Pitt has hired it’s new Women’s Basketball Coach.
University of Pittsburgh Director of Athletics Heather Lyke announced Wednesday afternoon the hiring of Lance White as head women’s basketball coach.
“When I first met Coach White, his genuine personality, energy and excitement about being at Pitt was evident and contagious,” Lyke said. “He has a tremendous pedigree in coaching and has been an instrumental part of several successful women’s basketball programs that have sustained success at the highest levels. I am confident he is more than prepared to build a program that brings great pride to our University. We are thrilled to welcome Lance and his wife, Melanie, and their children to Pittsburgh and the Pitt family.”
White comes to Pitt after spending the past 15 years at Florida State, where he helped the Seminoles to a 350-145 (.707) record, including 12 seasons with 20 wins or more. Since White’s arrival at FSU, 10 players were selected in the WNBA Draft, eight Seminoles earned ACC All-Defensive team honors and 37 earned all-conference awards. He helped Florida State reach the NCAA Tournament in 13 of the past 14 years, while the team won at least one NCAA Tournament game in its past 15 appearances. For his standout coaching efforts during the 2016-17 season, White was named the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association National Assistant (WBCA) Coach of the Year.
White was also an assistant coach at Texas Tech before FSU. Texas Tech is also his alma mater.
Hiring a top assistant from a top ACC program. Seems familiar.
“Lance has played an integral part in building our program to this point,” Semrau said in a release. “He is not only a great teacher, but also a strong connector.
“Pittsburgh is getting a tremendous person who cares deeply about his own family in addition to his basketball family. It has been 15 amazing years coaching with Lance, and we wish him nothing but the best.”
I don’t follow women’s basketball closely enough to say much with any authority. That said, the reasoning behind the hire and the resume suggest that this is a good hire for Pitt. A guy that doesn’t seem inclined to jump quickly, and willing to embrace a very tough job.
In Men’s Basketball news, Ryan Luther has indeed decided to transfer. Not at all a shock, really. Luther had become a big supporter of Kevin Stallings and his assistants.
“I liked coach Stallings and his staff and they treated not only me, but the whole team, well,” Luther said Wednesday night. “Nothing against the current staff (under new coach Jeff Capel). But people were bashing coach Stallings, and I didn’t appreciate it.”
Luther, a Hampton graduate who was a four-year starter at Pitt, received an additional year of eligibility from the NCAA because he missed all but 10 games of the 2017-18 season with a foot injury.
He said he met with Capel before deciding to transfer, and he believes thew new coaching staff will have the program pointed in the right direction.
“I like coach Capel and the staff he brought in,” Luther said. “I think they will turn it around quickly. My (Pitt) teammates are hard workers.”Luther said leaving Pitt was a difficult decision.
“I never thought I would leave Pitt,” he said. “But a lot has changed and I would be on my third coach.”
I can’t fault him. When you are going to have a 3d coach in your college career, it is hardly unfair to decide that to make your own choice.
Not a fan of him deciding to go to Arizona, though. It makes some sense. The Wildcat roster is depleted and he will definitely be in the rotation. Plus, it is still Arizona. They will get featured in the Pac-12 TV games frequently.
At the risk of sounding like I am concern trolling, I am hoping that he is not going to play starters minutes. The injuries that cut short his season each of the last two years, suggest something that will re-occur with heavy minutes. He would be better served as a rotation player limited to 15 minutes a game. I honestly question whether his foot can take a heavy workload. Regardless of the training staff.
Luther missed the final 22 games of this season due to a stress reaction in his right foot. In the 10 games he played, the 6-foot-9 Luther averaged 12.7 points and 10.1 rebounds per game.
“The main reason he chose Arizona is because he was really sold on their athletic training staff and their strength coach,” one source said. “This all has to deal with this foot injury. He feels he will have better attention to make sure he has a healthy year.”
In the meantime, Men’s Basketball Head Coach, Jeff Capel, has been hitting the recruiting trail hard and fast this week.
In an effort to reconnect to the fertile recruiting ground in those states, new coach Jeff Capel and assistant Tim O’Toole visited several Big Apple and Garden State prep powerhouses on Tuesday, including Archbishop Molloy, Christ the King, St. Benedict’s Prep and Archbishop Stepinac, which won the New York State Federation championship this year. On Wednesday morning, Capel also hit Lawrence Woodmere Academy.
…
At Molloy, the Pitt coaches joined assistants from Duke and Ohio State in watching Cole Anthony, the 6-foot-3 point guard ranked No. 6 in 2019 ESPN 60 and the son of former NBA guard Greg Anthony.At Christ the King, the Pitt coaches scouted 6-10 big man Kofi Cockburn, ranked No. 36 by ESPN. Coaches from UConn, Syracuse, Cincinnati and Bryant were also on hand.
Pittsburgh offered a scholarship to Cockburn after having previously offered one to Anthony.
At Stepinac, they saw Class of 5-7 2020 guard R.J. Davis and 6-4 2021 wing Adrian Griffin Jr., the son of the former Seton Hall and NBA player Adrian Griffin.From Stepinac, the Pitt coaches went to a 7:30 workout at St. Benedict’s Prep where they saw Class of 2019 wing Precious Achiuwa, ranked No. 12 by ESPN. Achiuwa is wide open in his recruitment, but Maryland was also in on Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning, Capel also met with 6-10 2019 big man Aidan Igiehon of Lawrence Woodmere Academy, ranked No. 38 by ESPN. Igiehon also met recently with USC, Louisville, St. John’s, Stanford and Oregon, with UConn also up on Wednesday.
Lot’s to do.
Pitt women’s basketball is is great hands! Terrific hire Heather.
Capel is doing exactly what he’s supposed to….hard work on the recruiting trail. Aim high….it just takes 1 to commit and others will follow. Great report Chas. Thank you!
Coach Capel (“Capelble”??) is already out there hitting the pavement. Let’s see what he brings home!
It appears that they are looking to be here, long term. And hopefully they earn the opportunity.
They have young families, where do you expect them to live , in a tent.
They are considering school districts (not private schools).
They seem to want to be part of the community.
Keep your panties on guys, lets just look at tangible elements that will indicate success, like recruiting and winning.
One nice thing about this past year was seeing a lot of high quality opponents. Although, by the middle of the 2nd half of the games, most of the better players were on the bench.
Most of the discussions on here are pretend but if I have to wait until 2022 for results I will be wearing Depends.
But you are correct, at this point we can only pretend, hell after 3 years we are still pretending about a winning football program. Hopefully that dream will come true this season.
This is the season where concerns become validated … or optimism is rewarded. There has to be progress. I’m worried about the offense but I see the defense hitting it’s stride. Next season, Pitt should have the depth and experience on offense with the defense clicking. We’ll see how this season goes, however. The offense will have to show progress from game one thru the end of the season. I think it will struggle early on.
Basketball should not take that long to be top 25. A little longer to be top 10. All Capel is recruiting is top 100 and better players per the information being distributed. Two top 100 players and you’re in contention for a Sweet 16. Two top 50 players and you’re in contention for a Final 4. Both dependent on more than a year in the program.
Next season is wash, however. Not much can be done to salvage it at this point. Capel and staff are recruiting mostly 2019 and 2020 kids. This roster will be filled with grad transfers and JUCO’s and may even leave a couple scholarships open for the following season.
Please take the pill before reading.
2019 football recruiting commitments progress.
BC- 7
Clemson- 9
Duke – 7
Florida St. – 10
Georgia Tech – 3
Miami – 10
Virginia- 5
Virginia Tech – 6
Wake Forest – 6
AND
Pitt – 0 – Zero
The Duzzi was suppose to be a top recruiter. We will be scraping the bottom of the barrel again for junior college transfers, walk-ons and Senior transfers. Please don’t tell me its early yet when these other schools are ahead of us so far.
Comment by Pitt Dreamer 04.19.18 @ 10:19 pm
Who cares who is committed in April? The last two recruiting classes didn’t even have the first commit end up in the final recruiting class. Lol. Pitt recruiting under Duzz generally always picks up in June and July with his best recruits closing very late. Btw, Pitt is recruiting just like most top 25 teams are if you look at rankings.
They are not recruiting like a top 10 team, if that’s what you’re upset about. Pitt has to be a top 25 team before they can start recruiting like a top 10 team.
Duzz inherited a poorly recruited roster that was unbalanced at key positions and had been recruited by three different head coaches. It was a mishmash of players recruited to play several different systems. And that doesn’t even address the team morale suffering having been through 3 head coaches.
With time, people forget the disaster that was Pitt football.
So correct , no national titles or even conference titles will be coming our way. By the way, I sat in section 22 for years.
I re-print facts about the number of recruits and people on this site discount the those numbers and facts and give excuses. The man is still not a good coach or recruiter and is full of BS.
There is something wrong with recruiting , why are so many kids turned off by Pitt. Could it be they are not impressed with a coach who can’t speak correct English or in complete sentences? He reminds me of a high school coach trying to make it big. I have been told by a family I know that the Duzz has been recruiting their kid and they are not impressed at all with his presentation the times they have met him. I won’t say what else they said. The recruit is a northern Allegheny county prospect.
Like Spiritofsec22 we have all wasted too much of our hopes and dreams to think anything will be different.
I still hope and want to see success but it is really hard to believe it will come. I really would like to see Narduzzi do well but I don’t have the impression he is smart enough to be the “face” of a college program.
IN any event I don’t see any football coaching changes coming no matter what. They blew all their cash paying off 2 basketball coaches.
Hopefully, this will help sway others who have been offered.
Does this mean that Kene is staying?
You brought back the best memories we every had which were at Pitt Stadium. Horn man (Bob) sits in our section at Heinz for every game, its like seeing family again.( no horns allowed at Heinz of course) He used to wear a Halloween mask and blast the horn for every point scored by the team. He had the entire section going nuts every game. Unfortunately none of that that goes on at Heinz. Horn man sits behind us along with about 50 others from old section 22. One of the guys approached Steve P. and he made sure we all continued to sit together at Heinz when the change was made. I have been going to Pitt games for over 50 years. Dad used to be a local football coach and AD, some of his players went to Pitt and several other major colleges. Once my brothers and I graduated from Pitt we purchased season tickets and have had them ever since.
Being one of the “oldies” we have all seen the many attempts to establish our teams with mostly no more progress than the previous guy for whatever reason. Truthfully, at this point, its hard to jump on the euphoric band wagons that many of our people do when we hire new AD’s and Coaches. But that being said, I will put negativity away in a box and look at the positives going forward.
Take care all.
link to post-gazette.com
link to twitter.com
LOLOLOL!!! Maybe that’s why the roof leaked.
BTW, Trey McGowens looks like a great kid…this video is 1 1/2 years old too.
link to frogsowar.com