Pitt hasn’t had a first-team All-American since 2009 when DeJuan Blair carried the Panthers to the Elite Eight. Ashton Gibbs is looking to change that.
Today Blue Ribbon Magazine released their All-American teams and Gibbs landed on the third squad.
While earning a third-team All-American spot is nothing to scoff at, many are upset that Gibbs didn’t make one of the top two teams. The players listed ahead of the Pitt senior, however, are all clearly better. That list includes the Big East’s Jeremy Lamb and Kris Joseph.
Gibbs is a spot up shooter. He has worked to increase his ball-handling skills and driving ability. Honestly though, he is not that type of player. He is just not naturally gifted enough to penetrate the defense or breakdown a defender one-on-one. Defensively, Gibbs is not great either. In order to help his overall draft stock, he switched to point guard. Again though, he is not a great distributor.
The fact remains that Gibbs does only one thing extremely well–shoot. For the Panthers, that is good enough. In fact, it is exactly what the team needs. But, in terms of All-American status, it simply won’t land him on the top two teams. For now, third team All-American sounds pretty good.