Sorry about the gap in posting. As usual, I put off doing the taxes until the final week. And naturally, that coincided with a crunch week of 12-hour work days.
There’s not much to really write about what is happening in Pitt basketball at the moment. Pitt is pursuing transfers — grad and regular — visits are on the table. Yet, it doesn’t seem like anything is happening. Even as it also feels like a period of total chaos and a desperate need for something. Anything to happen.
The team for next year will not have one returning starter. A recruiting class that is seven–deep, and it still isn’t enough. There are still rumors of at least one more possible transfer out of the program. I mean, at least it isn’t Memphis, but this is still a mess (or as Pat Forde put it as an aside in a column about this year’s coaching hire — “blooming disaster”).
As a further aside, how does Pitt not get matched up with Memphis in the Veterans Classic to tipoff the 2017-18 season? Sure, they get the headline game with host, Navy. I don’t care. It would have been perfect. The retread coaches, with fans of both teams trying to learn to recognize the players on their own team in the “Who Are These Guys” Classic. Frankly, Pitt and Memphis have to play a game this season. Start the home-and-home. Make it happen.
Back to the subject (sort of) at hand. It should be noted, that I don’t think Pitt’s recruiting class — primarily focusing on the incoming freshmen of the group — is bad. It looks better then decent. At the same time, it isn’t leaps and bounds above what Pitt was doing pre-Stallings — at least as far as how the recruiting sites ranked the kids. The bigger problem is that there isn’t much time to let the kids learn and work their way into the starting line-up. Let alone the rotation.
This class is going to be thrown out there, in the toughest, deepest basketball conference. I hope that they are better then the floor (Boston College), but I’m honestly not sure.
A nice infodump article on transfers/player dismissal history of Kevin Stallings at Vanderbilt. For the most part, his time there was rather stable — or at least about average — in comparison to most major conference basketball programs.
In other ACC-related news. After Arkansas slow walked back its attempt to dive into bullet-ridden madness by allowing guns at college sporting venues, the North Carolina legislature is giving it all she’s got to portray itself as the dumbest, hickest, reactionary group.
You have the legislator who compared President Lincoln to Hitler as a kind of solo, warm-up act. The special stupidity is the waste-of-time, grandstanding bill introduced to pull UNC and NC State out of the ACC if the ACC boycotts or pulls tournaments from the state. As recently happened in the wake of NC’s HB2 (bathroom bill).
I’ve always been supportive of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth following the lead of several southern states in legislating to make mandatory a certain in-state rivalry game. But seeing bills like this are the sort of thing that remind me why it isn’t a good idea for the states to stay out of the athletic departments.
I can’t see Luther transferring with only one year of eligibility remaining unless he can also graduate early. Otherwise he would have to sit a year and he’s already coming off of a half season of downtime.
And re Luther, if that’s the case that he’s kind of ‘trapped’, well then I do feel bad for him. Hopefully he makes the most of his situation whatever transpires…
Pitt’s beat writer, Craig Meyers, inferred that both Milligan and Nix are trying to graduate over the summer to be grad transfers. There is a very good chance that Luther is the only returning player on the roster.
1618mt – I understand what you’re hoping for but Stalling doesn’t have the track record to make that reality and the odds of it happening, even with another coach, are extremely low.
Freshmen, JUCO’s and grad transfers do not make for a competitive team. It just doesn’t. Especially, in a conference like the ACC. Pitt is in really bad shape right now. Freshmen, JUCO’s and grad transfers are meant to be complimentary players not the meat of the team.
I really don’t see Pitt basketball being very competitive for a long time. Stalling will probably get fired after next season which means we lose the 2018 class as well as more transfers out of the program. If we hit a home run with a new hire, it’s still going to be about 3 years before we see the fruits of that coaches efforts based on the lack of a roster they will inherit.
I love college basketball so I’ll be suffering right there with the team but, even as an optimist, I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.
In any case Pitt is going to pay a major price for the next few years in lost revenue. Going to take years to get the fans back.
Unfortunately, much of this would have happened no matter the new coach, but at least a young up and comer would have given us hope.
And no, I never said KS was a bad coach, maybe ‘averagish’; and No, I never said I wouldn’t be rooting again next year.
The two players mostly blamed was Young and Artis yet there was never an issue with them in the past. Young played much of his frosh year with a broken bone in his back, was one of two NCAA athletes selected to serve on a very prestigious national council, and played a few games this year with a broken orbital bone in his eye. And the only issue I saw with Artis was that he didn’t prove to be a good point guard as we hoped
Pitt now has 4 spots to fill before next season that could still turn into 6 spots. Smh.
I know Pitt won’t do it. I know it’s delusional to even mention it but now is the perfect time to cut ties. Next season is already lost. Losing this class is not going to change the trajectory of the program. It’s already in a death spiral. No recovering from it.
Fire Stallings and deal with the fallout (It really can’t get worse) Pay the buyout then go cheap and hire B-Knight. Rid ourselves of this train wreck and give us a connection to our past.
The obvious key is recruiting, and Stallings who is supposed to be good at it hasn’t distinguished himself so far.
Maybe we need some foreign guys. Haven’t had many , Zavackas, Adams, Kendall and the guy that started the down trend Montreal’s Gift.
We have a lot of foreign undergrads and grad students, why not some on the basketball team?
GC – As a person who is on record many times as believing we need to fire KS NOW, I still believe he’s a better recruiter than Dixon, and its too soon to judge him negatively in this area in my opinion.
TT – From what other posters have said, BK is not a very good recruiter; if this is true, then best case we scenario with him is Dixon situation- a guy that can coach but not recruit, but at least in Dixon’s case he’s a proven coach, whereas BK is not. So I just don’t see it with BK unfortunately. I think we want him to prove himself, understandably.
Who called this?
Tomas – I may have misread your post. For some reason I originally read it as being a regular top 5 ACC finisher, which I don’t see, if ever.
Certainly you could expect UNC, Duke, UVA and Louisville to be consistently taking the Top4 .. and in a good year, we would battle Syracuse, ND and one or two other mid-level squads for the 5-6 slots. Not a lot of room for error.
Looking at it like that, it blows me away why Barnes thought (assuming he did) KS would get us into the top of the ACC and challenge for titles. Like you said, there is no evidence that he could do that in 15+ years at Vandy. Why would he become great now ?
Perhaps Barnes was comfortable simply with mediocrity ?
The kid changed his mind and only he really knows the actual reason. They say Pitt won’t offer him and others will. That sounds like a program issue.
How many of you would wait around to see if you landed a job while unemployed if the were other offers?
“Junior college guard Troy Simons, a University Prep graduate who verbally committed to Pitt in the fall, is visiting New Mexico this weekend after he failed to sign a letter of intent with the Panthers on Wednesday, his former coach Matt Furjanic said.
Furjanic coached Simons at Polk (Fla.) Junior College. He said Simons didn’t receive a visit or a letter of intent because he was told by Pitt director of basketball operations Dan Cage that it’s not the program’s policy to do so with junior college transfers until they graduate.
Furjanic, a Rankin native who formerly coached at Robert Morris and Pitt-Greensburg, said Simons is on track to graduate by June 20.
“Because Pitt didn’t offer him a visit or a letter of intent, I felt it was in his best interests to look at other options because Pitt is making no attempt to sign him,” Furjanic said.
Furjanic said Illinois and South Florida also expressed interest in Simons, who led the NJCAA in scoring last season with an average of 26.3 points per game.
Simons was recruited to Pitt by former assistant coach Jeremy Ballard, who recently left to take a job at VCU.”
Regarding Stallings’ recruiting, I was trying to say the same thing the other day. Admittedly, it’s hard to judge/project a team with that many new guys, especially since they’ll be manning every position on the court (ie, not just a bunch of new guards, or just forwards), but the talent looks pretty decent, has nice position distribution, and even mixes in some experience due to the 2 JUCOS, both of which look like they can play based on stats and write-ups. I seem to recall that Huggins had a lot of success with juco at Cincy, so they can help if you know how to go about the process.
I did get a kick out of the pittsburghpanthers.com website, when they announced the Navy game they showed a shot of Ryan Luther going up for a layup, nice that they managed to get a picture of only him in the shot, supporting just about the only guy left on the team. You have to wonder what he’s thinking now… I have to imagine he is gone too before next season rolls around.