We are counting down the days to the start of the college basketball season.
If you’re reading this on the day is was published, we have 47 days to the official start of College Basketball, and 36 days until we can see the team in action against K-State (presuming it’s televised).
The Full Non-Conference Schedule:
- October 23rd — at Kansas State (exhibition)
- October 29th — at UNLV (exhibition)
- November 3rd — vs Cleveland State
- November 6th — vs Saint Louis (in St. Louis)
- November 9th — vs SIU-Edwardsville
- November 15th — vs Marquette (in Chicago)
- November 18th — vs Alcorn State
- November 20th — vs Le Moyne
- November 24th — vs Evansville
- November 27th — vs Arkansas Pine Bluff
- December 1st — vs Pittsburgh (ACC-SEC Challenge)
- December 6th — vs Kansas (in Kansas City)
- December 12th — vs Nebraska (in Kansas City)
- December 18th — at Indiana
- December 20th — vs Illinois (in St. Louis)
- December 22nd — vs Chicago State
After the last few years of a poor lineup of Q4 games in the non-conference schedule, Missouri pulled a 180 and have schedule as well as anyone in the country. On top of playing Illinois and Kansas as previously scheduled, the Tigers are playing neutral court matchups against SLU, Marquette, Nebraska, and a road game at Indiana. There’s no question Dennis Gates stepped it up.
Let’s Meet: the Pitt Panthers
If you were going to have a quiz on which school is the oldest for the Missouri Non-Conference schedule, the answer to that question would be the University of Pittsburgh. Chartered in 1787, the school was actually in place prior to the founding of the country, but those details are a bit sketchier.
I’ve always thought Pittsburgh was an underrated city, and the school is at the heart of the city. With Pitt, Saint Louis, and Marquette on the schedule, Missouri is doing its part in revitalizing mid-sized midwestern cities with universities in the heart of them. The school, Western Pennsylvania University was destroyed in the great fire of 1845, which burned down about 20 square blocks of Pittsburgh, and then a few years later its new building burned down as well. It eventually landed on Observatory Hill by 1889, and then it formed its first athletics squad, a — you guessed it — football team!
Pitt is also where Jonas Salk developed the Polio vaccine, and where everyone’s new favorite medical drama takes place.
The men’s basketball program played its first season in 1905, and won two national championships in 1928 and 1930, before there was a tournament. In 1982 they joined the Big East, where they played until 2013 when the football playing schools of the Big East separated as many joined the ACC. Pitt joined Syracuse, Louisville, and Notre Dame in the ACC. Cincinnati went to the Big 12, Rutgers spent a season in the AAC with South Florida before leaving for the Big 10.
From 2001 to 2011, Pitt was one of the 12-15 best basketball programs in the country. The Big East was thriving as a basketball league, and the Panthers went to 4 Sweet 16s, an Elite 8, but landed 8 protected seeds in the tournament in 10 seasons, without missing a single tournament. Ben Howland started it, and then Jamie Dixon took it to another level.
The move to the ACC started well enough, but after the program slipped to make three tournaments in Jamie Dixon’s last 5 seasons, when he and the program agreed to part ways. Dixon moved to TCU, and Pitt hired Kevin Stallings which might’ve been the worst thing they could have done. Pitt made the 2016 NCAA Tournament as a 10 seed in Dixon’s last season, and they’ve been back only once since, in 2023 under Jeff Capel.
Head Coach | Jeff Capel | 9th Season 127-127
Not all of Pitt’s ills are on the shoulders of Jeff Capel, but I’m not sure he’s made them any better either.
As I mentioned above the slide to oblivion started when Dixon failed to keep things as strong as they were in the early 2000s. The move to the ACC was met with some challenges, and the program wasn’t healthy when Stallings took over. But Stallings was a disaster. In his first season they had their first losing season since Ben Howland’s first season in 2000, and the programs worst loss since 1906. Then the next year things got worse as they failed to win a single conference game.
So Capel took over a mess, and the challenges of trying to rebuild a program at a time when everything in the sport is changing have proven more than he seems capable of. Now he’s trying to build a team without money to lure talent, and the school was hesitant to pay his full buyout. So things are in limbo with Capel playing out the string.
He looked like he was on the verge of being fired in 2022, but in 2023 he steered the team back to the NCAA Tournament with a 24-12 record. Pitt took advantage of the ACC being incredibly down, five ACC teams made the tournament that season and one of them was a surprise auto-bid with NC State. But the appearance led administrators to think things were on the upswing, and he was given an extension on his contract.
The next season Pitt missed the NCAA Tournament despite good analytics, but they only had one good win on their resume. Then things got worse the year after, and in 2026 they slipped again. Things aren’t as bad as when Kevin Stallings was there, but with his buyout north of $10 million, Pitt decided to hold for at least another year.
Series History | Mizzou leads 1-0
Despite these two teams having relatively storied histories, they’ve only met once. And it’s within very recent memory.
A case could be made that Missouri winning on Pittsburgh’s home floor in 2023 might have caused them to miss the NCAA Tournament. Mizzou was a different team in late November of that season than what the result was. But they still finished 145th in Kenpom.com, and a home loss to a team like that is a Q3 loss.
If you need a reminder of how it went, here’s Study Hall. Sean East was really good.
What about the team now?
There are 16 players on the Pitt online roster, and only one played any minutes for the team last season. That player is Macari Moore, who saw action in 22 games for about 6 minutes a game.
Everyone else either graduated or entered the transfer portal. So Pitt had to go shopping and what they were able to pull out of the portal is enough to be competitive.
In the back court Naithan George is the likely starter at point guard after averaging double figures for Syracuse and Georgia Tech the last two seasons. A’lahn Sumler transfers in from Charleston Southern and was the teams leading scorer a season ago at 18.9 ppg. Jonathan Powell is on his third school in three seasons, he started at West Virginia where his freshman season was a good one. He played 30 minutes a game and started 23 games, scoring 8.3 points. He transferred to North Carolina and saw his production halved.
In the front court Capel landed Baye Ndongo, a double digit scorer at forward each of the last three years at Georgia Tech. Mercer transfer big man Armani Mighty scored 13 points and grabbed 10 rebounds a night. Dominique Diomande was lightly used at BYU last season, but is an athletic swing forward with potential.
The wild card here is Jalil Bethea, a former 5-star recruit and McDonald’s All American who is trying to resurrect his dying career. Bethea had a solid season as a freshman, but struggled with injuries last year at Alabama. He’s a capable talent but has yet to really put everything together.
The Panthers are ranked 77th in the early BartTorvik.com projections. It’s clear the administration is providing Capel enough money to not be terrible, but far from enough to really compete at the highest levels of the ACC. What will be interesting to watch is if Capel can exceed expectations and get into the NCAA Tournament conversation.
