After troubled season, Ithiel Horton decides to transfer from Pitt

Pitt basketball lost a starting guard and its most reliable 3-point shooter Wednesday when Ithiel Horton entered the NCAA transfer portal.

Horton is the fifth Pitt player to announce plans to leave the program since the end of the season but the first starter. His departure is more striking than the previous four, largely because Pitt supported him even while he was suspended twice and facing four criminal charges after punching a Pittsburgh policeman in November.

The charges were dismissed Dec. 30 but refiled a week later. Eventually, most of the charges were dropped, and Horton returned to the team for the final 12 games, starting the last eight.

After charges were refiled, coach Jeff Capel expressed “1,000%” support and “love” for Horton, who ended up missing 18 games this season.

“He’s a great, great kid,” Capel said at the time. “It’s really, really messed up what’s happening and what he’s having to go through again. He loves to be part of a team, and that has been taken from him. Unfortunately, it’s BS, I think. He’s someone we care about that we love and we know the kind of young man that he is.”

Horton, who joined the team in 2019 as a transfer from Delaware, appeared in 35 career games at Pitt, with 26 starts, over the past two seasons. He averaged 9.2 points (9.8 in 2022) while shooting 37.4% from beyond the 3-point arc. Horton also led the team this season with a 37.9% success rate on 3-pointers.

Despite his problems, Horton became a valuable member of the team soon after his return, adding a long-range shooting dimension that had been missing.

He scored in double digits six times, including a four-game span that started with a 25-point effort Feb. 9 in a victory at Florida State. He hit seven 3-pointers in that game.

But Horton’s scoring and shooting percentage fell to six points per game and 28.2% over the final four games of the season — all losses.

He plans to graduate from Pitt in May, which would make him immediately eligible for his next school. He has two years of eligibility remaining. He has scored 759 points, with 147 3-pointers, in 68 career games.

The loss of Horton follows similar announcements by reserve players Noah Collier, Chris Payton, Onyebuchi Ezeakudo and Dan Oladapo. Mouhamadou Gueye, who would have been welcome to return after averaging 9.8 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.1 blocks, exhausted his eligibility this year in his only season at Pitt.

Only five scholarship players who were on the roster at the beginning of the 2020-21 season are still with the team. Armed with six open scholarships at the moment, Capel and his staff have been on the road and in the transfer portal recruiting since the end of the season. Last year, he found two starters — transfers Jamarius Burton and Gueye — in the portal while missing on Oladapo, who was not part of Capel’s rotation in the second half of the season.

Among those returning are the team’s leading scorers, center John Hugley and guard Jamarius Burton. Also expected back is guard Nike Sibande, who missed the entire season with a knee injury.