If you feel like it, I did a podcast Sunday night with Talkin ACC Sports.
For the most part, I kept things coherent. That is until I had to talk about whether Kevin Stallings will be back for a third year as the head coach of Pitt Men’s Basketball.
There I sort of devolved into a stammering mess, because after this past weekend it feels like so many moving parts — both internal and external — that make this a very difficult thing.
— The losing is obvious and the overriding issue. Not simply staring down the barrel of 0-ACC. Stallings couldn’t handle a senior-laden, albeit flawed team last year. He was treated like the substitute teacher. He’s flat out done nothing to indicate he will do much to inch the program to even mediocrity.
— Dismissing him after two years without any scandal, is virtually unheard of at this level of college basketball. I’ve been racking my brain for examples and the only one I can recall is Virginia Tech. They abruptly and bizarrely fired Seth Greenberg in the last week of April 2012. With such a late firing, they promoted assistant James Johnson. He promptly bombed and after two years hired Buzz Williams. (It took Williams until his third season to get VT into the NCAAs.) It’s not like the next hire won’t be looking for guarantees — written into his contract — to protect him financially if Pitt shows a similar lack of patience.
— The buyout. Has it really been less then two weeks since I posted on how the buyout makes it so difficult to fire Stallings? Still true, but it feels less and less like the impediment it was.
— Because attendance and apathy is a killer. It cannot be ignored, and may be the deciding factor at this point.
AD Heather Lyke was on The Fan this morning.
The topic of Stallings was broached and ducked as you would expect.
Lyke on Pitt's poor attendance this season and how that will factor into a decision on Stallings:
"Attendance is disappointing. There's no question about it."
— Craig Meyer (@CraigMeyerPG) February 27, 2018
Pitt AD Heather Lyke on 93.7 The Fan on Kevin Stallings' future with the program: "We're in the midst of continuing to evaluate."
Said decisions will be made after the ACC tournament.
— Craig Meyer (@CraigMeyerPG) February 27, 2018
But that is not all, is it?
— The FBI investigation into college athletics. Despite the quiet for a few months, it got a little busier and then exploded with the ESPN.com story on (for now) Arizona Head Coach Sean Miller being recorded on a wiretap discussing $100,000 payment for a player. That may finally end the delusional wing of Pitt fans who think Sean Miller will one day return to Pitt, but it is a jolting reminder that there is a lot of potentially damming information that is bundled up in this matter.
A lot of coaches could go down. And does anyone — especially Pitt — want to take a chance on hiring a coach who could end up being fired a year later because they were paying players at their prior job? Sure they would end up fired for cause and not much pain on the contract side. But restarting again? We saw how well that went with football?
— Having said that, waiting a year to make the change could put Pitt at a real disadvantage in hiring a coach if the FBI investigation does become as widespread as some figure. That means a lot of sudden retirements and firings. Suddenly it is a sellers’ market for clean coaches. Pitt would be competing for hiring any coach with a lot more programs.
There’s a lot going on and; boy, I’m glad I don’t have to make this call.
& a Soph (Stewart), plus a very good recruit in Golden. And might land 6-11 Stone. Food for thought!?
One other thing that Gillispie being fired (aside from Wins and Losses) was/is Gillispie’s drinking problem. Also, that’s Kentucky. They can and do throw a lot more money at basketball then Pitt.
So an elite recruit gets offered some cash to play at a school. Yeah that is not appropriate, but it is in no way in the same league of what happened in Happy Valley. It would be better to use our law enforcement to fight real crime in our country instead of wiretapping basketball coaches and their recruits.