After shooting 53.8% from 3-point range in its season-opening win over Rider on Monday, Pitt will look to continue its torrid shooting when the Panthers host Buffalo on Thursday night.
Pitt was 14 of 26 on 3-pointers in the 95-57 win over Rider.
North Carolina transfer Jonathan Powell shot 6 of 9 from long range for his 18 points, while Chase Foster added 23 points and made 3 of 4 shots from 3-point territory in the win. Foster set a school record for points by a freshman in a debut game.
Pitt totaled 21 assists to 10 turnovers for the game and also managed 13 steals. The Panthers were picked in the preseason media rankings to finish 12th in the Atlantic Coast Conference and had no players on the preseason All-ACC teams but started out blazing on offense on Monday.
“I thought we did some good things for our first game here in front of people,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “Now that we’re going, these games will start to come pretty quickly. We have a good opponent coming here on Thursday.”
Buffalo struggled in its opener, losing at Marshall 92-65 on Monday. One high point was the play of Tennessee State transfer Antoine Lorick, who had 28 points and 15 rebounds in his first game with the Bulls. Southern Illinois transfer Drew Steffe added 19 points in his Buffalo debut.
But aside from Lorick and Steffe, the rest of the team shot just 6-for-30 from the field. Buffalo went 5 for 27 (18.5%) from 3-point range in its opener while allowing Marshall to shoot 11 for 26 (42.3%) from long distance.
“I thought they played great,” Buffalo coach George Halcovage said of his two top scorers. “We’ve got to grow from this, and we’ve got to get ready to turn it around. First game of the year, lot of new pieces. We’re going to learn from it.”
Buffalo was picked in the preseason to finish 10th in the 12-team Mid-American Conference. The Bulls haven’t reached an NCAA Tournament since 2019.
The Bulls’ only four tournament experiences came in the five-year span from 2015-19, when they were coached by Bobby Hurley in that first season and Nate Oats in the final three before the coaches went on to bigger programs.
Oats is the head coach at Alabama, and Hurley went on to lead Arizona State.