The game behind Carlton Carrington's historic NCAA debut
Pitt freshman, Carlton "Bub" Carrington, had a triple-double in his first college game, the first player in a Pitt uniform to do so. Here's everything you need to know about his game.
A four-star recruit from Baltimore, Maryland, ranked 91st in his class just had arguably the best debut game in recent memory.
Carlton “Bub” Carrington, a 6’5” lead guard, walked onto the floor of Peterson Event Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the starting point guard for a Pitt team that went 24-12 last season, making the NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2015-16 season.
This, on its own, is a feat that should not be understated. Pitt is an athletic and talented team with several players who are going to be making their case for a selection in the 2024 NBA draft, if not an offer sheet as an undrafted free agent. Despite this, in their season-opening matchup against North Carolina A&T, it was their freshman point guard who walked away as the team’s leader in points (18), rebounds (12) and assists (10), logging a triple-double in his first ever NCAA game.
Carrington drew eyes early on, quickly establishing himself as Pitt’s primary ball handler. He didn’t look to score too early on, choosing to defer to his more experienced teammates. He logged two quick assists to Blake Hinson, the team’s leading scorer last season, hitting him for a deep three at the top of the key, then on an outlet pass off of a defensive rebound.
Carrington’s vision has always been one of his best traits, especially for his size at the position. As a playmaker, he’s not going to blow you away with his end-to-end speed, rather he’s going to run the offense, probing with patience, and finding the soft spot in the defense for a bucket or a pass.
One of the best ways to unlock playmakers that share the same style as Carrington is through the pick and roll. It’s a great way to push the ball downhill for guys who lack that top-end speed, and for Carrington, at his size, he is still able to deliver passes over defenders when they hedge.
Early on, North Carolina A&T were sending two at the ball out of every screen Carrington received. For most inexperienced guards, this type of pressure causes panic, forcing a pick-up and a trap, or in the best cases, a turnover. As stated, Carrington has both the size and patience to deal with these types of coverages. In back-to-back possessions, the opposing team hedged hard on ball screens to no avail as Carrington was able to find the roll man, Federiko Federiko, both times, who was able to find a dunk on the second attempt.
Carrington’s size also allows him to be a factor defensively, and for not having blistering athleticism, he slides his feet well and has great upper body discipline.
The very next possession shows this perfectly. Carrington picks up behind the half court line, prompting his man to attack early. He shadows his man all the way to the rim, defending with his arms out, and is able to stay completely vertical on the contest, getting the ball and pushing it up the floor in transition for his fourth assist of the game with just over two minutes played.
Defensively, Bub has real polish and potential, but he’s not without his flaws. His foot movement is great, but his ability to accelerate and decelerate with twitch guards can be his achilles heel at times. Stopping on a dime presents an issue and he lacks the anticipation and aggression required to box in offensive players and generate turnovers at a high rate.
Overall though, he made some great plays with his feet on that end, and doesn’t have the tendency to be handsy and overly aggressive as some young guards with on-ball roles defensively tend to fall into.
Back to the game, at this point, Pitt was up 9-2 coming out of a timeout, and Carrington had accounted for an assist on every single bucket. The next time down the court is when he’d take his first shot, a kind of awkward float after his defender attempted to take a charge. He missed it, but the attention he drew towards him allowed his teammate to clean it up.
Watching the defensive coverage, however, it’s clear to see the impact that Carrington was already beginning to have on the game plan of North Carolina A&T. He had already poked holes into their plan to blitz him, so instead they prompted him to drive by putting a defender in drop, playing the role man so Carrington couldn’t find him as easily on a pass.
Once you start to force the defense to play you as a playmaker, it opens up chances for you to score, and Carrington took full advantage. His first two shots, a floater and a catch-and-shoot three off an inbounds pass, didn’t fall but the aggression was promising.
Carrington’s knock offensively coming out of high school was his range on his shot. His midrange game was a consistent outlet for him if he couldn’t get directly to the rim or find a teammate, but when it came to punishing players who sagged off or went under screens, Bub has never been the most trustworthy in terms of converting from three.
We’ll see if it sustains, but last night’s game was a good start in changing that narrative. Carrington went three-of-seven from three, knocking down these shots in a variety of ways throughout the game.
His first bucket came due to his highly touted midrange game, where he’s shown the capability to get to and knock down a variety of tough shots. Here, we see the impact of his playmaking causing the defender to think. The defense switches at the screen, and fearing a pass, Carrington’s new defender fails to commit, and leaves him just enough room to square his feet and fire from the baseline.
Unsurprisingly, Carrington kept making plays throughout the game, even when the defense adjusted to turn him into a scorer. He was hitting his teammates with urgency, initiating half court offense as soon as he crossed half court or even before.
This kind of early offense forces defenses to scramble and puts the advantage fully on the side of the offense. Every defensive movement is determined on what the offense does with the ball, keeping the defense from being able to predicate how their opponent finds their shots.
He found bigs in semi-transition with quick hit aheads that got the ball moving and continued to pressure drop early in the shot clock with his midrange game. Attacking aggressively out of the pick and roll and in transition is where he made his name this game.
The Bub Carrington pick and roll continued its onslaught on the North Carolina A&T defense as Pitt Head Coach Jeff Capel III started to throw different variations out there in the last ten minutes of the first half, including switching the screen setters from traditional rollers to shooting guards and wings as well as bigs who prefer to pop.
This opens driving lanes up even more for Carrington as defenses have to respect the shooter fading out for the shot, leaving an open lane, and forcing help at the rim to rotate further than they would otherwise.
Unlocking Carrington off the ball moving forward will be the difference maker for this Pitt team, who has a plethora of young guards to pull from for ball handling and playmaking. With Bub’s size, if he can add to lineups with fellow guards by shooting from the perimeter, his stock along with the team’s ceiling will raise immensely.
Pitt started to test Carrington in an off-ball role late in the first half when Jaland Lowe, another freshman point guard, came back in the game. Lowe himself is a crafty ball handler and playmaker, yet lacks Carrington’s height, preventing him from having the same off-ball potential in many aspects.
During this time, Bub picked up his first three pointer of his collegiate career, swinging the ball along the perimeter into a pick and roll with Lowe, and staying shot ready as his man helps from the nail, sliding slightly into the open space for a catch-and-shoot look.
Now is as good a time as any to talk about Carrington’s shot mechanics. In the catch and shoot, Bub’s two-motion release is evident. He has a clear pocket, an inch or two above his brow, and the release has a bit of a catapult motion to it. However, the follow through is beautiful. Forty-five degree angle from the floor if we were to draw a line straight from the hardwood to the ceiling.
Interestingly, no thumb flick as his guide hand sits straight at the side of the ball. His feet are a great distance from one another, but as we’ve seen, he’s able to adapt his feet angles and distances in his pull up game, which is where the high set point comes in handy.
As we get into the second half, Bub quickly collected his first of three double-digit stat categories, collecting his eighth, ninth and tenth rebounds in the first 90 seconds. His tenth point of the contest came came just under four minutes in as he pulled up in the corner off of a step back.
Now with the double-double secured, you could see Carrington start to turn up the aggression on the offensive end.
He was moving quicker, throwing his most aggressive passes he’d thrown all day, hunting his shot and drawing defenses in because of it. This point in the game really felt like Carrington going from the feeling out process to star. He knew he could do whatever he wanted against this team, and he was going to try to do it, and if he got a triple-double in the process, that wouldn’t hurt.
Eventually, Pitt went back to what was working at the beginning, going full circle on a historic performance for Bub Carrington. Bub came down the court, got a screen from his favorite roll man, Federiko Federiko, and hit him with a beautiful pass for his eighth assists of the game.
At this point, the commentator’s avidly started rooting for every pass to lead to an assist, waiting with baited breath for the result of every pass.
The displeasure in the crowd was evident when Hinson just barely missed the bottom of the net on a three that would have given Carrington his final assist to complete the triple-double, and a smile on Carrington’s face showed just how close he knew he was to such an incredible feat as he went to the bench.
This was followed by an eruption from the stands as Carrington quickly made his way back to the middle of the sideline, not even staying on the bench for a full turn of possessions. A traveling violation was all it took to get him back on the floor, staying out of the game for a whole 20 seconds. A chant of “triple-double” broke out through the arena.
Here is the exact moment when Carlton “Bub” Carrington logged his tenth assist of the game, completing the triple-double:
That final assist put a stamp on a historic performance for Carrington as the first Pitt player in the program’s 118-year history. He came into the game as a somewhat-unlikely starter on a team with lofty aspirations going into the season and walked out as a potential star guard at the NCAA level, and even moving forward, a potential draft pick in the 2024 NBA draft.
He would then come back down the court and nail a pull-up three over his defender and going to bench just a few possessions later, cementing his debut statline at 18 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists in Pitt’s 100-52 win in their season opener.