PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – ACC play opens Friday night for the Panthers, at North Carolina State at 7p on 93.7 The Fan. It’s a pair of teams picked in the bottom half of the ACC, but the Panthers coming off a blowout win at Northwestern and the Wolfpack are 7-1 on the season.
“This is why you come to the ACC,” said Pitt transfer Greg Elliott. “You come for matchups like this. I’m really for that challenge. My teammates are ready for the challenge. Everybody is ready for the challenge. We are going to have a fight on our hands, so let’s get to it.”
Wolfpack led by Terquavion Smith, who Jeff Capel thinks is a first-round NBA pick, second in the ACC in assists (5.4), sixth in steals (1.9) and eighth in scoring (16.1). Last year the sophomore averaged 18.3 ppg in conference games and led the ACC with 96 made threes and is a preseason First Team All-ACC selection.
“He’s very talented,” said Pitt Head Coach Jeff Capel. “He can shoot it. He can shoot from deep. He can play off the bounce. He’s a really good athlete. He’s really good with the ball, very, very talented player.”
Pitt held Smith to 2 of 12 shooting last year and a near season-low six points in a Panthers victory.
Hot Shots
Pitt is coming off shooting 64 percent from three (14 made) in a blowout win at Northwestern. Heading into the game, the Wildcats were second in the nation in field goal defense. Transfer Greg Elliott finished with a Panthers-high 18 points going three of four from behind the arc.
“They stayed confident in me,” Elliott said. “I stayed confident in myself. I continue to put the work in and kept shooting the basketball. I knew at a certain point, if you shoot 40 in your career, you are going to make shots if you keep shooting.”
“It felt good to see them go in. The shots before that game were all good looks, I was just missing. I stayed confident.”
Overall the Panthers shot 48% from the floor, a plus-11 in rebounds and most impressively sharing the basketball at a clip we haven’t seen this season, 22 assists on 26 made field goals. As Capel said after the game, the basketball had energy.
“Seeing the energy it gave everybody,” Elliott said. “When we watched the film, we focused on our bench. When we made the extra pass, the shot was made, but the way our bench celebrated. You could tell that everyone knew that shot was going to happen.”
“That helps us offensive rebounding as well. When you know your teammate is getting ready to shoot, you know your job is to do whatever your job is to do.”
Another crazy stat from the Pens fourth straight win, they beat Northwestern by 29 without John Hugley scoring. Although he still played into the good shooting.
“We get all of our open shots based off John,” Elliott said. “John rolling to the basket hard. Most of the time when John is posting up, they are fronting him and there is a guy right behind him. That’s how we get our skips to the opposite corner. That’s how Nike gets a few of his, how I get a few of mine.”
“We get most of our shots off of John because of the attention focused on him.”
Blake’s Best
He hadn’t played basketball in two years after transferring from Ole Miss to Iowa State. Blake Hinson made Pitt his third school this year and has career highs in points per game (16.8), rebounds (6.6), assists (1.75) and shooting 52% from the floor and 43% from three.
“I was hoping he would be a good player,” Capel said. “I thought he would be able to impact winning. I didn’t qualify it by he would average x amount of points or rebounds or shoot this percentage. I just thought he was a good player.”
“I believe in our ability to help guys get better as long as a guy works. I think we’ve shown we can help guys individually improve their games. I think we’ve helped him. He’s certainly helped us.”
“The main thing is that the kid has worked. He’s easy to coach because there is no BS. You can coach him hard. He accepts the truth. He wants the trust, he doesn’t shy away from it. He doesn’t make excuses. Guys like that are easy to coach.”