Morning.

The Women’s Softball Team got screwed by the NCAA Selection Committee. After making it to the ACC Championship game, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion to FSU. Then to be one of the last teams out of the Tournament, as ND  (who they never actually played this season) was the last ACC team in. I don’t pretend to follow Women’s College Softball, but I can still generate reasonable outrage when a Pitt team is screwed.

Got a nice story on new Pitt Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach Milan Brown and his history with the Capels.

In 1995, Brown was taking a team he was coaching during an AAU summer camp in Hampton with Boo Williams to lunch when Capel II approached him out of the blue.

Capel II, who died last November at the age of 64 as a result of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was about to begin his second season as the coach at Old Dominion. He’d just lost his restricted-earnings coach, Bobby Collins, to an assistant coaching job at Hampton University, where Collins would ultimately become the head coach.

The job interview was even more brief with Capel II, who had seen Brown work on the bench as an AAU coach.

“He just came up to me and said, ‘Do you want the job?’” said Brown, who went on to become a head coach from 2003-2010 at Mount St. Mary’s and from 2010-15 at Holy Cross, leading Mount St. Mary’s to the NCAA tournament in 2008. “I thought for maybe a half-second before I said yes. I didn’t worry about the pay or any of that stuff.”

So began Brown’s long relationship with the Capel family.

Brown hit on what makes Jeff Capel III such a good recruiter (and hopefully coach).

“I think he’s a really good communicator,” Capel III said of Brown. “People that know him know that about him. He’s a really likable guy. He’s funny, but he’s also serious and to the point. He knows how to be in the world of young people. He knows how to talk to them. I think it helps that he’s a former player himself, and he’s also been a head coach.”

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“I do see similarities between (Capel III and his father) just in the fact that defensively they’re not trying to give up any easy baskets. Jeff (III) wants guys to be tough-minded. He wants them to not only be tough physically, but be tough-minded kids. That’s his dad. (Jeff III is) honest with the players in assessing who they are at that particular time, but he does it in a way that his dad would do, where even if he jumped you, you knew he was telling you the truth and it was for your own good.”

It will help if, Capel knows how to avoid the hot mike when he has to tear into a kid.

Xavier Johnson signed his NLI to come to Pitt last week.

One of the more sought after transfers (non-graduate version) is Sacha Killeya-Jones. A power forward formerly at Kentucky. He visited Pitt over the weekend. He will be hitting some more schools, so no decision yet.

With Malik Ellison no officially staying with Pitt, it might be a good time to revisit why he was such a highly sought transfer  a couple years ago. And why Pitt and Capel needed him to stay.

This season at St. John’s, Ellison connected on 34.1 percent of his three-pointers on better than 2.7 attempts per game. That is a decent clip and volume of attempts, which foreshadows a player who could potentially grow into a more accurate perimeter shooter. Ellison shot just 30 percent on catch-and-shoot opportunities, though, according to Synergy Sports. So, he will have to make some pretty serious strides here.

Where he can shine immediately is with his individual offense. On isolation plays, including possessions when Ellison was a passer, he produced 1.03 points per possession, according to Synergy. That ranked No. 4 in the Big East among players with at least 30 iso possessions. When Ellison was the shooter on isolation plays, he connected on 55 percent of his attempts.

He played primarily at small forward or as the wing forward. He did not stop the ball when it was being moved around on offense. Per the numbers he assisted on 19% of scores when on the floor.

Finally, this was a great piece on the increasing value of staying in the NBA Draft. Even if you are drafted in the 2d round.

When the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement went into place in 2017, reverberations resonated throughout the league. From the money owners received in basketball related income to the way general managers could build rosters to the tools coaches had at their disposal, the CBA changed the way the league operated in a drastic manner.

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Additionally, the introduction of two-way contracts allowed teams to carry two more players, who split time between the G League and NBA, paying them at a level competitive with what the rest of the world offers borderline NBA players.

But another aspect of this that has gone underreported is the way that the increase in minimum salaries has incentivized second-round-level prospects to stay in the NBA Draft instead of returning to college.

This is why we have seen more kids willing to stay in the draft. The money is not just better then it used to be. But teams see potentially big value in signing 2d round drafts more then ever before.

In the 2016-17 season, the minimum salary for rookies was only $543,471, and for second-year players it was $874,636. That’s a total of $1,418,107 over the first two years a player is in the NBA.

That changed substantially for the current season. This year, minimum-salaried rookies received $815,615, with second-year players getting $1,312,611. That’s $2,128,226, or an increase of about 50 percent on the previous season. That’s a big number to pass up as a rookie, but it is still just a pittance for NBA teams to give a potentially useful player.

With the NBA’s salary cap set to reach $101 million next season, teams are basically giving up about 1.4 percent of their salary cap to take fliers on potentially useful players. Because of that, NBA teams have increasingly realized how worthwhile it is to sign second-round picks long-term (three-year deals are the most common).

Even if they end up not working out –and they often don’t — it’s such a small percentage of their cap that it rarely affects teams’ long-term maneuverability. The potential benefits far outweigh the costs for NBA teams in how they utilize their second-rounders, making it a positive expected value equation for them.

With a rookie salary scale in place for 1st round draft picks, the difference is smaller. And if a team is willing to offer a contract. Even better.

Back in the 2014 NBA Draft, just eight out of 22 NCAA-based second-rounders received at least one million dollars and multiple years fully guaranteed. Last year, 13 of the 23 college players picked in the second round received at least a $2 million guarantee, and 15 players received sizable second-year guarantees.

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The numbers improved last year, with every player but one (Thomas Bryant) picked in the top 20 of the second round receiving at least $1.5 million guaranteed, with the average making $2,125,535. And this isn’t a one-year sample, either, as college players picked from No. 31-40 in 2016 made an average of $2,480,107, with the No. 31 to No. 50 range making an average of $2,040,905.

Expect to keep seeing kids at least test the NBA waters in higher numbers and even earlier. And as Pitt presumably will increase the talent in the next few years. Be prepared to see it happen here.