Ithiel Horton's tired of waiting.
He chuckled and exhaled loudly when I asked him exactly how excited he is to get back on the court, this time for real, in game situations with his Pitt teammates. Two words followed.
"Oh, man."
Say no more, Mr. Horton. We get it.
A 6-foot-3 sophomore guard, Horton sat on the sidelines after transferring from the University of Delaware, where he spent his freshman season putting up 13.2 points per game on 43.3/40.9/78.6 percent shooting splits while hitting four or more threes in a game on 10 separate occasions. Then, Horton saw the opportunity to transfer, to reach a broader audience and to play under a brighter spotlight. He took it, signing with Pitt, then sitting out the entire. freaking. year.
"Hell yeah. Helllllll yeahhhh," Horton responded when I asked him if the year off was tougher than expected during our phone interview. "I thought I was just going to coast through this year and just do whatever I wanted."
That didn't happen. At all. Horton went to work immediately, looking primarily to improve his strength and ball-handling skills. While Horton saw reps in practice — impressing everyone at every turn — it's not the same as the energy on gameday. The intensity can't be there. The stakes aren't raised. The Oakland Zoo isn't jammin'. Horton, thankful as he is for his year off to learn Jeff Capel's system and to slowly acclimate to the ACC, is ready for it all.
"I wanted to help my team the entire year," Horton said. "Just being on the sidelines and seeing little things, little areas of the game where I actually could've made an impact? It's really frustrating. Very frustrating."
On one level, Horton doesn't fully understand the purpose of the NCAA's transfer rules, adding to that frustration.
"This is what we identify ourselves with, obviously, and to have it taken away from us is like, why? Why are you punishing me for trying to make a decision to try to better my future?" Horton said. "You're making me feel bad about that by having me sit out a year."
But, in a mindset that became a common theme throughout our talk, Horton flipped that negativity on its head and turned it into a positive. He's always looking forward and up, never back. Rather than dwelling on the struggle of that year off, Horton sees it as a blessing.
"I would love to talk to all future transfers because the sit-out year is actually, it actually works to our advantage," Horton said. "We just don't realize it because, obviously, we want to be playing basketball. But it works to our advantage."
Yeah, how so?
"Obviously going into a new system, you get to learn the system," he fired back. "You get to see what the coach wants. As far as academics-wise, you get to focus on your academics, obviously. But I feel it really helps you mature into the person that you need to be, because this is like a different type of struggle that we're going through. It's unrecognizable. We've never gone through it. Some guys have sat 30 days in high school, but it's nothing compared to college. It really makes you mature and you really find out who you are and what you are away from basketball."
This all sounds great, and it's a good look for Horton, no doubt, but the bottom line is this: None of the hype matters if Horton doesn't produce on the court. None of it.
Capel, speaking with media back in late February at Petersen Events Center, sent Horton's stock rocketing into the mesosphere:
“I tell our guys that if you can guard him [Horton] in practice, I haven’t seen a better guy in this league that they will have to guard,” Capel was saying. “So if you can do a good job on him, then you have a chance to carry that over in the game."
That same day, Xavier Johnson doubled down on Capel's thoughts.
"Next season, I mean, he’s a scorer, so you don’t really have to create for him,” Johnson said. “He can create for himself.”
Ask anyone who watched Horton throughout the year, and the reply is nearly identical: Horton can play — and not just at the "finding regular minutes in the ACC" level. He can potentially become a star.
"It makes me feel really good," Horton was saying of all the early positive reviews. "I try not to dabble in the media or what anybody else says about me because those opinions can quickly change the next second. When I play a game or I lose a game, for somebody, those will quickly change. But for the time being, yeah, it's really good. It feels really good for the soul. I can't wait to get out there next year and show the Panther fans what we've been working on the entire summer and what I've been working on the entire transfer year. So it's very exciting. I cannot wait."
Looking at Horton's stats and game film from his freshman season at Delaware, it's clear what Capel wants him to do at Pitt: Score the basketball. Shoot it. Get buckets.
He's a long-range threat, draining 79 threes during his first year at the Division-I level, good for sixth in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA). Horton did that while also shooting the eighth-best percentage in the conference (40.9 percent), making it all that much juicier for a Pitt squad that finished last in the ACC in three-point percentage last year, converting on just 29.6 percent of their attempts.
Ask Horton to assess his skills, though, and he turns to something else first.
"Number one, I'm very tough-minded," Horton said. "I'm very resilient. Very determined. If we need a bucket or we need a stop, I'm that guy. I'm willing to do whatever it takes, all the little things."
But, yeah, the offensive upside isn't lost on him either.
"From an offensive standpoint, my strongest suit is definitely shooting," he continued. "But I can definitely handle the rock way better than I actually expected. I've been working on it all year, even in the summer. Defensively, I'm going to show as much heart as I can — matter of fact, that's a bad phrase. I'm going to show my entire heart on defense, and I'm going to bring a lot of energy to the arena."
With the transfer of Ryan Murphy and Trey McGowens, the team needs a three-point specialist, no doubt. But they also need more. They need points everywhere, any way they can get 'em. The Panthers finished 13th out of 15 teams at 65.2 points per game in 2019-20, barely edging Boston College's 14th-place mark of 64.6 points per contest. Virginia, a defense-first squad that allowed a league-low 52.4 points per game, came in at 15th at 57 points per game. Pitt's 40.4 percent overall field-goal percentage just beat out Boston College's 40.2 percent clip to avoid another last-place finish.
At 6-foot-3, 200 pounds, however, Horton has the physical makeup of a true ACC point guard. But Johnson has that spot locked, plus, the team needs to replace McGowens and add shooting. That makes Horton the clear pick for the two-guard, despite being a little undersized at the position. It's a tough situation, and it's one Horton recognizes.
"I really don't know [what I am exactly] to be honest. I don't know," Horton said. "I've been working on my handle a lot, but I'm not really like a pure point guard. I'm kind of like an in-between [guard] I guess. I can definitely play the two. I can play the one, and I can definitely play a little bit of the three. I don't know how much, because those guys get 6-7", 6-8" and over at that position. But I guess it's like a combo. I can handle the ball and shoot the ball. Whatever the team needs me to do at that moment, I'll do."
What the team needed last year was scoring. Simple. If Pitt scores the basketball efficiently last season, they finish above .500. That's a fact, as they lost eight games by eight points or less. Instead, the team floundered down the stretch, losing seven straight regular-season games before going 1-1 in the ACC Tournament in Greensboro, N.C., to finish 16-17 and 6-14 in ACC play. It was an improvement upon Capel's Year 1 — 14-19, 3-15 ACC — but there's meat on the bone.
And Horton's hungry.
"All I can say to you is next year, the culture will be different," Horton said. "Guys will be buying into one thing. We’re going to be buying into the system, and we’re going to see where it goes from there. Like I said, I have the utmost confidence in my team, coaching staff and the organization and the fans and everybody that’s with us for this journey."
Capel's made his vision for that journey clear from Day 1: He didn't come to Pitt to be "good" or "above average." He came to town to reinvent the program and to establish it as a top-tier, no-joke destination for the best college basketball players on the planet. Horton understands what Capel wants from his guys, and he says that determination — that grit and that confidence — played the biggest factor in his decision to suit up in the blue and gold in the first place.
"That was probably, I want to say, percentage-wise, probably 70 or 80 percent [of the reason I came to Pitt]," Horton said. "Because I love to be a part of something that's genuine and authentic and on the rise. It's easy to go to a top-notch program like [University of Kentucky head coach John Calipari] or [Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski], for instance, but to build something with somebody that's — obviously Coach Capel is a very notable coach — but to build something with Coach Cape[l], who's genuine, and to have the type of players that we have around us, it definitely affected my decision a great deal."
Push Horton a little farther down that path, and he lights up. He's dribbling a basketball outside at his house on the other side of the line, and I can hear the bounces getting a little faster, a little more forceful. Because when it comes to Coach Capel, Horton's found somebody who meshes completely with his own goals and his own vision for his future.
Just listen:
"I'd say, well, number one I'll say somebody needs to turn back the clock on him because every time, he looks like he wants to play with us out there," Horton began. "But obviously his old age lets him know that. On a more serious note, he just brings the passion and energy and the drive and focus that a great team needs. Every day. Every day. All we have to do is just be receptive and listen to it and put in the work every day, no matter the outcome. No matter if it's a bad day or not, just come in, show up, show the drive and tenacity and we'll be fine. We'll be fine. That's exactly why I love him. I love him to death. He brings all that to this program, a program who hasn't really shown anything in the last four, five years. He still brings it because there's hope and light in this program."
Add in the fact that Johnson's returning for his junior year, Au'Diese Toney's doing the same, sophomore Justin Champagnie appears to be on his own path to stardom and the team is adding Capel's deepest recruiting class to date, led by four-star, 6-foot-10 power forward/center John Hugley, and Horton's excitement reaches a new level.
"Oh, man, it's really exciting," he said. "Especially watching those guys last year and what they did and how they produced and the toughness that they played with. I just cannot wait to join them. There's just so much room for growth for this team and myself as well. And I just can't wait to start. I can't wait to start, man."
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