Even though Derrick Randall didn’t contribute an overwhelming amount during the conference portion of the season, I did expect that Randall would be a nice cog for 2014-15. If, for no other reason, the lack of experienced depth in the frontcourt. Especially as far as true centers go. The Rutgers transfer had noticeably slimmed down and gotten into very good shape by the end of the year.

That was before he got arrested.

Derrick Randall, one of the former Rutgers basketball players suing the school and former coach Mike Rice, was arrested and charged after a motor vehicle stop early Tuesday morning at Rutgers with driving while intoxicated, use of a controlled dangerous substance and possession of a controlled dangerous substance, Rutgers University Police said.

According to university police, the incident happened at 2:45 a.m. on Avenue E on the Livingston campus — not far from the Louis Brown Athletic Center. Randall recently completed his junior season at the University of Pittsburgh, where he transferred following Rice’s firing after videos surfaced showing the coach mistreating players.

Randall didn’t waste any time after the semester at Pitt ended to go home and visit some old haunts. That didn’t work out so well. There is no information on what the “controlled dangerous substance” was. I assume marijuana, but then I always assume marijuana.

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I won’t lie. I didn’t even know Cullen Christian was still on the team.

After three years at Pittsbugh, Cullen Christian will be transferring to West Virginia.

Christian graduated from Pitt on Sunday, earning his degree in Administration of Justice. He will go on scholarship at West Virginia, where he will be enrolled in graduate school pursing a Masters in Sports Management.

“I know where I wanted to go after I graduate, and I’m going to West Virginia,” Christian said. “This is something I’m looking forward to. I’ve already started conditioning, and getting ready. I went to the spring game, which was cool. I got to meet the coaches. I’m going to go there this week and get my apartment set up this week. I’ll start school on (May) 19th.”

Christian transferred to Pitt in 2011, after playing as a true freshman at Michigan. After sitting out the 2011 season, due to the transfer rule, he started the first two games of the 2012 season, including the Cincinnati game where he had two pass breakups.

Christian will be reunited with defensive backs coach Tony Gibson for a third time in his career.

Not trying to be mean, but this isn’t much of a loss for Pitt. He wasn’t going to show up on the two-deep. He really never had much of an impact.

Congratulations on graduating. Good luck in West Virginia.

After all the spring practices are in the books. As the long 3 month stretch of nothing but conference and NCAA rules debates, police blotters, recruiting and mindless predictions as the only news in college football stare us in the face, the ACC tosses us one last nugget. A conference call with the coaches to talk about spring practices.

You can listen to the nearly 2 1/2 hours of coaches talking vaguely about spring practices here. Coach Paul Chryst is on at roughly 2 hours into it.

Coach Chryst was asked about Tom Savage’s rise in the draft boards.

“You never know what to expect so if you said you’re surprised or not surprised you’d be wrong,” Chryst said. “He certainly has a lot of the talents and physical attributes. The biggest thing Tom hasn’t done is just play a lot of football.”

Savage transferred twice before ending up at Pitt, which Chryst said limited his visibility to NFL teams. Once they got a chance to look at the tape, they apparently liked what they saw.

“I think a lot of the buzz that comes before he wasn’t as much a part of because he hadn’t played for two years,” Chryst said. “I think what he did in the season, the combine, individual workouts, it’s been great to see. Hopefully everyone is right and his stock is rising.”

In Chryst’s seven-year tenure as Wisconsin’s offensive coordinator, the Badgers had 27 players drafted into the NFL. In two years as Pitt’s coach, he has yet to have a player taken. That will change this year, with Savage, defensive tackle Aaron Donald and wide receiver Devin Street each likely to hear their names called.

“I think for the program, it’s good,” Chryst said. “But most important you’re happy for those individuals. That’s what really makes it special.”

Or, dare we say, “neat.”

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The ACC released the match-ups in basketball for the next two seasons yesterday.

Here’s what Pitt looks like in graphic format:

Syracuse and Louisville are Pitt’s permanent “rivalry” games. That works for me. Both very good teams. I like that Big East connection and history. Yes it means Pitt will always have a tough ACC schedule, but that isn’t a bad thing.

The next pair are the home-and-homes for the season. I assume that they are planning on rotating the pairs to some degree. Which means it could well be five years before we see a UNC or Duke home-and-home.

The next group of five are the home ACC games. Then the last five are the road games. The ACC knows Duke and UNC are still the glamor programs that will draw the crowds. Every ACC team has UNC and Duke split as home-away each year.

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Well, the Barry Rohrssen departure is finally official. It wasn’t money. It was about opportunities. As has been the case the entire time.

2. Money was not a factor. Pitt was ready to match and exceed any money Kentucky offered and Dixon met with Rohrssen last week to try and see if he could work this out but again, it wasn’t about Pitt, it wasn’t about money.

3. Rohrssen and Calipari have been very good friends for about 25 years. This is a long-time friendship they have always wanted to coach together but timing was never right. Rohrssen felt like this may be his last opportunity to jump on with Cal so he did.

I look forward to reading in the comments how this is still Steve Pederson’s fault.

Later this morning the ACC will be announcing all conference basketball matchups for the NEXT 2 YEARS. Amazing what a bit of membership stability can do. Very different from the Big East approach which maximized TV and competitive games between projected top teams. Either they expect the best teams to stay the best for a couple of years, or the ACC is looking at it more to rotate all teams in games with the unbalanced schedule.

But really, it is only three games. Every team plays once. That’s 14 games. One game is part of the protected “rivalry” game that is a home-and-home (I think for Pitt, it will be Louisville slid in there to take the place of Maryland). That leaves three other games to be chosen as home-and-homes.

I get a kick out of the fact that the ACC not only lets everyone know it is coming, but sets a placeholder on the webpage in advance. It does make it easy to bookmark and go there when it is up.

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Curious to say the least, but Pitt has added a new member to the 2014 recruiting class.

Cameron Johnson is a local kid. He goes to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Which is apparently in Coraopolis. He was the Trib player of the year. He’s had a significant growth spurt in the last year.

Johnson started his junior season as a 6-foot-2, 165-pound point guard. He now stands 6-6, 185, and can play almost anywhere.

“I expected to grow at least some in high school because my parents are tall and my mom grew late,” said Johnson, whose father is 6-8 and mother is 5-11.

“It’s allowed me to play more positions, that’s for sure. I’ve always stuck to point guard and shooting guard. Now, I can fill in at small forward and power forward. That’s what schools like to see, a guy who is versatile and can play multiple positions.”

He may be up to around 6-7 or 6-8 at this point. His father, Gil Johnson, played at Pitt from 1988-90.

Johnson is not a rated recruit. He has strong academics so he had schools like Rice, Penn and Columbia after him. Late in the recruiting season schools like Stanford, BC and Virginia have been sniffing around him.

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I’m doing the usual dad thing in the morning. Getting the kids ready for school. Drinking coffee. Trying to see what news is happening on the internet. Then my daughter comes up to me, and tells me her stomach hurts. Before I can even suggest she head to the bathroom she proceeds to unload the contents of breakfast, and eventually what appeared to be part of last night’s dinner on my shoes. Good start to the week.

The QB situation for this season has essentially been known since the end of last August when Tra’von Chapman was dismissed from the school and team. Owing to few blowouts in the second half of the season and an O-line that between mediocrity and injuries should have been considered a work hazard for any QB, there wasn’t the Tyler Palko-Bill Stull-esque classic clamor to get Chad Voytik some work. There may have been an occasional murmur, but nothing significant.

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Last year, Curt and Voodoo Brewery debuted their HTP beer. That was some really good stuff.

In the last year, Voodoo has had some significant growth. Their beers are showing up in more places (but not in Ohio, dammit).

This Friday kicks off Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week. Voodoo is taking part, and they have reworked HTP to the new version H2P. I’ll let Curt explain:

H2P is a revamped iteration of the HTP IPA. For H2P this year I changed the recipe from the previous batches, along with the hops and hop schedule.

The past two batches featured Zythos and 7 C’s opposite Simcoe. This year and in the future, it will be a single-hop Simcoe IPA.

Technically a different beer, but the soul of it is still the same. We are calling this H2P going forward. As a former Pitt student, I know the Pitt faithful use HTP and H2P interchangeably, so it seemed fitting to change the “T” to a “2” for version 2.0. The H2P was inspired by the IPAs I fell in love with in California and deepened my college experience in South Oakland.

H2P is a 8.0% west coast-style IPA brewed with four kinds of malted barley and a ridiculous amount of Simcoe hops with five kettle additions and two dry hops. The nose of the beer is rich in pine and fruit notes, with hints passion fruit, apricot, along with woodsy and floral undertones. Medium bodied, this beer starts with a mildly bitter taste that gives way to the pine and fruit notes found in the nose on the back end. H2P is a bright and crisp IPA that was designed to be highly drinkable, exceedingly flavorful and aromatic, but without being abrasively bitter. As production allows, we hope to continue to provide this beer to the Pittsburgh market and the Pitt faithful each year for Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week.

Curt has informed me that in addition to being on tap at Voodoo Brewery for about 2 weeks, H2P will be available in Pittsburgh at the following locations during Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week.

Oakland:
Mad Mex
Fuel and Fuddle
The Porch at Schenley

East Liberty:
Kelly’s

New Kensington:
House of 1000 Beers

South Side:
Carson Street Deli

Looks like I’m making a run to Meadville this weekend.

It has been amusing watch Tom Savage work his way up the draft charts. From mid-third round to top of the third. To somewhere in the second round, up to the top of the second. Now he is — at least in the rumors and chatter — to be heading into the first round.

How hot is he? Late last week Savage’s agent, Neil Schwartz, had to tell two teams who wanted to set up a visit or meeting with the quarterback that he didn’t have any time left to do so. “There are literally no days left on his calendar for him to go see any other teams,” Schwartz said Saturday. The deadline for teams to host players or work them out is April 27, and by then Savage is scheduled to have either worked out for or had visits with 24 or 25 teams. That’s an amazing number of workouts and/or meetings … and when I say meetings with teams, I mean time with either the GM, coach, offensive coordinator or two or three of those. … Amazing to think a player so itinerant and with so little college success could be leap-frogging A.J. McCarron, Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger. But there’s a good chance Savage will.

The reasons are understandable.

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It had to figure, right? Pitt decides not to do a spring game and the weather was absolutely perfect this past Saturday.

Well, from the talk and some reports the Field Pass event was a success. Pitt had more people than they expected sign up and attend the event. I think if they had announced the event at the same time they made the announcement not to have a spring game, the reaction might have been better. Including from me.

Seems, though, that Pitt is at the start of a trend. Or at the very least a debate on the merits of spring games. For programs that will pull in over 30,000 fans for a game, it’s a no-brainer. For other programs it becomes a trickier decision, much more about what the coach and the athletic department feel is needed.

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It’s not the same, I know.

Tyrone Haughton signed his letter of intent today, to become a member of the Pitt’s 2014 recruiting class. Haughton is a 6-9 C-F who came from the JUCO ranks.

Originally he was a 3-4 star recruit who signed to play with South Carolina. After Darrin Horn was fired and Frank Martin came in, things changed. Martin had a verbal from another big man at K-State. The player switched to South Carolina. Suddenly, the scholarship numbers weren’t right and it seems that South Carolina suddenly had a problem with Haughton’s grades.

Oh, but SC and Martin didn’t want Haughton to completely go away. Just go to prep school for a year and see how things look next year. Haughton said no thanks and went to junior college. Isn’t recruiting just a lovely thing?

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It seems assistant basketball coach Barry Rohrssen has been the rumored target to replace Orlando Antigua on John Calipari’s Kentucky bench. Granted it has been a slow week-long rumble, but everyone is presuming it will happen (and thank you KSR comment kids for demonstrating that Kentucky fans have little basketball knowledge outside their own team).

For Rohrssen it is almost a no-brainer. Kentucky is a blue-blood job with huge exposure. No, John Calipari assistants haven’t had the greatest success rates, but they get opportunities. Rohrssen obviously wants another crack at being a head coach. His odds increase being on a staff like Kentucky  This may shock some, but the money may have very little to do with it.

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As the spring practices reach their endpoint, the talk turns to the change in how the players themselves are from when Coach Paul Chryst came in with a whole new staff. A lot of that theme for the day comes courtesy of Offensive Line Coach Jim Hueber and his typical bluntness.

“When we came in here, there was a reason we got hired and it wasn’t because this was utopia,” Hueber said. “I think we fought through that. We had kids that didn’t want to buy in to our way. You look around now, there’s not much bitching and moaning, there’s not many guys missing. We don’t have the problems that we had before.

“How that pans out in wins and losses we’ll only know as these recruiting classes get older.”

Now in the stories from both papers that last quote was left out. That is the nut, though.

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Is there anything more absurd than posting a top-25 list for the next season within minutes or hours of the final game of the season? Yes. Compiling a list of the rankings to see where your team fits. I’m nothing if not ridiculous so here are the ones to date.

Gary Parrish at CBS Sports had his out minutes after the UConn-Kentucky game ended. Pitt got slotted in there despite the departures of Lamar Patterson and Talib Zanna at #23.

After that Pitt tends to get lumped in with others who may crack the polls but not ready to be ranked before the season begins.

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No real theme to the stories. Basically some of the ones that have piled up in my browser tabs that need to go.

The pads came off for yesterday’s practice per NCAA spring practice rules. Given the number of players banged up or sitting out practices for injuries, that seemed like good timing. The good news is that Isaac Bennett is returned, but is going to be limited in practices. At this time of the year, it is hard to say what are real injuries that would keep a player out for games and what are little things that they are just being careful not to aggravate when the season is five months away.

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