Four-star center Qudus Wahab passes on Pitt

Pitt head coach Jeff Capel was the recipient of some disappointing news on Wednesday, as coveted 6’10” center Qudus Wahab announced his commitment to Georgetown around 4 p.m. ET. Wahab chose from a group of five finalists that included Syracuse, UConn and Virginia Tech in addition to Georgetown and Pitt.

The news was hardly unexpected for those monitoring the situation, as many national recruiting analysts predicted Wahab would wind up in the nation’s capital, where the Hoyas are on the rise under Patrick Ewing. Georgetown’s campus also happens to be 17 miles from the Flint Hill School, where Wahab is finishing out his senior season.

Pitt offered Wahab on June 15, 2017, and he officially visited on Nov. 2, 2018. He also took two unofficial visits to Pittsburgh and showed significant interest in Capel’s program. That prompted several recruiting analysts to predict Pitt as his eventual destination, but most of those predictions had been changed to Georgetown by Wednesday afternoon.

The silver lining for Pitt is that Wahab, who would be a matchup nightmare for the current Panthers roster, is heading to the Big East rather than the ACC. That has to be considered a win, as it means Pitt will avoid facing him on a regular basis for the next four years.

Nonetheless, Wahab’s decision extends Pitt’s recruiting dry spell, which has seen them miss out on a number of talented prospects, including Kofi Cockburn, Akok Akok, Tyrese Samuel, Oscar Tshiebwe and Anthony Walker.

For the 2019 cycle, Capel is still focused on adding to his frontcourt, and his most notable remaining target in that respect is Karim Coulibaly. The 6’8” power forward out of Scotland Performance Institute holds a four-star rating from ESPN and is said to be particularly interested in Tulane, St. Joseph’s and Pitt, despite interest from a wide array of college basketball's Major Seven programs.

Other names linked to Pitt recently include Christian Brown, Gerald Drumgoole, Jalyn McCreary and Tre Mitchell, of which only the latter two are bigs. Of those two, only Mitchell holds an offer from Pitt, and little has been said about Pitt’s pursuit of either recruit in recent weeks. Mitchell, a native of Pittsburgh, is believed to be a Notre Dame lean by four recruiting analysts at 247Sports and three at Rivals. Meanwhile, two analysts at Rivals see McCreary as a future DePaul signee.