Pitt Hosts Buffalo Thursday Following Season Opening Rout

Thursday, November 5

Pittsburgh, Pa.

7:00 PM

Pitt

Buffalo

Tickets From $18 - $48

11/4/2026 12:05:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Pitt Game Notes Buffalo Game Notes Watch On ACCNX Live Stats Tickets

Pitt (1-0) vs. Buffalo (0-1)

Date: Nov. 5, 2026
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Pittsburgh, Pa. | Petersen Events Center (12,508)
Television/Streaming: ACC Network Extra (Jason Earle | Nick Rivers)
Panthers Radio Network: Flagship Coverage 93.7 The Fan (Bill Hillgrove | Curtis Aiken)
X/Instagram: @Pitt_Athletics | @Pitt_MBB

THE OPENING TIP

Coming off of a 38-point win over Rider to open the season, the Pitt men's basketball team will host Buffalo Thursday night at 7 p.m.
Jason Earle and Nick Rivers will call the game for ACC Network Extra.
Beginning his 58th season on the mic, Bill Hillgrove (play-by-play) and broadcast partner Curtis Aiken (analysis) will provide the commentary of the game on the Panthers Radio Network (flagship coverage on 93.7 The Fan).
Pitt brought in 11 transfers, but a freshman stole the show in the season opener. Chase Foster broke Pitt's school record for points by a freshman in his debut, recording 23, to go with six rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots.
Buffalo opened the season Monday with a 92-65 loss at Marshall. Antoine Lorick had 28 points and 15 rebounds for the Bulls, but Buffalo was just 5-of-27 from three and shot only 37 percent from the field.
Pitt and Buffalo meet for the 11th time in program history. Buffalo won the first meeting, way back in 1917, but the Panthers have won all nine since, most recently in 2016.

A SUCCESSFUL START

It was only one game, but Pitt opened the season Monday with a successful 95-57 win over Rider inside the Petersen Events Center.
For a team with 13 new players, Pitt looked like a unit that has played together much longer. The Panthers had 21 assists (more than in any game in 2025-26) and just 10 turnovers (compared to 18 in the season opener last year).
Guards Naithan George, A'lahn Sumler and Jalil Bethea combined for 17 assists and only one turnover.
Fourteen different players saw the court for the Panthers Monday and 10 of them scored. A year ago, Pitt never played more than 10 players in any game.
Jonathan Powell missed his first two three-point attempts and then made six in a row on the way to a career-high 18 points and career-best 6-of-9 from long range.
And then there was Chase Foster. The rookie had the highest-scoring freshman debut in program history with 23 points, knocking down 3-of-4 from three-point range. The previous record of 21 points was set by Pitt Associate Head Coach Ricardo Greer to open the 1997-98 season.

"CHASE"ING AFTER RECORDS

It took just one game into his college career for Chase Foster to break a Pitt record.
Making his debut, Foster scored 18 first half points and finished the game with 23 points, to go along with six rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots.
Foster's 23 points were the most in Pitt history for a freshman making his debut. His three-pointer late in the game pushed him past Associate Head Coach Ricardo Greer, who had 21 points in his debut on Nov. 17, 1997.
As notable as Foster's debut was, it's hard to beat the debut of Carlton "Bub" Carrington in 2023. While Carrington "only" scored 18 points, he added 12 rebounds and 10 assists for a triple-double in his first career college game.
Foster's 23 points are tied for the fifth-most among freshmen in the NCAA so far this year.

IN-NAIT ABILITY

Naithan George entered Pitt with 530 career assists and led the ACC in assists as a sophomore in 2024-25 at 6.5 per game.
With that in mind, George's eight assists in his Pitt debut Monday night was not a big surprise, but the one turnover was comforting.
George averaged 2.75 turnovers per game over his first three years but he ran the Pitt offense the way a senior should.
A year ago, George had 8+ assists with one or fewer turnovers just three times. Ironically, one of those came in last year's season opener against Binghamton when he had exactly eight assists and one turnover.

POWELL PACKS A PUNCH

Junior Jonathan Powell got off to a slow start Monday in his Pitt debut. But that was short-lived as he began a barrage on the Rider defense.
Powell's first three-pointer of the game came with 3:12 to play in the first half and he added a second one just 28 seconds later. He knocked down his third of the half with 50 seconds left that put Pitt ahead 48-26.
In the second half, Powell made his first three long-range attempts to give him six in a row and he ended the game 6-of-9 from three.

WHO ARE THESE GUYS?

The Pitt men's basketball team has undergone a transformation from a year ago, with 13 new players joining one scholarship returnee (Macari Moore) and two walk-on returnees (Benjamin Mayhew and Jajuan Nelson).
However, fans of the ACC will recognize some of them, as six of the transfers have prior ACC experience.
Jonathan Powell spent the 2025-26 season at North Carolina and also played against Pitt during his 2024-25 campaign at West Virginia.
Jalil Bethea played the 2024-25 season in the ACC at Miami before transferring to Alabama last year.
Naithan George has been at two previous schools, beginning his career at Georgia Tech from 2023-25 before transferring to Syracuse a year ago.
Akir Souare took the same path as George, playing two years at Georgia Tech before transferring to Syracuse for the 2025-26 season.
Baye Ndongo played alongside George and Souare at Georgia Tech as he played three seasons for the Yellow Jackets from 2023-26.
Finally, Armani Mighty spent two seasons at Boston College (from 2022-24) before transferring to Central Michigan and then a breakout campaign at Mercer in 2025-26.

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM, JOIN THEM

Five of those six players have already seen the Panthers from the other bench.
Jonathan Powell, Naithan George, Akir Souare, Baye Ndongo and Armani Mighty have combined to play in 14 games against Pitt. The Panthers were 8-6 in those contests.

PORTAL PASSENGERS

Five Pitt transfers have not played in the ACC, and they come from a variety of situations around the country.
A'lahn Sumler was an all-conference player at Charleston Southern a year ago, leading the Big South in scoring (18.9 ppg) and assists (3.8 apg). That came after sitting out the entire 2024-25 season following a breakout sophomore campaign, averaging 14.2 points per game. He began his career at Northern Kentucky, where he played 28 games as a freshman in 2022-23.
Colin Hawkins played two seasons at Gardner-Webb before transferring to Pitt. He started all 31 games for the Runnin' Bulldogs in 2025-26, averaging 8.2 points in 27.4 minutes.
Dominique Diomande began his career at Washington, where he joined the program in January of 2025 and sat out the remainder of the season. Last year he played in 24 games at BYU, where he learned behind the NBA's No. 1 draft pick AJ Dybantsa, who led the country in scoring.
Kraig Gilbert was a dynamic scorer at NCAA Division II Concord (W.Va.). As a freshman in 2024-25, he averaged 9.1 points and 6.0 rebounds and then elevated his game as a sophomore, averaging 16.3 points over 14 games before injury shortened his season. He was 36-of-75 (48.0 percent) from three-point range in those 14 games.
Timofei Rudovskii continues to rehab from injury but averaged 12.9 points and 4.6 rebounds as a freshman at Bryant in 2025-26. He shot 35.1 percent from three-point range, making 67.

FRESH FACES, HIGH CEILINGS

Along with those 11 transfers, Pitt added two highly touted freshmen in Chase Foster and Jermal Jones Jr., who played together at IMG Academy.
Foster will look to make an immediate impact on the Panthers. As the highest-ranked recruit in the class, Foster has size, shooting touch and versatility to stretch the floor and defend multiple positions.
Jones Jr. has the type of toughness and grit that defines Pittsburgh. He has defensive potential and versatility as a guard. He can knock down shots, defend at a high level and attack the basket.

HOMECOMING ON THE BENCH

When Jeff Capel retooled his coaching staff in the offseason, he went looking for coaches who could teach his team how to win with grit, and he found two perfect fits in former Panthers Ricardo Greer and Ronald Ramón.
Associate Head Coach Ricardo Greer played for Pitt from 1997-01, leading the Panthers through one of their most successful eras in the Big East. He finished his career among Pitt's all-time leaders in scoring and rebounding. Following a successful professional playing career, Greer turned to the coaching profession and most recently served as associate head coach at Dayton.
Assistant Coach Ronald Ramón is a 2008 Pitt graduate and compiled a 101-35 record during his career. He helped Pitt reach four NCAA Tournaments and win the 2008 Big East Tournament. Most recently, he served as an assistant coach at Iona.

OPENING STRONG

Pitt improved to 84-36 all-time in season openers and 20-2 in season openers inside the Petersen Events Center with a 95-57 win over Rider. In total, the Panthers have won 27 of their last 30 season openers and five in a row.
Pitt has won 23-of-25 home openers at the Petersen Events Center and is 97-23 all-time in home openers.
Jeff Capel improved to 14-4 in his head coaching career in season openers, including a mark of 7-2 at Pitt.

MORE OF MOORE

Macari Moore is the lone scholarship player to return to Pitt from a year ago.
A 6-foot-3 guard from Ann Arbor, Mich., Moore appeared in 22 games as a freshman in 2025-26, averaging 1.4 points, 0.9 rebounds and 0.8 assists. The numbers were modest, but the efficiency wasn't: he shot 75.0 percent from three-point range and 87.5 percent from the free-throw line.
A three-star signee out of Huron High School, Moore was ranked among the nation's top point guards in the 2025 class and originally committed to Iowa State before reopening his recruitment and choosing Pitt.
With every other scholarship player new to the program, Moore is the only scholarship Panther who doesn't need to learn Pitt's culture, program standards or day-to-day rhythms from scratch.
His freshman season may have come with limited minutes, but it makes him the most experienced voice in a locker room otherwise full of newcomers, from former high-major starters to proven mid-major scorers.

FOUR-DIGIT FIREPOWER

Pitt enters the 2026-27 season with three players who have already surpassed 1,000 career points, two of whom have done it playing their entire careers in the ACC.
Following the season opener, Baye Ndongo is the team's leading career scorer with 1,145 points. Naithan George follows with 1,059 and A'lahn Sumler has 1,036 career points.

PASSPORTS PLEASE

Pitt's 2026-27 roster has a distinctly international flavor, with players bringing connections from Canada, Senegal, Guinea, France and Russia to Oakland.
Naithan George and Armani Mighty both hail from Toronto, while Baye Ndongo was born in Senegal, Akir Souare in Guinea, Dominique Diomande in France and Timofei Rudovskii in Russia.
It gives Jeff Capel's newest roster a unique makeup: a group of players who have taken very different paths to Pittsburgh, but all arrived with the same goal—to make their mark in the ACC. Pitt's 2026-27 roster isn't just new. It's global.
With six international players on the roster, it makes for the most diverse men's basketball team in program history, just ahead of teams that featured five international players in 2025-26, 2024-25, 2018-19 and 2017-18.

NO PLACE LIKE THE PETE

Pitt has compiled a 326-105 (.756) record, including a 190-20 (.905) ledger in non-conference play, at the Petersen Events Center.
Pitt is 28-31 (.475) versus teams ranked in the top 25 of the AP Poll at the Petersen Events Center, with a 14-11 (.560) mark against top-10 teams and a 9-5 (.643) ledger versus teams ranked in the top-5.

WHEN IT'S 80, IT'S GREAT

Pitt is 56-3 under Jeff Capel when reaching the 80-point mark in a game.
Pitt won 32 consecutive games when scoring 80 or more points until falling 98-88 to NC State in the ACC Tournament second round to close the 2025-26 season.
Pitt improved to 41-0 at home under Capel when scoring 80+ points with Monday's 95-57 victory over Rider.
Pitt has won 154 consecutive home games when scoring 80+ points since a 90-83 double overtime loss to St. John's on Jan. 22, 1998.