Lamar Patterson Leading Way Offensively For Pitt In Greentree Summer League

Understandably so, most of the hype around the Greentree Summer League has centered around Pitt freshman Steven Adams. But it's been another player who's showing the most prowess offensively - Lamar Patterson.

To anyone who watched much of last season, it was easy to see Patterson stepping up a bit more as a scorer. Patterson took his game up another notch in the infamous CBI tournament (yeah, that's right - I'm still not over it). He averaged nine points a game on the season, but upped that to a little over 13 in the postseason, reaching double figures in five out of Pitt's six games.

Patterson's on the rise again in this year's summer league.

Based on Panther Lair's statistics, he leads Pitt players in scoring, averaging about 19 points a game and has gone over the 20-point mark in two out of his four contests.

Patterson is putting up these numbers in a summer league contest, but I still expect his scoring to increase significantly this season. Pitt is now without two of their top three scorers from last year with the graduation of Ashton Gibbs and Nasir Robinson, and will need production from somewhere. Patterson has the skill set to score and the team is definitely going to need him to do some more of that.

Trust me - I get it. We've all been fooled by Greentree Summer League hype before (Dante Taylor - I'm looking at you). But Patterson's improvement in Pitt's postseason last year coupled with the loss of some offensive players makes me think he's taking a big step up this year.

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