Pitt Seniors Reflect on What They Built
PITTSBURGH -- For 67 teams, the NCAA Tournament ends expectedly and inevitably in disappointment. No one walks off the floor after a season-ending loss capable of carrying perspective the Pitt Panthers are no different than anyone else not crowned the national champion.
But among the tears spilled in Pitt's locker room following their 84-73 loss in the second round to Xavier was a sense of pride. The sadness comes only from the fact that this specific group will not get to play together again.
“It’s bittersweet," departing senior Jamarius Burton said. "Obviously, we wished to continue fighting together but there’s a sense of happiness that we can carry on the brotherhood we have here beyond today.”
This Pitt team has every reason to leave the 2022-23 season proud of their efforts. Picked to finish 14th in the ACC during the preseason, the Panthers finished fifth. They won 24 games, the highest win total in a season for this program in nine years, earned an NCAA Tournament bid for the first time since 2016 and won two games in the Tournament for the first time since 2009.
When there was little hope Pitt could ever return to its former glory, players like Greg Elliot, Nelly Cummings, Nike Sibande and Burton took a leap of faith, transferring in and buying into what head coach Jeff Capel was selling with the firm belief that it could and would happen as long as they committed themselves to the cause.
"They're tough. They're workers. They're selfless. They're really, really good teammates, and they all wanted to be a part of something," Capel said. "They all had healthy egos, not ego problems. And they all had the ability -- these four guys had the ability to believe even when something maybe didn't look strong. They had the ability to believe in themselves, to believe in each other and to believe in what we could do together."
Finally at the end of the road, this group of seniors was able to look back on their work and take comfort in the fact that they brought Pitt back to national relevance and laid the groundwork for a brighter future. There is not just talent still in the program, but tangible evidence that the process works that didn't exist before.
"The future is definitely bright for Pitt basketball because we have Coach Capel at the helm," Elliot said. "He wasn't ACC Coach of the Year for nothing. He knows what he is doing. You know, like they just said, we're back on a national stage now. Everybody knows who Pitt is again. So if you want to come make noise, why wouldn't you come to Pitt?"
So even with this special season over, the leaders are looking towards the future. Their goal when they arrived at Pitt was to leave the program in a better place than they found it and that's exactly what they've done.
This team was more than good - it was fun and refreshing after dysfunction plagued the last seven years of this proud program's history. They played with confidence from the jump and sustained it all the way through their final minutes, as they mounted a last-ditch comeback from down 20 against Xavier. They fell short in that game, but it comes at the conclusion of a long season marked by far more success than failure.
It started with those four proven seniors - Burton, Sibande, Elliot and Cummings - who set the tone for all that has happened and will happen for this program in the future.
"I knew it was possible with the group that we had," Burton said. "This group is special. This group believed and this group was selfless from the start, and that was the biggest thing that allowed us to be able to sit here today."
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