Pitt Hoops Game Preview: Pitt vs. Monmouth

Pitt (2-2) has had a very hot-and-cold start to the 2019-20 basketball season, starting with a big win against Florida State followed by two tough losses at home to Nicholls State and West Virginia. Monmouth (1-3) enters Monday night’s contest on a three-game losing streak, including their most recent 112-57 loss to no. 4 Kansas on Friday, Nov. 15.

Fast Facts

• Pitt and Monmouth have never played against one another in a regular season college basketball game. Tonight’s matchup will be their first.
• To my eye, Monmouth has not beaten an ACC opponent on the road going back at least 30 years. They beat Miami during the 1987-88 campaign, but Miami was an independent at the time. Monmouth took down no. 17 Notre Dame 70-68 at home in Nov. 2015, however, for an impressive ACC win.
• The Hawks had a really impressive run in 2015-16 in addition to the Notre Dame win, as they beat USC (83-73) at a neutral site, as well as both Georgetown (83-68) and UCLA (84-81) on the road. The Hawks finished that season with an impressive 28-8 record.
• Pitt enters tonight’s game on a two-game losing streak at the Petersen Events Center for the first time ever.
• Monmouth Head Coach King Rice is in his ninth season with the Hawks, and has amassed a 132-136 record as head coach. The Hawks are just 26-44 since the start of 2017-18.
• Impressively, however, is the fact that Rice led the Hawks to the MAAC Championship game last season after the Hawks jumped out to 12 consecutive losses to start the year. Following their 0-12 start, Monmouth went 14-8 on their way to the championship contest. They lost the game, and thereby just narrowly missed an automatic NCAA tournament berth.
• Monmouth is currently ranked no. 252 in the KenPom rankings, while Pitt has dropped to no. 83 in the ranking following their loss to West Virginia.

Monmouth Preview

Monmouth comes into the 2019-20 season with much of its roster intact from the previous season. They return their top two scorers from a year ago in junior guards Ray Salnave and Deion Hammond, who put up 11.9 points and 11.8 points per game, respectively. Salnave also added 4.0 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game last season. Through four games this season, Salnave (14.0 ppg) and Hammond (13.3 ppg) are Monmouth’s leading scorers once again, with Salnave also adding 3.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game.

Perhaps most impressively, Salnave is putting up his excellent numbers while playing just 21 minutes per game and without having started a single game yet this year. Part of his ability to score big points in fewer minutes is his efficiency at the free throw line. He has taken 18 free throws in just 85 minutes of action this season, making 16 of his tries.

The only significant contributors that the Hawks lose from last season to this season are center Diago Quinn, the Hawks’ leading rebounder and third-leading scorer a year ago, and guard Nick Rutherford, who transferred to St. John’s before this season. Those two departures represent 22.4 percent of Monmouth’s scoring from a year ago.

With so many returning players and just two key departures, Rice returns a lot of experience to a Monmouth team which should be better this season than it was last season. And so far, he has been spreading the minutes around to share, as 12 players have spots in the Hawks’ rotation. Eleven of those players have played in each of the team’s four games this year, and all but one of the 12 are averaging more than 10 minutes per game.

Let me repeat that: Monmouth has 11 players that are averaging at least 10 minutes per game this season. Nine of those players were on last year’s team. That is incredible depth to have on a team, and allows them to run lineups out there that are well-rested and trusted to produce by their head coach. Whether that makes a difference against Pitt is another question, but it will surely benefit them as the season wears on.

Pitt Preview

Pitt enters this game off of a tough home loss to West Virginia, but if there’s any good news coming into tonight, it’s that there are plenty of correctable errors from their most recent home defeat. As I have said many times (and I’ll keep banging this drum), the offensive problems start and must end with Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens. The pair of sophomore guards turned the ball over nine times in the loss to West Virginia on Friday. The rest of the team? Just one turnover.

It doesn’t get much more clear than that. They need to be better at protecting the basketball, period. And while McGowens is actually shooting the ball fairly well in the early-going, Johnson’s struggles are running pretty deep, as he’s posted just a .314 field goal percentage through four games, and has shown very little of the success driving the basketball that made him a freshman phenom one year ago. Au’Diese Toney (.227), Justin Champagnie (.324), and Gerald Drumgoole (0.125) have also really struggled shooting the basketball this season, leaving McGowens, Ryan Murphy, and Terrell Brown as the only consistent offensive options for Pitt early in the season.

Of course, Brown saw just 11 minutes of game action against the Mountaineers on Friday, and it’s not clear where he stands in Jeff Capel’s rotation at the moment. Capel has always insisted that players must earn their minutes, and outside of Johnson and McGowens, who are both unlikely to see a significant drop in minutes at any point, that appears to mostly be the case.

For instance, on Friday, in addition to Brown, Eric Hamilton also saw just 14 minutes, while Abdoul Karim Coulibaly got his first major action of the season (19 minutes), and even Samson George got in on the action for the first time this year (8 minutes).

However, it was not a pretty sight. Pitt’s four true interior defenders scooped up eight total rebounds in 52 total minutes, while they allowed 19 offensive rebounds for the Mountaineers, including eight to true freshman Oscar Tshiebwe.

By my count, Coulibaly was alone on the floor for a staggering seven of West Virginia’s offensive boards; Brown was alone on the floor for four; and Hamilton was alone on the floor for five. Meanwhile, when Pitt had multiple bigs on the floor, they allowed just two offensive boards, by my count. This suggests that Capel ought to consider using multiple bigs against teams with more dominant frontcourt offenses.

Additionally, with so many big men in the mix, we got a decent look at how they might contribute to the team this season. Overall, I think Brown was still the best, as he contributed two rebounds, two points, and one block in his 11 minutes.

Coulibaly played the most minutes, but he was largely dominated on the defensive end, though he showed some nice offensive touch on a couple of lay-ins. He finished with four points and one rebound in his 19 minutes.

Hamilton was also largely stat-less during his 14 minutes, registering just two points and one rebound. Samson, interestingly, produced best on the boards for Pitt, registering four rebounds in eight minutes. Offensively, I can’t see him contributing much to the team, but I can see a scenario where he “earned his minutes” with a decent defensive performance on Friday.

Game Preview

Last season, teams shot an incredible 956 three-pointers against Monmouth, hitting 35.8 percent of them. In fact, teams took more three-pointers than two-point shots against Monmouth in 2018-19. This season has not been quite as crazy in that regard for the Hawks, but they have still allowed opponents to score on 41.7 percent of 84 three-point attempts through four games.

Murphy should have the ball early and often in this game, as three-point defense is a clear weakness of the Hawks. After shooting just two three-pointers against West Virginia, who had clearly prepared to defend Murphy, Pitt will need to work to get him open and the ball in his hands beyond the arc against Monmouth.

Additionally, the Hawks have turned the ball over 66 times through four games, good for nearly 17 per game. That’s around 2.5 more turnovers per game than Pitt has committed. In fact, Monmouth has had only one game so far with fewer than 15 turnovers. So in addition to protecting the ball themselves, Pitt will focus on forcing turnovers and getting into their transition offense.

Next, Pitt needs to contain Salnave and Hammond, and avoid sending Salnave to the free throw line. This will be no short task, and if Salnave is able to draw fouls while he’s on the floor, we could see one or more of Pitt’s guards in foul trouble.

We saw how Pitt’s offense changed with Johnson on the bench for much of the second half versus Nicholls State due to early foul trouble. It’s a decent bet that Monmouth will try to attack part of Pitt’s sophomore guard duo to once again reduce the impact that Johnson or McGowens (or both) can have on the game. Especially with a player like Salnave who is great at drawing fouls, Johnson and McGowens will need to be careful in guarding him.

Finally, I feel confident in saying that I have no idea how Capel will use his rotation tonight. After predicting that Coulibaly probably would not see the floor against West Virginia, he goes out and puts up 19 minutes. Brown played around 30 minutes in the previous two games, and he played just 11 minutes. George and Onyebuchi Ezeakudo saw the floor for the first time this year.

We will find out who has been earning their minutes for the Panthers tonight at 7 p.m. when Pitt and Monmouth tip-off at the Petersen Events Center. The game will be televised on the ACC Network, with a radio broadcast on 93.7 The Fan.

Check back in with Dream Backfield after the game for some post-game analysis of tonight’s game!