If you haven’t, by all means read the USA Today article on three St. Anthony players in college. Travon Woodall featured, and I hope finally puts to bed that long-running criticism of Woodall playing at Pitt because he wasn’t even a starter as a senior in high school.

Fontan and Woodall became the only St. Anthony players to be named season captains, because of exemplary leadership and punctuality, Hurley says. They always were on time despite commuting 20 miles, sometimes by train and light rail from Paterson.

“Both those kids brought the whole package,” Hurley says of their work ethic in the classroom and basketball.

Woodall wants to show that leadership at Pitt alongside senior Ashton Gibbs, one of the country’s top shooters. Nationally, Woodall is one of the most improved players since last season when the 5-11 point guard averaged 6.4 points and 3.4 assists while playing 21.6 minutes a game as a reserve.

This season, he is averaging 15 points and 8.5 assists, third in Division I, heading into Wednesday’s game vs. Duquesne. He’s a starter now, but starting never has been important to him. As a senior at St. Anthony he came off the bench because “emotionally he could handle it,” Hurley says. “Travon had less ego than other players.”

What matters most to Wood-all is finishing games, having teammates count on him to help put away an opponent. He can’t recall ever being nervous and says he steeled his nerves in middle school when classmates, including rival gang members, once beat him up after taunting him for weeks.

Woodall will be one of those players in the future we look back on with pride that he went to Pitt.

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It was a sloppy affair, as has become typical, and some absurd differentials. Turnovers and rebounds were absurd. Pitt outrebounded Duquesne 39-15. Pitt outrebounded the Dukes just on offensive boards with 16 of those. The flipside, Pitt turned the ball over 23 times while Duquesne kept theirs to only 12. So depending on how you look at it, the Panthers could have destroyed the Stage Magi if Pitt was better with their passing — because that was the bigger issue than ball handling with regards to the turnovers — or Duquesne might have pulled off the upset if they just could have grabbed some rebounds.

Since this is a Pitt blog, and we’d rather be much more concerned with Pitt’s flaws, let’s take a look at the turnover issue.

Get this out of the way, now. Pitt turning the ball over a lot against Duquesne should not have been a surprise. To anyone. This was the City Game with Duquesne operating under Ron Everhart. Only twice has Pitt kept the turnovers to something that would not create the, “this team can’t play this sloppy against better teams” style angst.

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