Pittsburgh Basketball: 3 key storylines in Panthers matchup with The Citadel

1. Figuring out the backcourt rotations

After dealing with a complete lack of depth in the past few years, Pittsburgh landed five newcomers to at least solve that issue. Now, it’s worst than ever on paper in the backcourt due to the losses of Horton, Sibande, and currently, Burton. That leaves just Femi Odukale as the lone scholarship guard on the roster.

The problem for Pittsburgh is that with Oduakle as the projected “point guard” of the team, they literally don’t have an eligible shooting guard. And the only other ball-handler on the roster is  Onyebuchi Ezeakudo, a 6’0 senior walk-on that has played a total of 89 minutes in the first three seasons, all of which was in garbage time. He played 12 minutes in the Gannon exhibition, essentially whenever Odukale wasn’t on the court.

Now, Ezeakudo not only will be seeing meaningful minutes to start the season, but he may have to start at the point as well since Odukale is the only guy who naturally can play at shooting guard. Otherwise, there are a pair of wings available that could be used at the two-spot in freshman wing Nate Santos and sophomore William Jeffress, two guys who went from fighting for a rotation spot to now in line to potentially both starting.

Both guys are very young, with Jeffress actually being the youngest player in college basketball last year. The 6’7 wing has the versatility to play multiple positions and probably would make for a smoother transition to the two-spot on both ends. Yet Santos is arguably the best pure shooter on the team and gives Panthers much-needed spacing on the perimeter. However, neither guy are true ball-handlers so if teams force the ball out of Odukale’s hands, the offense for the Panthers could look really bad.

The hope is that The Citadel was one of the worst defensive teams in the country a year ago and if that hasn’t changed, Pittsburgh won’t struggle too much to score. But this is a very important storyline to watch and quite frankly, the rotations and projected minutes for the guards outside of Oduakle are completely up in the air right now.