So, will Pitt be able to field a roster for ACC basketball play next season? Joking but not joking.

4 of the 5 starters graduate from a team that finished 4-14 and rarely used the bench. As well this month, three players have announced they are transferring, and a fourth player was dismissed for violating team rules. Going off the roster on Pitt's website and removing the players who graduate or are leaving, here is who I believe is left among returning scholarship players, with points per game.

Cameron Johnson 11.9 ppg
Ryan Luther 5.7 ppg
Jonathan Milligan 2.2 ppg
Rozelle Nix 1.4 ppg

A quick trip to a recruiting site shows Pitt with 6 incoming freshman, with the entire class rated as 3 stars (no 4/5 star guys). I'm guessing Stallings is looking at all avenues, so perhaps grad transfers are in play as well? Although it may be difficult to convince a guy to come in for a year when its a rebuilding job.

If no one else departs it appears Pitt will have around at least 10 scholarship bodies, but I think next year will be a massive struggle.

That is very gruesome out look for Pitt!

I don't have much faith in Stallings to turn things around. I just don't like the hire at all. Hopefully he proves me wrong.

I'm sure they'll field a team. Whether they win an ACC basketball game is another story.

This IMO was one of the worst hires last year. Someone should have stepped in and had the AD to re-evaluate his decision before actually hiring him. There is no way a search committee of any kind pulled Stallings name over other candidates. I hope Pitt figures it out soon rather than later.

(03-22-2017 05:33 PM)ndlutz Wrote:  I don't have much faith in Stallings to turn things around. I just don't like the hire at all. Hopefully he proves me wrong.

I'm sure they'll field a team. Whether they win an ACC basketball game is another story.

I was worried about the GT and Pitt hires last year. GT looks like it might work. Pitt looks like it might be the only bone-headed hire in the ACC in the last 2 years in a major sport.

I have no idea what you guys saw in Stallings. He was decent at Vanderbilt, but he was never great.

But Pitt has a lot going for it. You guys will bounce back.

Pitt did what Pitt does best: unnecessarily blow up a successful, competitive program. Most of the fans, at least the smart ones, were absolutely disgusted. The AD, one year into his tenure, nuked the hoops program out of his own hubris and then hightailed it out of town.

We are likely the new BC. You're welcome Eagles.

(03-22-2017 08:28 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  Pitt did what Pitt does best: unnecessarily blow up a successful, competitive program. Most of the fans, at least the smart ones, were absolutely disgusted. The AD, one year into his tenure, nuked the hoops program out of his own hubris and then hightailed it out of town.

We are likely the new BC. You're welcome Eagles.

Ouch!

It's actually going to get worse. Word on the street is Milligan is also leaving and Johnson likely will as well. Luther is a solid bench guy and Nix is not a Division I basketball player, much less an ACC caliber player.

As for Kevin Stallings, he's a victim in this is much as anything else. The move from the Big East to the ACC really hurt Pitt because we focused all of our recruiting efforts on New York City. When we lost regular trips to that area for games, it absolutely CRUSHED our recruiting.

Dixon was openly critical of the move to the ACC at the time and he saw this train wreck coming. That's why he left when he did.

Next year is going to be gruesome and the following year probably won't be much better. My guess is that we will be looking for a new coach in two years and we will be doing so with a program that has been completely destroyed.

Also, it's not like this is a big surprise. Anyone who follows the program closely could see this coming from a mile away. We haven't recruited anyone in several years now.

This year's team literally did not have a point guard, a shooting guard, or a center. It had four wings and a power forward who wanted to play on the wing. It was the worst constructed roster I can remember at Pitt in at least two decades and it was obvious that the current coaches feel the same way.

Our program has fallen off a cliff and it is a long way to the bottom. This year was torturous at next year is going to be 10 times worse. And the most frightening part is there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

There's no sense of, "Hey, we're gonna bring in all these new guys and take our lumps, but it will be worth it in the end because in two or three years were going to be really good."

Instead, it's more like, "Hey, we are going to bring in all these new guys and we are obviously going to take our lumps next year. However, if everything breaks our way, in 2–3 years we have a real chance to go .500."

There's no energy or optimism around the program. We normally sell out the 12,500 seat Pete but next year we'll be lucky to draw 5,000 fans per game.

Even worse for Stallings, the athletic director who hired him has left for Oregon State, so he won't have any protection either.

Pitt still owes him $14 million on a six-year contract. They are not going to eat that money so he is safe for at least two years. However, it's difficult to fathom these next two years going much better than this past year went and that's not nearly good enough.

If you are a fan of an ACC school and you want to laugh at another school, find Kevin Stallings's introductory press conference at Pitt.

It was the most surreal thing I have ever seen. At most places they treat introductory press conferences like pep rallies or PTO meetings. During Stallings's pressed the assembled media was an open revolt.

At one point, one of the media members literally angrily demanded that former AD Scott Barnes "come clean," with the process because of how absurdly bad the hires seemed to everyone right from the start.

I just shook my head and thought to myself, "I've never seen anything like this before in my life."

(03-24-2017 12:37 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  It's actually going to get worse. Word on the street is Milligan is also leaving and Johnson likely will as well. Luther is a solid bench guy and Nix is not a Division I basketball player, much less an ACC caliber player.

That is rough. Johnson showed promise and presumably would have been the star guy the next two years. Milligan didn't play much but you need some returning guys for program experience. At this point if they leave, I wonder how much of the decision will be based on the prior departures. At a certain point, whether an athletic roster or office environment, if a critical mass leave others don't want to be left holding the bag by themselves.

The roster issues definitely go back to before Dixon left. Hopefully Stallings can bring in a few guys who accept the team will struggle but want playing time to try and stem the tide a bit. Even if it's 1 or 2 grad transfers just because he'll have roster spots for the coming season and it could prevent a winless ACC schedule.

Yeah, I'm not too bummed about that. What's the practical difference between going 0–18 and going 4-14, as they were this year? They were the No. 14 seed in the 15-team ACC Tournament. It really doesn't matter at that point.

At that point, you really ought to just try to clear out your roster and bring in new guys who can hopefully play at this level. None of the guys we had were very good and certainly were not difference makers. Even Johnson, who I agree is the best of the four players listed above, is really just a shooter. He can't handle the ball and he certainly cannot defend anyone.

Like everyone else, I too thought the Stallings hiring was atrocious. Not merely bad – flat out atrocious.

However, he is a little bit of a victim of circumstance here in that he inherited a train wreck of the roster. By the time he gets it turned around, if he can even get it turned around, he's going to run out of contractual racetrack. And I say that knowing full well that he still has FIVE years remaining on his contract. I think that's why Pitt fans are so dour right now. This program is bad and about to get much, much worse and there is no visible light at the end of this terminally long tunnel.

I just hope that in the meantime he can bring in enough talent so that the next coach can capitalize on it.

(03-24-2017 08:25 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  Yeah, I'm not too bummed about that. What's the practical difference between going 0–18 and going 4-14, as they were this year? They were the No. 14 seed in the 15-team ACC Tournament. It really doesn't matter at that point.

At that point, you really ought to just try to clear out your roster and bring in new guys who can hopefully play at this level. None of the guys we had were very good and certainly were not difference makers. Even Johnson, who I agree is the best of the four players listed above, is really just a shooter. He can't handle the ball and he certainly cannot defend anyone.

Like everyone else, I too thought the Stallings hiring was atrocious. Not merely bad – flat out atrocious.

However, he is a little bit of a victim of circumstance here in that he inherited a train wreck of the roster. By the time he gets it turned around, if he can even get it turned around, he's going to run out of contractual racetrack. And I say that knowing full well that he still has FIVE years remaining on his contract. I think that's why Pitt fans are so dour right now. This program is bad and about to get much, much worse and there is no visible light at the end of this terminally long tunnel.

I just hope that in the meantime he can bring in enough talent so that the next coach can capitalize on it.

True, and hopefully your last sentence comes true. I don't follow recruiting a lot but it doesn't appear anyone in the incoming freshman class will be an immediate star. Hopefully some or most of them are at the ACC level though once they get experience. They should have plenty of playing time early and maybe that pays off when they're upperclassmen.

(03-24-2017 08:25 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  Yeah, I'm not too bummed about that. What's the practical difference between going 0–18 and going 4-14, as they were this year? They were the No. 14 seed in the 15-team ACC Tournament. It really doesn't matter at that point.

conference realignments have led to the ACC–Big Ten Challenge being expanded to 14 games.

Imbalances in the number of teams in the conferences are resolved by dropping the larger conference's lowest finisher(s) in the prior season from the challenge pool
-- wiki

ODD MAN OUT

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(03-24-2017 12:37 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  It's actually going to get worse. Word on the street is Milligan is also leaving and Johnson likely will as well. Luther is a solid bench guy and Nix is not a Division I basketball player, much less an ACC caliber player.

As for Kevin Stallings, he's a victim in this is much as anything else. The move from the Big East to the ACC really hurt Pitt because we focused all of our recruiting efforts on New York City. When we lost regular trips to that area for games, it absolutely CRUSHED our recruiting.

Dixon was openly critical of the move to the ACC at the time and he saw this train wreck coming. That's why he left when he did.

Next year is going to be gruesome and the following year probably won't be much better. My guess is that we will be looking for a new coach in two years and we will be doing so with a program that has been completely destroyed.

That's is not at all why Dixon left when he did. To suggest it was the conference change is straight up BS particularly since he signed a 10 year contract extension the year we entered the ACC. No basketball coaches wanted to leave the Big East, but he also had conveyed his preference to the school leadership that if Pitt had to change conference, something that had been percolating for years, was that it move to the ACC. The change in his boss is the biggest reason why he decided to get a fresh start. Simply, he didn't feel he had the support from his new boss to navigate a down cycle (a down cycle being still in post-season tournaments by his standards) and rebuild, and guess what, he didn't. We were absolutely f'ed in the coaching search because the college coaching community eyebrows were collectively raised by what went down. No one but someone who was on the verge of being fired was willing to step into that highly questionable environment. We got what we deserved, the first losing season in 17 years with the promise of more.

Most of my optimism at this point centers around the fact that we have a new AD for the next basketball hire. I hope Stallings turns out to be hidden genius, but nothing in his long coaching resume, or any observations of his coaching this season, signals that as anything but a pipe dream. Actually, the thing I do like about him, and actually gives me hope about his tenure at Pitt, is this willingness of his to clean out the program because I've seen first hand how one rotten apple can bring down a new coach when he is trying to establish himself somewhere new.

Q: Besides Greater Pittsburgh, where do you think the Panthers SHOULD recruit basketball players? I don't think New York City is out of the question, but your non-conference schedule would need to be focused. Philadelphia might make more sense, and I'm sure there are plenty of teams there who would LOVE a home-and-home with Pitt in hoops.

Where do you Panther fans think the focus should be?

DC, NYC, & Philly

(03-24-2017 02:51 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  Q: Besides Greater Pittsburgh, where do you think the Panthers SHOULD recruit basketball players? I don't think New York City is out of the question, but your non-conference schedule would need to be focused. Philadelphia might make more sense, and I'm sure there are plenty of teams there who would LOVE a home-and-home with Pitt in hoops.

Where do you Panther fans think the focus should be?

NYC, Philly, DMV. We been scheduling as many neutral site games as possible in NYC. We have been turned down for home-and-homes with Villanova and Georgetown (although those have been our secret scrimmages the last two years). We also started pivoting more south since joining the ACC.

What about Ohio, Michigan and/or Indiana?