Pitt Hoops Game Preview: Pitt vs. Canisius

Jeff Capel and the Pitt Panthers basketball team received some very good news last night, as they secured a verbal commitment from 2022 five-star guard Jalen Hood-Schifino. Hood-Schifino is currently ranked as the no. 17 player in the class of 2022 by Rivals, and picked Pitt over a smattering of other high-major and ACC programs including Florida, Illinois, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Clemson, and Virginia Tech.

To say that this is a major get for Capel would be an understatement. Hood-Schifino gives Pitt it’s most highly-ranked recruit in a decade, and despite being nearly three years away from enrolling at Pitt, his commitment should signal to other recruits that Pitt is a viable landing spot for elite talent.

Good news all around, on the recruiting trail. Aside from the commitment, Pitt (10-3) plays their final out of conference game today against the Canisius Golden Griffins (5-6). The game tips off at noon at the Petersen Events Center, and will be aired on the AT&T SportsNet with a radio broadcast on 93.7 The Fan.

Fast Facts

This will be Pitt’s fourth matchup with Canisius going back to at least 1949-50, with Pitt having lost two of the first three contests to the Golden Griffins. The most recent contest, however, came on Dec. 20, 1978.
The last Canisius coach who beat Pitt was Nick Macarchuk, and the Griffins have had six basketball coaches since he left the program in 1987. The most famous/successful of the bunch? John Beilein, who went on to coach the University of Michigan to multiple NCAA Tournament finals appearances before becoming the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers this year.
Beilein led the Golden Griffins to their most recent NCAA Tournament appearance, all the way back in 1997.
Canisius’ current head coach is Reggie Witherspoon, currently in his second career head-coaching gig after serving as the Buffalo head coach for 14 seasons. He has a 59-51 record at Canisius.
Witherspoon led Canisius to a very successful 2017-18 campaign, when they finished 15-3 in the MAAC to secure the regular season championship. They lost in the conference tournament, however, narrowly missing the NCAA tourney.
Canisius is currently ranked no. 224 in the KenPom rankings, while Pitt sits at no. 73.

Canisius Preview

There may not be much that we can glean about how Canisius will match-up with Pitt from their 5-6 start, since they have yet to play a high-major program-this season. Further, they have yet to even play a team ranked higher than no. 114 in the KenPom college basketball rankings.

Interestingly, the Golden Griffins beat their two most highly-ranked teams, taking down 2018 NCAA tournament darling UC-Irvine (no. 116) by a score of 94-64, and St. Bonaventure (no. 124) by a score of 61-57). They have also lost some bad games, losing to Siena (no. 186) by one point; Albany (no. 230) by 26; Brown (no. 234) by seven; and Florida Atlantic (no. 181) by three.

Being ranked no. 224 themselves, this basically amounts to playing the way we might expect them to play against teams in their ballpark. Nevertheless, they do have some weapons, starting with senior guard Malik Johnson. Johnson was third-team All-MAAC last season, and was a preseason pick for second-team All-MAAC this year.

He’s started the year off with a bang, too, posting 13.7 points, 5.5 assists, 5.2 rebounds, and 2.7 steals per game in the early going while playing a whopping 37.6 minutes per game and averaging 12.0 shots per contest. The only other player on the Golden Griffins to eclipse 30 minutes per game is sophomore Jordan Henderson, averaging 8.1 points per game while serving as the team’s most reliable three-point shooter (0.333 percentage, 4.1 attempts per game). Junior Scott Hitchon is shooting 0.450 from beyond the arc, but on just 2.9 attempts per game.

This is all to say that Canisius, like Pitt, struggles from beyond the arc. Their 0.314 team three-point field goal percentage ranks no. 255 in the country, which I regret to inform you is still 92 spots higher than Pitt’s rank.

Canisius is also a pretty small team, with just one true big man in the form of freshman Jacco Fritz, standing at 6-foot-10. He is averaging 7.1 points and 4.6 rebounds per game thus far. Canisius utilizes a lot of gang rebounding as a smaller team, a tendency that shows as the Golden Griffins have six players that are averaging 3.0 or more rebounds per game.

Pitt’s Keys to the Game

So what does Pitt need to do to beat Northern Illinois tonight? Here are the Keys to the game.

Force Canisius to take shots from the perimeter.

In their six losses this season, Canisius is shooting 33 of 119 (0.277) from three-point land, good for an average of 19.8 attempts per loss. In four of their wins, omitting the win over UC-Irvine, Canisius is 18 of 64 (0.281) from three, which makes for 16 attempts per game. So they’re taking a few more three-pointers per game in losses, but shooting poorly in the wins, too.

Why did I omit the UC-Irvine game? Because they shot an other-worldly 15 of 27 from deep that game, which is something that they haven’t been able to even come close to replicating in any other game this season. Odds are, if you make them shoot a ton of threes, they are going to come away with a lot of empty possessions.

After the success that Pitt had against Northern Illinois in the zone defense, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them use some zone tonight against Canisius as well, with an aim of limiting the Golden Griffins’ ability to get the ball inside and forcing them to settle for deep looks. Even if those looks are moderately open for Canisius, it’s a pretty good bet that they’ll miss a whole lot of them.

Continue to protect the basketball.

Pitt beat Binghamton by 26 points on Dec. 20, marking its largest victory of the season. Key to that victory? Pitt forced Binghamton to commit 27 turnovers, while turning the ball over just 11 times themselves.

They also turned the ball over just seven times against Northern Illinois, 12 times against Louisville, and 13 times against Rutgers. They have more assists than turnovers in three of those games (Binghamton, Rutgers, Northern Illinois), all of which were wins. The loss can be excused as a mostly competitive contest on the road against the no. 1 team in the country.

The point of this is to say that Pitt wins games when they protect the rock. We’ve seen how they struggle when they’re turning it over (see: loss to West Virginia at home), and it’s ugly. But the Binghamton game flashed the best that this Pitt team can be, with Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens combining for 11 assists and just four turnovers, while leading the offense to its best offensive output of the season.

If they can limit the turnovers and spread the ball around again today, they should win handily.

Ryan Murphy needs to have a big day.

This isn’t so much a key to victory today as it is a key to Pitt’s success in the ACC portion of their schedule. After a brutal eight-game stretch that saw Murphy hit just 21.7 percent of his three-point attempts, Murphy looked more confident from behind the arc against Binghamton, sinking three of seven attempts.

There’s no sugarcoating it: Murphy is Pitt’s most important spot-up shooter moving forward. McGowens is pretty skilled as well, but he can provide more value driving the basketball and either finishing in the lane/drawing fouls, or kicking to the wing for open looks. Same goes for Johnson.

As Pitt enters ACC play in January, on most nights, they will need to have the version of Murphy that showed up against Florida State, Nicholls State, and Binghamton to regularly compete against the top half of ACC teams.

Look for Murphy to try to get into a rhythm today with an eye toward getting hot just as we hit the most important stretch of Pitt’s schedule, which begins on Saturday, Jan. 4 against Wake Forest at the Petersen Events Center.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back in for more content as the season progresses!