Jalil Bethea is headed to Pitt. The Alabama guard announced Sunday that he was joining the Panthers, giving Pittsburgh its third commitment of the weekend and another perimeter player to add to a roster that has been stripped by the transfer portal.
Bethea brings a name Pitt fans will recognize from long before this weekend. The Philadelphia native was the 2024 Pennsylvania Gatorade Player of the Year at Archbishop Wood and arrived in college as a five-star recruit, giving the Panthers a former elite prospect with multiple stops already behind him.
The 6-foot-5 guard began his college career at Miami, where he played in 31 games with 16 starts in 2024-25 and averaged 7.1 points and 2.1 rebounds per game while shooting 36.8% from the floor. He then moved to Alabama for 2025-26, appearing in 26 games with no starts and averaging 3.9 points and 1.7 rebounds per contest.
Across 57 career collegiate games, Bethea has shot 37% from the floor and 32% from deep. For Pitt, the appeal is clear: he has length, recruiting pedigree and experience at two major programs before ever taking a game for the Panthers.
His arrival also comes as Pitt keeps filling out a roster hit hard by departures. Brandin Cummings, Omari Witherspoon, Roman Siulepa, Papa Amadou Kante and Kieran Mullen all entered the transfer portal, and the Panthers still have more work to do replacing guards, forwards and a center after landing Bethea along with former BYU/Washington forward Dominique Diomande and North Carolina/West Virginia guard Jonathan Powell.
That makes Sunday less a finish line than a start. Pitt has added talent, but it still has to turn a weekend of portal wins into a complete team.
