage Highlights
- Thread starter Vader_Storm
- Start date
From George Michalowski on todays scrimmage,
Leggett: 20 points, five rebounds, five assists. Carrington: 16 points, three rebounds, five assists. Hinson: 13 points, seven rebounds. Federiko: eight points, six rebounds, and two blocks. Austin: eight points, two blocks. Lowe: 7 points. The Panthers hit ten three pointers and shot 50% from the field.
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10 three’s on 50% from the floor is a super encouraging sign.
And if my Pitt math taught me anything…13 points total from Hinson equals max 4 3 pointers made. Meaning 6 threes from panthers not named Hinson. That’s encouraging. Georgetown was 159 in Kenpom. Not sure what hypothetical spread should have been.
Also … with the transfer portal, I have no idea of the validity of Kenpoms pre season rankings.
About 7 point favorites using efficiency site data. I would take the preseason rankings from these efficiency sites with a bit of a grain of salt and they should be used lightly until at least 10 games or so have been played.
But if we want to improve our ranking substantially on the efficiency sites, you need to constantly beat the spreads the efficiency sites put out and use.
For reference, Torvik has us 86th preseason and Georgetown 138th. So in this game, we were way better than our preseason ranking would indicate.
Especially a bunch of portal kids AND a new coaching staff. Lot of variance there with Georgetown’s kenpom.
I think Cooley’s really good and they’ll be solidly better than that projection.
To further up on this, Torvik for example has North Carolina preseason #13 and Northern Iowa #141 which is close to Georgetown in the preseason rankings. Torvik has North Carolina in the preseason as 12 point favorites in this game on a neutral floor. And we still exceeded that today.
So it can be stated and summed up that we played really well today based off preseason efficiency sites.
I still wouldn't put too much weight into this result today for us. But it was a convincing win which is what is most important.
In the opener, we are a 26.5 point favorite on Torvik. We need all gas and no breaks in this game so it doesn't hurt the NET and efficiency rankings and we need a big blowout score margin.
I tend to agree, after all it's a pre season scrimmage. However
given today's football result, it's some much needed good
news. Bball season can't get here soon enough.
I'm just ready for the basketball season to start so we can move on from football, so this was some much needed catnip.
Great catch. That was obviously a typo from George. Hinson had 7 rebounds, not 7 assists. I edited it.
After rewatching a few times, it was good team excitement for a scrimmage. Hinson was pretty pumped with his dunk in final highlight. Bench seemed engaged. So yes a scrimmage, but team mindset at least seems to have carried over hopefully. Expectations have to be 4-0 heading into the Gator game I would think.
Regardless, if they falter, I still think Hinson can fill some seats if he just starts going off from 3. Would be entertaining at least to see some 3 pointers from range.
Can't wait for hoops season to get here. We need some excitement and positivity from Pitt athletics and this just might be the ticket.
Our backcourt is coming for respect.... a ton of haters....And they are coming...
Pitt talked about in the preseason...
"Pitt has zero talent in the backcourt"
"Leggett cant compete in the ACC, he is a midmajor player at best"
"Pitt caught lighting in a bottle and is a 1 year wonder" They will collapse with weak guards...
"Pitt has zero impact transfers or freshmen" Their backcourt is one of the worst in ACC... They cant shoot...
"Pitt is predicted around 12th or 13th preseason, guards are awful"...
Wow... We'll see. We will see, lol. Pitt is going to be a lot better than people think.
"Pitt has zero talent in the backcourt"
"Leggett cant compete in the ACC, he is a midmajor player at best"
"Pitt caught lighting in a bottle and is a 1 year wonder" They will collapse with weak guards...
"Pitt has zero impact transfers or freshmen" Their backcourt is one of the worst in ACC... They cant shoot...
"Pitt is predicted around 12th or 13th preseason, guards are awful"...
Wow... We'll see. We will see, lol. Pitt is going to be a lot better than people think.
I don't understand why Cooley, a Providence man born and bred, went there. It has a higher ceiling than PC but its not like its a top job
Georgetown’s a great job with a significantly higher ceiling. You can win a title at Georgetown.
Nice results, and good to see the focus was on getting the new players into more distinct roles.
Also for anyone curious, I found this to be a good summary on the point of secret scrimmages, and how they work:
https://www.espn.com/blog/ncbexperts/insider/post/_/id/74
Also for anyone curious, I found this to be a good summary on the point of secret scrimmages, and how they work:
https://www.espn.com/blog/ncbexperts/insider/post/_/id/74
Good article, thanks. I've been involved with a lot of
these scrimmages. More often than not they don't
resemble a real game even though there's direct
competition. The coaches can basically structure
the scrimmage any way they like. They can interrupt
the play on the floor for a "teaching moment." They
can create "do overs" or any number of other situations.
There's a big differrence between an exhibition game and a
"secret scrimmage."
With all that said, they can also create as much a game
like experience as they want. All of this is usually decided
beforehand depending on the needs of the two coaches.
Syracuse lost one against a nobody an still earned a 1 seed the same year.
North Carolina lost to Santa Clara early in the season and won the national championship the same year. This was a real game though.
One game doesn't mean a whole lot, I agree. But our guards, who have been highly disrespected in all these preseason media outlets for the most part with Pitt getting picked at the bottom the acc, still tore up Georgetown and kids still are going to try in these games.
Im bullish on the guards. And I think they are going to prove some people wrong. 2 weeks to the opener to find out...
They will make freshman mistakes at times, but certainly don't look like true freshman players with how they have played so far. We don't need all ACC, but enough to weather the early season 5 game stretch against P5 competition to keep the NET in striking range. A win against Florida would be huge.
If this team protects the basketball with limiting turnovers and gang rebounds on defense, we are going to be dangerous.
Last year was the first year under Capel we finally protected the basketball with a bunch of senior guards, and we still didn't get in the top 50 nationally in turnover rate. We have to protect the basketball on offense with our freshmen guards which has been my biggest concern this offseason. Our two freshmen can score but they have been turnover prone in the past. They need to do a better job securing the basketball.
Our DR rebound efficiency rate hasn't been ranked in the national top 50 since 2011. Its going to improve with the added size and athletic ability we added, but its TBD by how much. There has been a lot of hype coming out early season on the defense being much better than last year, and those words also came out directly from Jeff Capel who even leaked it to Jon Rothstein. Leggett is the locker room leader on the defensive end and Carrington and Austin should be considerable upgrades on defense to Cummings and Elliot.
Well it sounds as though we're basically saying the about same regarding scrimmages
and exhibition games. Your point about our guards makes some sense at this point.
You have seen em in real time, while I haven't. So as usual. I'll wait until I see em
in game situations. I do wish we had another experienced guard on the roster. As
of now we have three guards who should be able to give us positive minutes. Two
of them haven't played a minute yet at the college level, but I'll go with your take
on them...I hope you're right. Our fourth guard is a big question mark. What's your
take on him? Also, we can't afford an injury in the backcourt, four guards just
doesn't cut it IMO. Remember a few yrs ago when the injuries hit our backcourt?
It basically derailed the progress we were starting to see.
I have not watched Hueitt at all, not even highlights videos. But I think its very likely that if one of our top 3 guards gets injured, we are in pretty serious trouble. We have zero margin for error with backcourt injuries imo.
We have had success with freshmen guards in the past. Levance Fields, Ron Ramon, James Robinson, X to some extent... etc...
Not only do I think both our guards were considerably underrated in the national rankings, I think they are basically being thought of as "nobodies" since Dior was let go, at least from other viewpoints Ive read or listened to over the weekend with regard to acc previews of this season. Our backcourt was getting trashed by quite a few people in the preseason rankings.
These 2 freshmen we have are quite talented with a long list of accomplishments prior to college... I could make the argument that based off high school accomplishments including summer league play in the EYBL, they are the 2 most accomplished guards we have had outside Brad Wanamaker with prior accomplishments to college of any guard that actually came to Pitt since Brandin Knight. Carrington has the highest upside, but both are dangerous.
They better be considerably better than Wanamaker was as a freshman if Pitt is to be successful.
Yea, Brad didn't start to get it going until his sophomore year at Pitt. Somewhat surprising to a degree.
Brad was a pretty darn unique high school player. He was no near as polished scoring as the 2 coming in this year at the high school level and was to an extent raw on offense. What made Brad special in high school was he was elite on defense, on the glass, as a facilitator as a point forward, was insanely clutch, and just willed his team to wins with leadership (kind of like his Pitt career here). Brad only averaged around 16-17 points per game or so as a senior. But he was leading and willing his team to wins when games were being scored in the 50s and 40s. I remember him beating 5 ranked top 25 nationally ranked teams in a row at 2 major high school basketball tournaments to finish the season which was incredibly impressive. And it was even more impressive because Brad and Maalik Waynes were the only real D1 talent on that team.
Its understandable to an extent why Brad needed some "college seasoning" his freshmen year as an offensive player here at Pitt. He was a bit raw as a scorer in high school for a top 100 player.
I agree. He progressed more than I thought he would
at the time. I wonder though, would he have made
the same progression at another school. Looking at
it now makes me think that the way Dixon ran his
program here, fit Brad's style and helped him progress
and improve as he did.
These were Brad's numbers as a sophomore playing in the best conference in college basketball that earned three number 1 seeds in the same year.
19 minutes per game, 0 starts
5.8 points per game
3.3 rebounds per game
2.1 assist per game
1 steal per game
46% FG %
39% 3 point shooting
54% eFG%
win shares- 3
defensive win shares- 1.7
defensive drtg power rating- 95
If Jaland Lowe is remotely close to this on both ends of the floor this year, I will be pretty ecstatic as those numbers above for a depth piece are quite strong. For our great guard play that we had last year, not one of our guards had shooting percentages that were near that good with a defensive power rating anywhere remotely close to Brad was as a sophomore. And Brad played against the 10th toughest schedule in college basketball.
Vader, if you're going to say you'd be "estatic this year, if Lowe is remotely
close to this"...then use Brad's FRESHMAN year stats, not his SOPH. yr. He
averaged 2.2 pts, was 32% from the field, and a dismal 48% Ft's. and a not
so great 1.4 assists, and 1.2 total rebounds. Those are his FROSH stats. I'll
be disappointed if Jaland Lowe mirrors Brad's Frosh yr. stats. You did an
apples / oranges comparison on this one. Come on, you know better.
I would love for Lowe to average Brad's sophomore stats. Its not likely this year, at least not in respect to the shooting percentages and the defensive power rating. Although I would love to be wrong and Lowe does it.
We can't have Lowe or Carrington be freshmen Brad this year, who was not good offensively at all as a freshmen. Both should be much better on offense their freshmen year in terms of true scoring ability.
For reference, here is Levance's freshmen stats
21.7 minutes per game, 4 starts
6.8 points per game
2.1 rebound per game
2.2 assist per game
1 steal per game
49% FG
43% 3 point shooting percentage
eFG- 59%
win shares- 2.7
And here is James Robinson
27 minutes per game, 32 starts
6.1 points per game
2.1 rebound per game
3.5 assist per game
1 steal per game
37% FG
31% 3 point shooting
eFG% 41%
win shares- 3
I think Lowe is likely to be in here somewhere with regards to these 2 players with his freshmen stats. The shooting percentage is the big thing, as Fields was way stronger than Robinson as a freshmen. Although this was an anamoly for Fields, as his shooting percentage went down quite a bit after his freshmen year. Lowe is a bit of a volume scorer to a degree. My hope is, Lowe puts up numbers somewhat similar to this with an ORTG offensive power rating of at least 100+ at a minimum as a freshmen. If that happens and Carrington exceeds this, we have a really good chance of making the tournament at a minimum.
Like I posted above, apples/oranges. The point is Lowe is a freshman,
and will more than likely supercede Brad's not so hot Frosh yr. Yes,
Brad improved somewhat his second yr. However, as another poster
above pointed out, he didn't really come on until he was a Jr. when
he didpost some much better #'rs. I do think Jaland can come cloe to
Brad's Soph #'rs as a Frosh. But let's remember, he's still is a frosh.
Way too much emphasis on stats, as usual. I agree that they're
important, but so is his actual play on the floor. I've never seen
him, so I'll hold my opinion until I see how he is when he is getting
real game time minutes. At this point, he hasn't played one minute
of college basketball. He does appear to be a very solid recruit, and
I would expect a solid performances.....let's see what happens.
