PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan)- Xavier Johnson had the game of his college career Wednesday night in Pitt’s 83-72 win over 16th ranked Virginia Tech.
Ithiel Horton was pretty good, too.
Both came off the bench instead of assuming their usual starting roles to lead the Panthers in scoring, combining for 47 points (Johnson 32, Horton 15).
Head coach Jeff Capel joined The Fan Morning Show in his weekly spot Thursday to explain why the move was made and why it was such a success.
“I felt like we needed to shake some things up. Obviously, the direction in which we were going over the last three games prior to last night was not working. Not just the fact that we didn’t win, we didn’t play well. For me, it’s about the performance.
When you think about the Notre Dame game, both of those guys got technical fouls for some things that were not acceptable in our program. So I knew we were going to have a different lineup, I didn’t know exactly what we were going to do. But I made the decision that those two guys would be coming off the bench for that particular game.
To their credit, they really responded. They didn’t know until 10 minutes before the game, when we do the lineups. That’s when I finally made the decision of what we were going to do and those guys really responded well.”
Wednesday night also did a lot to snap Pitt out of a run in which Capel knew his team was not playing up to their standard and what’s been their identity this season.
“After we beat Duke, it was like we got away from who we had been the majority of the year. We went and we lost a tough game at Wake Forest.
Then we lost to a really good North Carolina team and their size was just too much for us.
The Notre Dame game was a huge letdown. It was embarrassing, to be quite frank with you. But my thing was that it was a week and a half, two-week period for us where we just hopefully were out of character. Last night was consistent with who we’ve been the majority of the season just because we fought. We defended. We have to understand that’s what are our identity is. It doesn’t matter who we beat, we have to play that way, play with an edge and play with a sense of urgency.”
Capel also didn’t rule out a repeat of bringing Johnson and Horton off the bench when the Panthers take the floor next, Saturday, against current #14 Virginia.
“I don’t know. We’ll see what happens in practice. Those two guys started the second half. So we’ll see what happens in practice.
It doesn’t matter if you start. It matters who finishes and it matters what you do when you’re in the game.”