Pitt G Greg Elliot Breaks Slump with Sharp Shooting Night vs Northwestern

Pitt Panthers sharpshooter Greg Elliot held his confidence despite some early-season struggles.

PITTSBURGH -- Greg Elliot rarely sees a shot he doesn't like. He's earned the chance to take his open looks as they come, but in his brief time as a Pitt Panther, those looks haven't resulted in points at the rate they usually have. 

Elliot was in a slump. Over the four games played prior to the start of this week, the career 40% 3-point shooter was averaging just seven points per game on 30.6% and 21.7% marks from the field and 3-point distance, respectively. The frustration of watching so many shots clang off iron got to Elliot, whose body language got poor at times according to Pitt head coach Jeff Capel. 

“I got on him because I thought he did against VCU," Capel said. "When we played them, he couldn’t make a shot. He was in a little bit of a slump and in that game, he was demonstrative on the court with expressing his frustration and one of the things I told him afterwards was he can never do that. ... You can’t show it because the opponent sees it and if it’s a good opponent or a good player, they pounce on it."

Elliot weathered the next four games, despite making just three of his 13 attempts from deep over the next four games. He broke out of that slump at the beginning of this week against Northwestern, when he hit three of the Panthers' 14 3-pointers in a dominating win over one of the better defenses in the sport. 

Capel stressed maintaining confidence and it appeared to have worked. Elliot said his track record of on-target shooting helped remind him of why he deserves to have confidence. 

"I stayed confident in myself," Elliot said. "I continued to put the work in and kept shooting the basketball. And I knew at a certain point that if you shoot 40[%] for your career, you’re going to make some shots if you keep shooting. So I kept shooting.”

That confidence carried through the struggles even before he pulled out of them this past week. Elliot said it was personally gratifying to watch some shots fall, but it wasn't like he had ever lost faith in his own ability to hit triples. To that end, the slump didn't feel much like a slump. 

“It felt good to see them go in, but I watched all my shots from before that game and they were all good looks," Elliot said. "So I wasn’t like - I was just missing. So like I said, I stayed confident and kept working and stayed with my training and got to my point.”

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