CBS Sports analyst Jon Rothstein is buying Pitt as the ACC’s surprise team.
On his show, Inside College Basketball Now, Rothstein singled out the Panthers as his sleeper pick in a league that usually has its familiar heavyweights at the top, including Duke and North Carolina. He also slotted Pitt at No. 9 in his ACC preseason power rankings, a clear step up from the No. 15 spot the Panthers occupied last season.
Rothstein traced the program’s recent slide back to its post-2023 NCAA Tournament pattern, noting that Pitt has come up short year after year since that appearance. His diagnosis was blunt: “Pitt has not had a talent acquisition problem, it has had a retention problem,” Rothstein said, pointing to Jaland Lowe leaving in the transfer portal and Bub Carrington heading to the NBA Draft after his freshman season.
That issue is still front and center for this roster. Pitt has only one returning player from last season in guard Macari Moore, even though the staff brought in players such as Roman Siulepa and Omari Witherspoon before losing them for the 2026-27 season.
Still, Rothstein likes what he sees now. “But, now I'm looking at this Pitt roster, and I like what I see,” Rothstein added.
“I've always been a fan of Nait George. I've been a big fan of Baye Ndongo.
Jalil Bethea is someone who is highly, highly thought of in turn of his longterm potential.”
He went a step further, saying, “In a 76 team tournament, this is a team that could compete for a berth to March Madness.”
The appeal is obvious on paper. George, Ndongo and Jonathan Powell all bring multiple years of ACC rotation experience, while Bethea offers the kind of upside that still makes him intriguing at the college level.
There are also pieces Rothstein didn’t mention that could matter, including Armani Mighty and A'Lahn Sumler. Mighty’s defense and Sumler’s scoring give Pitt more options, even if they arrived without Power Four backgrounds.
The biggest issue is not talent, but how all of it fits together. Outside of George and Ndongo, who were teammates at Georgia Tech, the roster is made up of players who have not shared the floor before. The transfer portal has helped build a lot of winning teams lately, but chemistry still has to show up once the games start.
Now it falls to Jeff Capel to put it together. Pitt has the kind of roster that looks loaded on paper, but turning that collection of newcomers into a real ACC team will be one of the toughest jobs of his tenure.
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