By Sean Gentille / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pitt’s 55-point home loss to Louisville should’ve been staggering for anyone with even a passing awareness of what games at the Petersen Events Center used to be like. Imagine what it was like for guys who actually played.
Thanks to Levance Fields, we don’t have to; the former Pitt point guard was part of teams from 2005-2009 that went 111-30 and is third all-time in assists. He isn’t thrilled with the Kevin Stallings Era thus far. (There are more tweets. These are the ones without bad words.)
LeVance Fields @Lfields23
But they said Brandin Knight wasn't ready to be head coach
6:49 AM - 25 Jan 2017
LeVance Fields @Lfields23
Can't believe PITT n I never will.. terrible decision to go with stallings over Brandin..
6:50 AM - 25 Jan 2017
Now, Fields’ main opinion here — that Pitt screwed up in not giving Knight the job Jamie Dixon was forced out of — is debatable. Great as he was as a player, Knight was part of some uneven teams as an assistant coach. One of the biggest problems with late-Dixon teams was that their recruiting wasn’t on par with elite ACC teams, and Knight was a big part of that.
Maybe Knight, now an assistant at Rutgers, winds up as a great head coach. It’d be cool if he did. But the problem all along wasn’t that Pitt wound up making a clean break from the Dixon lineage (though Stallings offered Knight an assistant job that he turned down).
The issue was that they went with Stallings in the first place; his hiring may have been a conflict of interest; he was reportedly on the way out at Vanderbilt; and though he recruited NBA talent and built a deserved reputation as an offensive coach, he also had a history of freaking out on players and failing to do enough with said NBA talent. All of those were known issues working against Stallings before he coached a game.
And even then, he isn’t even the full problem; he’s been forced to deal with, essentially, a random hodgepodge of players that features zero ballhandlers, zero true playmakers and 2 1/2 players that can score with anything approaching consistency. If you go into ACC play with that, you’re guaranteed to get pounded. A huge part of that is on Dixon and, yes, Knight.
The issue is that Stallings is spectacularly failing to maximize even that. He’s said it himself, in between throwing his players under the bus; it’s a mixed message to follow that up with platitudes like this, via the Post-Gazette’s Craig Meyer, but at least he’s trying:
“It’s my responsibility to have them prepared to play better than that, harder than that, smarter than that. We weren’t. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s my responsibility.”
Stallings is in a tough spot that he admittedly doesn’t know how to get out of; if he hoped the pre-Louisville call-out would work, it, uh, didn’t. Now, his team is in a position where it could conceivably lose every single one of its remaining games. It’s not likely, but really, can you put money on a team that lost by 55 (and should’ve lost by more) to turn it around in any real way?
The hope, clearly, is that administration, alumni and recruits give him a mulligan this season. Maybe he weathers the storm, stops getting “embarrassed” by his team and brings in the mix of talent necessary to fix things.
But when you sandwich a five-point loss to N.C. State between a 26-point home loss to Miami and the worst defeat since Roosevelt was president -— the first one -— that becomes a tougher sell. When you essentially say “I don’t like the way these guys play and don’t know how to fix it,” you somehow make things worse — and certainly, folks like Levance Fields are going to start noticing.
Sean Gentille: sgentille@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @seangentille.
Pitt’s 55-point home loss to Louisville should’ve been staggering for anyone with even a passing awareness of what games at the Petersen Events Center used to be like. Imagine what it was like for guys who actually played.
Thanks to Levance Fields, we don’t have to; the former Pitt point guard was part of teams from 2005-2009 that went 111-30 and is third all-time in assists. He isn’t thrilled with the Kevin Stallings Era thus far. (There are more tweets. These are the ones without bad words.)
LeVance Fields @Lfields23But they said Brandin Knight wasn't ready to be head coach
6:49 AM - 25 Jan 2017
LeVance Fields @Lfields23Can't believe PITT n I never will.. terrible decision to go with stallings over Brandin..
6:50 AM - 25 Jan 2017
Now, Fields’ main opinion here — that Pitt screwed up in not giving Knight the job Jamie Dixon was forced out of — is debatable. Great as he was as a player, Knight was part of some uneven teams as an assistant coach. One of the biggest problems with late-Dixon teams was that their recruiting wasn’t on par with elite ACC teams, and Knight was a big part of that.
Maybe Knight, now an assistant at Rutgers, winds up as a great head coach. It’d be cool if he did. But the problem all along wasn’t that Pitt wound up making a clean break from the Dixon lineage (though Stallings offered Knight an assistant job that he turned down).
The issue was that they went with Stallings in the first place; his hiring may have been a conflict of interest; he was reportedly on the way out at Vanderbilt; and though he recruited NBA talent and built a deserved reputation as an offensive coach, he also had a history of freaking out on players and failing to do enough with said NBA talent. All of those were known issues working against Stallings before he coached a game.
And even then, he isn’t even the full problem; he’s been forced to deal with, essentially, a random hodgepodge of players that features zero ballhandlers, zero true playmakers and 2 1/2 players that can score with anything approaching consistency. If you go into ACC play with that, you’re guaranteed to get pounded. A huge part of that is on Dixon and, yes, Knight.
The issue is that Stallings is spectacularly failing to maximize even that. He’s said it himself, in between throwing his players under the bus; it’s a mixed message to follow that up with platitudes like this, via the Post-Gazette’s Craig Meyer, but at least he’s trying:
“It’s my responsibility to have them prepared to play better than that, harder than that, smarter than that. We weren’t. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s my responsibility.”
Stallings is in a tough spot that he admittedly doesn’t know how to get out of; if he hoped the pre-Louisville call-out would work, it, uh, didn’t. Now, his team is in a position where it could conceivably lose every single one of its remaining games. It’s not likely, but really, can you put money on a team that lost by 55 (and should’ve lost by more) to turn it around in any real way?
The hope, clearly, is that administration, alumni and recruits give him a mulligan this season. Maybe he weathers the storm, stops getting “embarrassed” by his team and brings in the mix of talent necessary to fix things.
But when you sandwich a five-point loss to N.C. State between a 26-point home loss to Miami and the worst defeat since Roosevelt was president -— the first one -— that becomes a tougher sell. When you essentially say “I don’t like the way these guys play and don’t know how to fix it,” you somehow make things worse — and certainly, folks like Levance Fields are going to start noticing.
Sean Gentille: sgentille@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @seangentille.
