Pitt's 3 guards hold key to team's late-season surge

Basketball is a game of ball control. Maintaining and maximizing possessions are critical to a team’s success, and guards often control the offense’s flow.

No wonder that nine of the past 10 players who were named Most Outstanding Player in the Final Four are guards. Miami rode guards Jordan Miller, Nigel Pack and Isaiah Wong all the way to the 2023 Final Four. Strong backcourts helped Houston and Xavier reach the Sweet 16 that season, the Musketeers at Pitt’s expense.

Villanova never would have won the 2018 national championship if guard Donte DiVincenzo didn’t come off the bench to score 31 points against Michigan in the title game.

Pitt (20-10, 11-8 ACC) still has plenty of work to do just to reach the NCAA Tournament, but a 10-3 record since the road upset of Duke on Jan. 20 has raised hope among the fan base. In his projections released Thursday, Fox Sports bracket analyst Mike DeCourcy lists Pitt among his “first four out.”

And if Pitt gets there, its three-man guard play will receive a large portion of the credit.

Guard Ishmael Leggett, a junior who transferred from Rhode Island, comes off the bench, but he still leads the team in rebounds per game (5.4) and is third in minutes played (28.4). Leggett also is averaging 12.5 points in the past 13 games.

Meanwhile, coach Jeff Capel is proving it’s still possible to build a winning team by using the old-school method of recruiting high school players. Freshman guards Bub Carrington and Jaland Lowe, who were mere 12th-graders at this time a year ago, are two of the four most valuable pieces in Pitt’s success.

Since Lowe became a starter 16 games ago, he is averaging 34 minutes per game — more than Blake Hinson’s average for the season. In those 13 games, he is averaging 12.7 points and 4.5 assists. In the same time frame, Carrington is averaging 13.2 points and 3.5 assists.

Capel has placed a large load on his freshmen’s shoulders, but that’s what he expected to do when he examined his roster before the season.

“We knew coming into this season, they were going to have to be good,” Capel said.

But Lowe didn’t make his first start until Jan. 6, and Carrington hit obstructions to his progress in two losses when he was scoreless in a home game with Syracuse and managed only four points at Miami. Overall in those games, Carrington was 2 for 21 from the field, 0 for 12 from beyond the 3-point arc.

“I knew that there were going to be growing pains because it’s very difficult for a freshman, especially when you have the ball in your hands,” said Capel, a four-year starter at Duke in his playing days. “And both of those guys were going to have the ball in their hands.

“We took some knocks. We took some lumps. I think the experience they got through trial and error have really, really helped them.”

But Capel said Lowe and Carrington are more than what can be seen on game nights. It’s what they do when no one’s watching that makes a difference, the coach said.

“They work. They watch a lot of tape on their own, stuff we send to them,” he said. “They are students of the game. They are hungry to learn. I knew that when we recruited them, but just to see how fast they’ve gotten better has been pretty cool to watch.

“Maybe they’ve done it faster than even I anticipated.”