Vukovcan: Pitt Leaving Plenty of Doubt

The Pitt men’s basketball team entered the 2024-25 season with the slogan of ‘Leave No Doubt’ but unfortunately with their recent play, the Panthers have left plenty of doubt as to whether or not they’re an NCAA Tournament team.

As we sit here today with less than six weeks until Selection Sunday, Pitt appears to be a team that right now is on the outside looking in following an embarrassing performance last night against Virginia.

Up until last night, despite losing 7 games, Pitt was projected by all bracketologists to still be a tournament team because all of their losses were of the ‘Quad One’ variety. But that completely changed following a blowout loss at the hands of a really bad Virginia team.

The bottom line is that since the start of the calendar year, Pitt has not been a winning team.

Many different reasons and excuses can be made ranging from not being able to rebound, running into a hot shooter, bad referees and non-production from their start players. Whichever one you want to cling to; Pitt is struggling, and their tournament hopes are currently on life support.

Not that losing is ever acceptable, but I don’t have a huge problem with the Duke or Clemson losses BUT losing to Louisville solely because of a lack of effort in rebounding and the subsequent losses to Florida State and Virginia are embarrassing.

Big picture even for the staunchest Pitt supporter, it really makes you question how good is this team that entered the season with so much promise and expectations.

Anyone that knows me well, knows that in terms of supporters of Jeff Capel, I’m as big as it gets. Despite the critics, I’ve always felt that Capel is a good coach for Pitt, is a good person and representative of the university.

However, if things continue to go south, then any criticism that he gets is deserved because this team has the proper pieces and shouldn’t be on the bubble of being a tournament team.

That is not acceptable, and the blame has to fall on his lap.

Plenty of reasons have been given for Pitt losing 6 of their last 8 games including Capel’s offensive system, poor interior play, certain stars questionable shot selection, etc. but I want to throw something out there that I believe has contributed.

Let me be clear, this isn’t the main reason because it still comes down to the best players playing their best, but I certainly believe this has contributed.

I believe Capel’s rotation since the Duke game has been very questionable and coincidence or not, they’ve really struggled since then.

Since the start of conference play, Capel has decided to completely shorten his bench and basically make the players on it non-existent.

Minutes Play for Brandin Cummings, Amsal Delalic and Papa Kante Since Duke Game
(6 games combined (Louisville, Florida State, Clemson, Syracuse, North Carolina, Virginia)

Brandin Cummings: 29 total minutes in 6 games, high was 9 minutes vs. Florida State, mostly when game was out of hand.

Amsal Delalic: 8 total minutes.

Papa Kante: 33 total minutes, this number is inflated due to his 15 minutes last night in the blowout loss.

Maybe these Pitt “stars” aren’t performing up to par because they’re on the court too much? Remember the much talked about Louisville loss when Capel didn’t make a single substitution in the final 17+ minutes of the game. Sorry but that’s ridiculous.

Guys off the bench are fresh and many times are able to give their team a spark, you mean to tell me that from what we saw in the first couple months of the season that Cummings couldn’t provide that in spurts for Pitt? Or games in which the front court is struggling either defensively or with rebounding that Kante can’t provide something?

I’m not a head coach but it doesn’t take one to make the observation that if my team is in a prolonged slump and not playing up to expectations, I’m willing to make any move possible in order to shake things up. Maybe taking away some playing time will light a fire under certain players asses?

This Pitt team has at least 10 more games to try and figure this out and if they don’t, the heat and criticism will deservedly ramp up.

The Pitt basketball 2025 roster is of NCAA Tournament quality. It’s time that the players and coaches start performing like it.