Pitt’s Best Three-Point Shooters Have Been a Surprise

Pitt’s three best three-point shooters this season have been Zack Austin, Brandin “Beebah” Cummings, and Jorge Diaz Graham.

Austin has nearly made as many threes this season as he did in the entirety of last year. After making just 28 of his 95 threes a season ago (29.5%), Austin is already off to a 25-for-56 start from deep (44.6%). He has also improved his free-throw shooting this season, going from 73.7% last year to 88.2% this year from the charity stripe. Austin’s scoring average has gone from 6.5 points per game last year up to 9.9 points per game this year.

Diaz Graham leads the team in three-point percentage, shooting 58% from downtown. This comes after he made just 21 of his 65 three-point tries in his first two years at Pitt, combined (32%). Although he is averaging a career-low 6.6 minutes of action per game, Diaz Graham has made the most of his playing time in his junior season, hitting 11 of his 19 threes. In Pitt’s recent game against Stanford, he went two for two from three-point range, playing a strong game alongside his brother. After the game, Stanford head coach Kyle Smith explained how he did not expect to see Jorge in the game, playing at the three spot.

“Absolutely not. I didn’t think he’d play one of the Diaz’s at the three, I didn’t see that coming,” Smith said when asked if he expected Diaz Graham’s performance. “That actually altered the game, too… I didn’t expect that, so anything inside was really hard. That’s a lot of length and size in there…”

Stanford head coach did not expect Jorge Diaz Graham to play significant minutes against him for Pitt. Diaz Graham hit two threes in the Panthers’ win.

Cummings has been huge off the bench for the Panthers this year, too. He has made 18 of his 41 three-point attempts so far in his rookie season, and is averaging 7.9 points per game.

The three sharpshooters have been huge for the Panthers, who lost Damian Dunn to injury more than one month ago. At the time of his injury, Dunn was the team’s leading three-point shooter.

Check out Pitt’s leading three-point shooters below.

BY MAKES

Zack Austin – 25

Jaland Lowe – 21

Brandin “Beebah” Cummings – 18

Ishmael Leggett – 16

Jorge Diaz Graham – 11

Damian Dunn – 10

BY PERCENTAGE

Jorge Diaz Graham – 57.9%

Damian Dunn – 52.6%

Zack Austin – 44.6%

Brandin “Beebah” Cummings – 43.9%

Amsal Delalic – 43.8%