March Madness: Player introductions highlight team handshakes

When freshmen arrive on campus to play basketball at Pitt, they receive more than just a… When freshmen arrive on campus to play basketball at Pitt, they receive more than just a blue-and-gold jersey. Each new player also gets his very own handshake.

Although junior guard Ashton Gibbs couldn’t say for sure when the tradition started, he said the tradition of handshakes between teammates helps first-year players bond with the rest of the team.

“We’re all friends,” Gibbs said. “I think it started in the summer. Everybody got a handshake, including the freshmen. It just makes you feel good, especially as a freshman. It makes you feel like part of the team.”

Five of the personalized greetings go on display before every game when the starters are announced. Gibbs’ introduction, which includes a pat down, has followed him since high school.

“My father told me to do it one time because I was a shooter,” he said. “It’s not literally having a gun, but checking to see if I have a gun because I’m hot a lot. That’s really what it came down to.”

Former Pitt forward Tyrell Biggs created a number of the team’s handshakes, including starter Nasir Robinson’s introduction that ends with a swipe across his chest.

“We both have tattoos across our chests,” Robinson said. “Everyone with tattoos on their chests does that handshake. There’s four or five of us.”

Robinson said Biggs had a handshake with everyone on the team and that he’s been doing his own handshake since Biggs’ time at Pitt.

“I don’t know where it came from,” he said. “I guess he just thought about it at home and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Both Gilbert Brown and Gary McGhee said the team members came up with a lot of the handshakes on the spur of the moment.

“It’s something the team has always done with each other,” McGhee said. “Everybody has their own handshake that we just came up with off the top of our heads.”

When he’s introduced, McGhee walks through the line of his teammates and knocks elbows with them. Brown said he also doesn’t remember where many of the handshakes originated.

“We made it up right there on the spot before the game or something,” he said. ”Everybody does have one with everyone on the team. It’s just something we do, it’s like a little bond between each other.”

Senior Brad Wanamaker, the last player introduced at home games, doesn’t have a handshake for an introduction. Instead, he jumps up with the player who meets him at the end of the line.

“I don’t know where it came from,” he said. “Sometimes we just sit around and do handshakes. It’s something exciting, something new.”