University of Pittsburgh Athletics
Pitt Men's Basketball Brings a Clean Slate to ACC Tipoff
10/7/2026 5:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball
CHARLOTTE — The gym was quiet at 6 a.m., and head coach Jeff Capel was not saying a word.
It was a Saturday this summer, the morning after what he considered his new team's best workout yet and the first time the group had run conditioning together.
The players were fine. Capel wanted more. He kept that to himself, stood off to the side and just watched.
Monday's workout was bad. Tuesday's was only okay. When the team finished a meeting with Pitt's ticket office that afternoon, Capel asked the players how they felt the session had gone.
A few of them said okay. He told them the truth.
"I thought it was [bad]. I thought it was horrible," Capel recalled telling them. "You didn't come with a bad attitude. You just didn't have the right attitude. That's a losing mentality. You came just to get through the workout. It's 6 a.m. You don't want to be there. I get all of that, but until we get to a point where we're showing up every day to beat the workout, to beat the practice, to beat whatever, that's where we have to get."
Those are what he calls "losing habits."
They follow talented players from one disappointing season to the next, and this roster has plenty of those players.
Almost everyone in the locker room either has not won or has been on a winning team without being a major piece of it. Capel told them so plainly. The first step in changing, he said, is admitting you need to.
The next day they came back and were really good. It was the first time he saw it, the first real sign that this group could become something special.
"Part of changing is identifying that you need to change, that we have to change," Capel said. "We've tried to hold them accountable with that, and we're much further along now than when we first got together."
That mentality is what Nait George and Baye Ndongo carried with them to Charlotte for ACC Tipoff.
Neither is a stranger to the league's preseason spotlight, both have been to Tipoff with Georgia Tech. This was their first time speaking on behalf of Pitt.
The honor was not lost on either of them. George said being chosen showed the trust his teammates and coaches have in him.
"It means a lot," George said. "This goes to show that [they] trust me as a leader, and I'm willing to accept my role."
Ndongo said it meant a lot to him too, pointing to how much the staff has helped him with more than basketball. Then he explained what makes this group different. He has spent his college career on teams that did not win enough, and he has not been to the NCAA Tournament.
The 2026-27 roster is full of talent. It's not like it's a group full of players who need to adjust to the power conference level either.
"We're a bunch of guys who just haven't won in college yet, and haven't won as a team," Ndongo said. "The way we practice and the way the coaches are holding us, we can really do something big this year as a team."
That is what makes the goal so simple. Everyone in the room has been in college long enough to know what is expected and long enough to be tired of coming up short.
Ndongo did not dress it up.
"We gotta win," he said. "I'm hoping we're going to win. I'm hoping we make the tournament, because I haven't gone to the tournament. So we gotta win."
George's version sounds the same. The approach starts in practice and film, he said, and it carries over into games, with everything the Panthers do aimed at one outcome.
"Just win," George said. "We just want to win the game. When it says 0:00 on the buzzer, we want to be on top."
There are a lot of questions about a group that has 13 new faces on it, especially in a very strong ACC. No one knows what to think about the Panthers.
The league might have some ideas, but George is clear on what they want to be known for.
"They can view us as whatever they want to view us," George said, "but how we want to portray ourselves is physical, gritty, tough."
That identity starts with the way Capel and his staff built the roster. After a complete overhaul, they began in two places.
Capel pointed to George first. The point guard has been a good one in the ACC for three years and led the league in assists two years ago. Ndongo is one of the better interior players in the league, and Capel said his former coach told him to pencil in 12 points and eight rebounds a night.
Capel has asked both for more.
"It was really important to get a really good point guard and a really good interior player, and then build everything around that," Capel said. "And the two guys that we brought here with us represent that. There's more in them that they can give, and I'm grateful for the attitude that they have had, their work ethic and things like that."
Around them, the staff added players who know the league. Jonathan Powell, Jalil Bethea and Armani Mighty all have ACC experience, and Capel said he plans to lean on that this season.
They also share a hunger to prove they can win.
For now, everything looks good. The team has spent the summer learning each other's strengths and weaknesses, and the work has paid off in ways Capel can see. But the real test has not arrived yet, and he knows it.
"Right now, everyone's in the hope mode," Capel said. "Every team goes through adversity, and you normally don't experience that until you get punched in the mouth, until you take a loss or a couple of losses. That's when you see what you're really made of, who you really are."
Nobody has lost a game or lost minutes. Nobody has had to find out who they are when things go wrong. That will change, and George is not worried about the answer.
Ups and downs come with a season, he said. What matters is how you recover. The plan is to come back the next day and make it better, to show everyone this is not a team that will lay down.
It sounds a lot like that Wednesday morning in the gym.
Capel does not want the past to define this group.
Last season was a disappointing one and that weight still hangs around the program.
But very little of it belongs to the men on this roster. Macari Moore is the only returning player with meaningful minutes, and nearly everyone else spent last year somewhere else.
Whatever went wrong, they were not in the building when it did.
Capel wants the outside noise to understand that, and he wants these players to hear it too.
"This group deserves a clean slate," Capel said. "It's a new group. They chose to be here. We're excited to have them, and it's a group that I think is talented. They're really good guys. They want to be good for Pitt, and they have shown up most days since we've been together, trying to become the best that we can be."
