Those players returning to Pitt’s basketball team for the 2024-25 season were not surprised that Bub Carrington left for the NBA after one season. Especially when it became almost immediately apparent that Carrington was destined to be a first-round choice.
No one panicked, either, even as Carrington left while Blake Hinson also was headed toward a professional career. The team’s two leading scorers, gone.
You would think coach Jeff Capel might want to sit down with guards Ishmael Leggett and Jaland Lowe and make sure they knew what awaited them as players on the court and leaders off the court.
That scenario was tossed at Lowe on Saturday afternoon after Pitt held an open practice at Petersen Events Center for Alliance 412 members, other boosters and reporters.
Lowe said no words from Pitt’s seven-year head coach were necessary. He knew. They knew.
And that says a lot about the culture Capel has built the past two seasons.
“He kind of just said, ‘You all know what to do. I trust you all. Now, go handle it,’ ” said Lowe, a sophomore who will join Leggett, Zack Austin, the Diaz Graham twins (Guillermo and Jorge) and two veteran transfers in helping carry the mantle of leadership.
“Not much has to be said to me and Ish. We’re two pretty smart guys,” Lowe said. “We understand what’s going on. Knowing that those guys left, we knew we had to pick it up more. We kind of figured it out.”
Lowe, who averaged 9.6 points per game as a freshman, increased his scoring pace last season when it mattered most. He scored a total of 28 points in the final two games, a victory and defeat against Wake Forest and North Carolina in the ACC Tournament.
Lowe was not totally healthy through most of the season, but it didn’t affect his game significantly, especially after he went home for the holidays.
Lowe said a visit with the family — and, especially, his father, Jamailah — was just as effective in regaining total health as any rehab or treatment.
“It took me 75% of the season to feel pretty good,” he said. “I was good enough coming back from Christmas break. All I needed (was) to see my family real quick, my dad, get my dad on me real quick, and, somehow, my body started feeling better.”
Pitt’s preseason practices are ending soon, and it’s time to tangle with another team. An exhibition that won’t count in Pitt’s won-loss record is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday at Petersen Events Center against Point Park. The season starts Nov. 4 at home against Radford before a challenging nonconference schedule that includes West Virginia, VMI, LSU, either UCF or Wisconsin in the Greenbrier Tip-Off, Ohio State and Mississippi State. The first ACC game is Dec. 7 at Virginia Tech.
Voters in the ACC preseason poll picked Pitt to finish seventh in the 18-team conference. Not bad, but not great and not a “great feeling,” Lowe said.
“But like coach said, ‘We can feel one way about it, but we’re going to do something about that.’ We’re going to show the country.”
Truth be told, Lowe is too savvy and focused on his duties as a point guard to worry much about it.
“Grateful for that,” he said. “It’s one of the best (standings in the ACC preseason poll) it’s been.”
There are five new scholarship players on the team, and they arrived on campus from different areas of the U.S. and even overseas: freshmen Brandin Cummings (Lincoln Park), Amdy Ndiaye (Senegal) and Amsal Delalic (Bosnia & Herzegovina) and transfers Damian Dunn (Houston) and Cam Corhen (Florida State).
Second-year forward Zack Austin, himself a transfer last year from High Point, was asked how Pitt’s culture remains intact with new and different personalities joining the team every year.
”We hang out all the time,” he said. “I don’t even know regular students here. It’s really a brotherhood.”
That’s one reason it hasn’t been difficult for Lowe to become a leader before the start of his second season at the age of 20.
“I don’t think it’s too hard because of the guys coach has put around us,” he said.
When someone asked him if the locker room has changed, he said, “I don’t think so.”
“It’s still hilarious. Everybody is smiling, jumping around, dancing in the locker room every day. It’s just a bunch of guys who love being around each other. It doesn’t make our jobs (off the court) too hard. We just have to worry about that basketball part, really. It’s just a bunch of kids hanging out, having fun.”