Maybe it was just the ineptitude of Wake Forest that made the loss feel like the end of Stallings. Maybe it has been seeing his name on so many of the “hot seat” articles this week. Maybe it’s because no one was watching the game — at the Pete or even on TV. Hell, maybe it’s because it is snowing this morning where I live after being 70, two days ago.

Whatever the reason, there is almost a palpable feeling that Pitt basketball coach Kevin Stallings has moved into the terminal stage.

Let’s get this out of the way. Wake Forest is bad. I mean, painful to watch, incompetent, bad. This is year four after the deconstruction by Bzdelik for Danny Manning and they have taken a significant step backwards. They have some nice pieces, but they are a bad team. That Pitt still lost to them is a testament of how much worse Pitt is, and why this loss seems like the bottom.

Let me put it this way. In the second half, Pitt had two. TWO! Two scoring droughts of at least five minutes. By they time they scored to end that second drought, they were down by only 4 points. That was amazing.

And Stallings knows this is bad.

With slumped shoulders and sagging spirits, Pitt coach Kevin Stallings said Wednesday night he’s worried more about his players than his job security.

“I’m here to help these guys be successful,” he said, “and I’m not doing a good enough job of that right now.”

Still, the question of how to prop up a program that attracted a meager crowd of 2,420 — a record low at the Pete for a conference game — continues to shadow this team. Pitt (8-21, 0-16) has lost a school-record 16 games in a row. It entered the night as one of only five Division I teams that are winless in conference play.
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“I thought the difference in the game was, honestly, that (Wake Forest) played like they had some experience, and we just kept doing things that seemingly didn’t … we didn’t play with enough discipline to win this game,” Stallings said. “There are new and different lessons they have to learn every game.”

“New and different lessons.”???? It’s the same problems. The same mistakes. That’s why there is no support for Stallings. There is nothing that can be pointed at to show this team. The individual players, even, have made tangible improvements since the start of conference play.

“I could call out mistakes that were made in the last two or three minutes of this game that just completely go against what we practice and what we teach and how we work,” Stallings said. “But that wouldn’t do any good. It’s an overall collective. We have to play better, we have to execute better, we have to execute better on defense, we have to play with more discipline on defense, we have to make good decisions on offense. We start the half and we have three, four, five ‘Like you’re playing H-O-R-S-E’ shots and don’t make one. You’ve got to make shots.”

Such instances raise questions of how much progress and maturation has taken place with this team, as has been the case for much of the season. Now, with only two regular-season games remaining, those same continual struggles also prompt speculation about Stallings and his future at the school.

For now, even as his team continues to lose and the ominous signs around him only seem to multiply — from the swaths of empty seats at the Petersen Events Center to the absence of his boss, athletic director Heather Lyke, at numerous games, including Wednesday’s — Stallings can only focus on what he can control.

“My confidence in that really is irrelevant,” Stallings said of his job security. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Those questions need to be asked to the athletic director. I’m not here to be confident or unconfident. I’m here to help these guys be successful. I’m not doing a good enough job of that right now.”

[Emphasis added.]

AD Heather Lyke was at the Dapper Dan dinner last night. As for why Lyke is generally staying away from the basketball games, the answer is easy. She is trying to avoid having to continually give the same canned answer every AD says of a struggling coach who’s job status is questionable, “we will evaluate the program at the end of the season.”

She’s not going to say anything else. But every utterance of that dreaded cliche is one more nail in the Stallings coffin. And props to Stallings for practically daring Lyke to fire him at this point, even while being depressed.

Columnist Joe Starkey paints a bleak picture.

I guess I’ll start here with the on-court scene: They aren’t even announcing Kevin Stallings’ name independently anymore. Pitt used to introduce the coach — be it Ben Howland, Jamie Dixon or Stallings — after the players. Now it happens before the player intros in quick conjunction with “Pitt Panthers!” in an obvious effort to spare Stallings as many boos as possible.

The “Oakland Zoo” student section has been reduced to a miniature exhibit. It used to stretch across eight sections of Pete real estate. It no longer fills two on most nights.

The 15 smallest crowds in Pete history have come under Stallings’ watch. This was one of them — and at 2,420 the lowest of any conference game in the arena’s history.

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She [Lyke] has to be asking herself whether she can afford to keep Stallings as the fan base dwindles toward zero, not whether Pitt can afford to let him go.

I’m guessing Stallings is gone.

That might not be fair. I almost always believe a new coach deserves one natural recruiting cycle — four years — to make a case. But this has been far more horrifying than any reasonable person could have imagined.

One could argue this is Pitt’s worst team since its very first team in 1905-06, the one that lost a 106-13 squeaker to Westminster.

If they don’t win one of their final two games — against No.1 Virginia on Saturday or at Notre Dame next week — the Panthers will go winless in-conference for the first time. Which means 49 years of conference play.

Stallings’ conference record is 4-30. That is Hue Jackson territory.

The one question that remains out there, where does Pitt find the money? No one seems to have answer to that part.