Please note that this article was written by a reader, not the staff of Cardiac Hill.

(I apologize in advance about having to display all tables and GIFs via link. I experienced some technical difficulties with embedding them.)

Six games in, Pitt has been better offensively than defensively, similar to last year’s team; anyone who’s watched a couple games could probably tell you as much. How much better? According to Ken Pomeroy’s rankings ( kenpom.com ), the Panthers rank 11th in the country in Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and 100th in Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the Panthers are the 11th best offense or the 100th best defense in the country: as we’ve grown accustomed to seeing under Jamie Dixon, the Panthers have faced a weak non-conference slate. Purdue is the only top-100 RPI team they have encountered thus far (not counting Gonzaga). So there is certainly a good chance that Pitt’s numbers worsen as they begin to see tougher opposition in the ACC, but what they do reveal right now is the disparity in the Panthers’ play on either end of the floor.

Some might argue that the Panthers just need more time together to improve their chemistry on defense, or that certain players just have to work harder. Those both might be true, but another possibility is that Jamie Dixon’s current rotation isn’t making the best use of the personnel available to him. Given that three of the four games remaining on Pitt’s schedule before ACC play are duds (Eastern Washington, Morehead State and Western Carolina sport an average RPI rank of 180), Dixon certainly still has the opportunity to experiment with line-ups before gut-check time. That being the case, there is a rotation adjustment that could help balance the Panthers’ strengths and weaknesses.

Right now, Sheldon Jeter sees the majority of his minutes at the 4, with some supplemental playing time coming at center. But he’s struggled against true 5s. At 6’8", 225lb, he’s not quite big enough to contain them on defense or on the boards, and he hasn’t been able to use his athletic advantage over them on offense, often settling for outside shots.

It seems like Jeter’s length and athleticism would be best applied on the perimeter, particularly on defense where he could give the opponent’s best wing player a challenge. So what if those secondary minutes came at the 3?

Pitt starts Jamel Artis at the 3. I love Artis, and so do a lot of Pitt fans. Sometimes the spark he provides makes you think he could (maybe) play in the NBA; those games where he’s hitting his 3s and mid-range jumpers, and spraying passes from the perimeter and high-post. We saw a lot of that down the stretch last year, and as a result he was named to the All-ACC Third Team.

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

He’s doing a lot of those things well so far this year, too.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pi/shareit/HbDbF

He’s second on the team in scoring, third in assists and is shooting the ball tremendously well from both inside and outside the arc (so well, in fact, that his percentages probably aren’t sustainable). But he also has a downside: his defensive rating is the highest (a bad thing) of any Panther averaging more than 10 minutes/game. As we Pitt fans know, Artis has been guilty of lackadaisical efforts on D in the past, like this one.

via GIPHY

That’s Marcus Paige, a pretty good three-point shooter, given about five feet of space on a closeout. But check out who has the best defensive rating of the same group of players.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pi/shareit/g0TL8

Advanced statistics can help define the differences between Artis and Jeter.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pi/shareit/2QXEF

Jeter isn’t all bad on offense. His true shooting and effective field goal percentage are solid if not spectacular, and he’s also fairly productive on the offensive boards, an area where Artis is lacking. Additionally, he gets to the line slightly more often per 40 min , where he’s been shooting very well (admittedly, in a very small sample size, 11/12 for the season).

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pi/shareit/VbETV

PER, Box Plus-Minus and Win Shares per 40 min suggest that Jeter is actually playing better overall. But obviously, there’s the question of volume. Artis spends more time on the floor, shooting the ball more and probably playing more against opposing teams’ best players. That makes his shooting percentages more impressive and probably improves his defensive numbers a little bit relative to Jeter’s. Likewise, Jeter’s shooting and defensive numbers would probably see a downtick under the same conditions.

So, given that Pitt is already doing pretty well on offense and needs improvement defensively, should Jeter be cutting into Artis’ minutes at the 3? Maybe, but not necessarily. We also have to consider who else sees minutes at the 3 for Pitt. Cameron Johnson has seen a large majority of his minutes there; Chris Jones has also appeared at the 3, although he spends most of his time backing up Smith at the 2.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pi/shareit/hju1O

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pi/shareit/Lz0rH

The 3PAr and 3PT % for both players provide a similar conclusion: they’re fairly high volume long-range shooters who haven’t been shooting the three very well this season. But Johnson has relied on the trey-ball much more heavily than Jones, and has shot only marginally better. Meanwhile, Jones has been able to diversify his offensive game a bit: he gets to the line far more often and he’s shot a very respectable 52% on two point field goals, leading to higher true shooting and effective field goal percentages. Comparing assist rates also suggests that Jones is a far stronger passer. Johnson holds a slight edge in defensive rating, but that’s really outweighed by the big difference in offensive play.

Cam Johnson seems to be the third best option of those used at small forward, but he’s getting the second most playing time there. 10.6 MPG isn’t a lot, but it’s significantly more than the 0 MPG that Sheldon Jeter is getting at the 3 right now. Jeter is a stronger defender and he would really have to struggle on offense to sink to the level that Johnson is at right now.

Taking into account all of the above, I would love to see Dixon try out this adjustment: give Sheldon Jeter a chunk of Cam Johnson’s (and maybe even Chris Jones’) minutes at the 3, and shift the equivalent playing time at the 5 over to graduate transfers Rafael Maia and Alonzo Nelson-Ododa, the other 5s on the roster. Maia in particular has been playing scrappily on D of late, although he is very limited offensively.

Of course, how much time bench players see and where they play are always going to fluctuate based on the characteristics of the opposing team and game flow. For example, I think Jeter could and should see time at the 5 against Davidson. Peyton Aldridge, Jake Belford and Oskar Michelsen are all the kind of stretch big that could give the bulky Maia problems on defense, but none are big or strong enough to bully Jeter in the paint. Moreover, Davidson’s best scorers, Jack Gibbs and Brian Sullivan, are small guards that Jeter probably wouldn’t guard on the perimeter anyways.

But Pitt is going to see a lot of strong wings throughout ACC play: Brandon Ingram, Justin Jackson and Damion Lee, just to name a few. I suspect it would behoove Pitt to get Sheldon Jeter accustomed to spending time at the 3 now, so that he can be used effectively there when the team will need him most.