Pitt F Blake Hinson Took Extra Satisfaction in Beating Iowa State

The Pitt Panthers' NCAA Tournament win over Iowa State was extra sweet for Blake Hinson.

PITTSBURGH -- His previous school didn't want him but as a Pitt Panther, Blake Hinson was able to thrive and take some revenge on the team that didn't think he still had it in him. 

Pitt was Hinson's third stop of his college basketball career and he arrived with his confidence shaken. He transfered because the Cyclones has told him he wasn't good enough to play for their program, so it must have felt pretty sweet when Hinson and the Panthers bounced them from the NCAA Tournament this past March. 

"I didn’t want to go too public about it in the moment because I didn’t want to overshadow the purpose of the game," Hinson said in an appearance on SiriusXM ACC Radio. "It was Pitt vs. Iowa State. It wasn’t Blake vs. Iowa State. But Iowa State told me I wasn’t good enough to play for their team so you can imagine how good I felt after we were waving them goodbye come tournament time.”

After the game, Hinson took a subtle shot at the Cylcones by posting a screenshot on Instagram of the frigid weather in Ames, Iowa that they would be returning to after falling, 59-41, at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

Blake Hinson on Instagram #Pitt pic.twitter.com/3Fq8BwxXU4

— stephen thompson (@stephenethom) March 17, 2023

While Hinson scored just five points and grabbed four rebounds in the first round victory over Iowa State, he had a resurgent year with the Panthers. He averaged 15.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game - both team-highs - while making 38% of his 3-point shots and 97 total triples - the third-most of any single season in school history - on the way to second-team All-ACC honors. 

Hinson credited much of his success to the confidence head coach Jeff Capel and the rest of the coaching staff instilled in him the moment he arrived. As his ending at Iowa State illustrates, there haven't been many college coaches who believed in Hinson like Capel does. 

“In practice one time, I didn’t take a shot," Hinson said. "It wasn’t the most wide-open shot but Coach [Capel] came up to me and told me, ‘I never want you not to shoot that ever again.’ … We laugh now because he said ‘Ever since, there hasn’t been a shot that you haven’t taken.’”

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