Okay, DVR delay it is.
8pm
ESPNU
Adam Amin and Tim Welsh (he’s the ex-Providence head coach… the one before Keno Davis’ disastrous run).
December 23, 2011
Briefly, at least.
There is a game at the Pete against Wagner tonight. Given the time of year — plenty of good seats still available. For those of us not in the Burgh, the game is on ESPNU at 8pm.
I may have to go with an open thread for tonight, because it is a better than 50% chance that I will have to resort to DVR delay. Only way out is if my wife is let out of work early so I can take care of my last minute errands. Ah, Christmas time. The moments of personal inconvenience when I think I should have have listened to my grandfather and found a nice Jewish girl. But I digress.
Ashton Gibbs is on the verge of some nice statistical accomplishments.
And in the next few games, beginning Friday night against Wagner at Petersen Events Center, Ashton Gibbs likely will move past Brandin Knight and into 15th place on the Pitt all-time scoring list. Gibbs has 1,417 points, and Knight, now an assistant on Panthers coach Jamie Dixon’s staff, totaled 1,440 from 1999-2003.
Gibbs, who’s averaging a team-high 17.5 points, said reaching performance standards doesn’t excite him. When he was close to setting a Pitt record for consecutive made free throws in 2009-10, he said he didn’t know it until his father told him.
“No clue,” said Gibbs, who set the mark at 46. “That’s one thing about me nobody really knows. I never look at stats. I don’t want it to get in my head like how many points I need to keep up my average. I just keep on playing and just win games.”
But he is pleased to be so close to Knight.
“Just to pass someone who is a great player, great coach, great person, it’s definitely an honor,” he said.
There’s a little more.
“[Graham] could recruit commitment even if [he] couldn’t understand it” — 85mf
While waiting for the Chryst presser yesterday, a Twitter discussion broke out about how the Pitt recruiting class was handling all of this.
One of the remarkable things about this insanity of the past week plus, is that the rather quality recruiting class Pitt put together — stayed together. The players may have been recruited by Graham and many of the “mercenaries,” but they have hung tight with Pitt. Even before the decision on the next head coach was made, they were stating strong support to still come to Pitt.
This, of course, is in stark contrast to last year. When as soon as Wannstedt was fired, many of the recruits started looking elsewhere and reopening recruitment. Many factors in last year’s issues. One, Wannstedt was fired, so Pitt was the bad guy to the recruits. In their view, Pitt broke the commitment to the coaches — and by extension to them. The other was that many of those assistants who were cleared out of Pitt quickly landed elsewhere — especially in New Jersey. That made it easy for several to just switch commitments — especially since they had already been recruited by Rutgers and others in the East.
By contrast, all the departing coaches this year, headed for points in Arizona. Very, very different.
