I know this has been talked about and we all feel we need more players. However, Chris mentioned in one of the Morning Pitt videos that the coaches don't seem super worried about anything. I have 2 theories.....

1) They think very very highly of at least 2 of the Freshman coming in. The coaches have mentioned before that they knew Addison was going to be special before he even got here. I am thinking they feel that way about one of the young guys. Or along those same lines, they think either Alston, Copeland, or Che are going to be game changers.

2) They have something else working up their sleeves. Now I not the faintest clue what that would be but they must have a plan. I feel the coaches have earned the benefit of the doubt. So I will trust them.

And I literally just stared at seeing Pitt 3rd at 6-2 and for about 2 minutes couldn't stop smiling.

It feels so nice for Pitt to be a top tier program again .

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Pitt vs Penn State for a NCAA tournament play in game

Trust me, I’ve been to every single Pitt basketball game at The Yum and we have never left with a win. This cannot be the case on Weds night. UL is horrible. A Pitt weds night game will have a soft crowd compared to the insanity we faced with Pitino and a good cardinal team. Can this be the team and the year that we finally get the monkey off our backs??? We must if we’re going to continue this run. Hope to see some Pitt fans there. I’ll have the Hamlin jersey and the blue Afro on behind the Pitt bench. Hail to Pitt!!!

The volunteer position is being turned into a full time paid assistant role with no recruiting restrictions for baseball/softball and other sports that have it. Starts July 1.

This is huge for Pitt baseball. Our volunteer is former MLB All Star Devin Mesoraco. Having him be a full time assistant who can fully recruit will be a massive win for us

Will Pitt accomplish this this season?

Also, how many teams will be able to say that?

Season ticket holder. I asked to be put on the ND ticket list, they charged me $10?

Maybe we should throw the ball to him next year? Didnt Cig and Jurkovec have a good TE at BC?

Too bad cook didn't follow

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Sibande did a great job on Ellis last night (sans the bad foul before the half).

Cummings and Elliot do well also. All over their men with hustle. Great job rebounding.

Burton. Takes on the bigger guys. Uses his body well.

I look at Santos and see a guard but he has done well against bigger guys. Again, uses his body well and hustles. Good rebounder. I really like this kid. Good form on his shot - really think they are going to down SOON!!! I still can’t believe that spin move. More to come from Nate.

So is best case scenario next year 9-3. I see losses to Notre Dame, Florida State, and North Carolina. I know its early, but I'd take 9-3 if we can avoid the one bad loss, we have every year.

From Brian Dohn. Not as active as used to be, is this a surprise. This would really suck.

The kid from California that signed with Florida then got his 13 million NIL yanked. I just saw a report that he may have gotten his release from his NLI. I want to know what others on here think.

I am thinking that the NCAA had a real opportunity here to actually take some control over the NIL stuff and they are not doing that. The kid chased the money. He committed and signed with a school for all the wrong reasons. I do know that 13 million would make me do about anything but I am sure he had other NIL stuff at other schools if he would have went to them. But the bottom line is the NCAA has no teeth and no power to control NIL or the transfer stuff. They punted for 30 years and finally congress forced them to get with the program. The problem is since it was not the NCAA that allowed the NIL stuff they have no solid ground to stand on.

Which brings me to Rashada. I feel for the kida, I really do, however life is all about choices. He chose to follow the money and sign with Florida not because of the coaches, or the school, or the academics or the history....he chose Florida because of the money. Now for reasons unknown to us...that money was pulled after he signed. The other layer to this is that it is not the school the pulled anything it was the 3rd party collective. So Florida who is horribly thin at QB is going to basically be punished for the 3rd party having their fingers in the recruiting cookie jar so to speak. The kid chose to follow the money, it the 3rd party pulled it. Now he is getting released to go chase money somewhere else.

The NCAA should not have allowed him to be released from his NLI. If he wants to transfer...so be it. But that too would be his choice. That would have given the NCAA some solid ground to stand on that, though it is the wild west..there still needs to be accountability at least to a point. The kid chose the money...make him at least either play for a year use his 1 time transfer. I hate the kid would be made an example out of but it is what needs to be done. Paying these high school players who have never even had a practice in college big amounts of money will never make sense to me. Once they are in school and playing ....sure let them make money however they can. But to lure kids to a school with money is just not right...and the opposite of what NIL was intended to be used for. I would also bring some sort of punishment down on Florida for this. I know it was their collective but there still needs to be accountability for this situation in general to deter if from happening again. Its not like this was $500 this was 13 Million dollars. obscene amount of money and this is where NIL is really going to go down the rabbit hole.

The NCAA should have grown some balls and try to take control at least a little bit of this thing, because we are only scratching the surface of how bad this could and most likely will get.

I know this seems heartless towards the kid....but once again choices.

Ranked 343 out of 363. I know some will hate me bringing up Jamie but I came across this while looking up some NET stuff. Poni and Muller were talking about how Jamie has changed on the Pitt pregame tonight and how fast they play but man, do have the most experienced team in the nation coming back and to play a schedule that weak is criminal. I still believe that his Nov/Dec scheduling turned a lot of the more casual Steeler/Pens-first fans away because they didnt have to pay attention until Jan/Feb.

Skip the 1st part about Julius Randle's son. Below there's highlights of a game of players acting like NBA dudes. I mean I'm cool with it. The guys they watch on TV do it. I love these Barstool articles. The line about the PG playing for Duke one day is spot on.

When they hired Chris Mack coming off of all of their improprieties, I thought "that is just not fair". I thought they would not just keep on rolling, but be even better.

Karma is a bitch. LOL. This is the worst ACC team since the Stallings led Panthers. They looked like Pitt from then. Ellis and Traynor are decent players, but the rest...

I mean the play that symbolized what Louisville has become is when they rebounded a Pitt miss, and every turns and starts running down court and the guy hits his "outlet" man square in the back. That outlet guy was Curry who would be like throwing an outlet to Gary Mcghee to bring the ball up the court. Burton calmly scooped up the loose ball for an easy layup. That was fairly indicative of Louisville's night. If it wasn't for Ellis, this would have been an epic beat down.

I would like to say the ACC needs a strong Louisville, but Louisville Basketball right now is experiencing the karma that I wished Penn State football would have had thrust upon them.

Interesting article focused mainly on Florida recruiting. Pitt generally gets very high marks from the HS coaches. Certainly the best in the ACC outside of the two Florida schools. One coach said Pitt doesn’t back off from going after highly-rated players with multiple SEC offers, while another said that all of the ACC schools are intimidated by SEC offers. (I assume he meant SEC offers like Georgia, Alabama, LSU and Tennessee, and not Vanderbilt, Missouri, Kentucky and Mississippi State.)

Cory Sanders got the most praise among Pitt assistants; higher than Partridge. One mentioned Underwood.

A couple of coaches mentioned HCPN as a coach they would want their son to play for because he is a straight shooter.

Most didn’t want to discuss NIL, but one indicated that Miami is the only school that matches the SEC in that area.

** If you are a stat geek, perhaps something you find fun on the ESPN Gamecast is the “Win Probability” number that is constantly updated during the course of the game.

** We started this game at an 88% win probability. Mostly that number is a pretty sad indictment of the hapless Cards considering they are playing at home.

** And of course our Panthers didn’t come out like gangbusters, and their win probability dropped to 75% when the Cards snagged their biggest lead of the game at 14-10. Five Panther three pointers later, that same win probability was back up over 90%.

** The worst it dipped for the remainder of the game was 88%, and it remained over 98% for the last nine minutes.

** That’s a far too long a way of saying this game was never in doubt.

** As noted, it wasn’t really in doubt because Louisville is beyond terrible. But interestingly, there is some talent on this Cards squad, or at least some fairly highly ranked talent. Experienced for sure, but there are a handful of players who some of the best programs wanted.

** I suspect the Cards will beat a team or two in the ACC this year in the Yum Center. All we know now 100% is that it won’t be us. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a tiny bit concerned going into the game that it could be.

** Maybe at some point during this season we will all become completely comfortable with the notion that this is a very solid basketball team truly headed for the Tournament. But unfortunately, the specter of four previous slides still lingers off in the distance.

** After the tonight, it’s a little further away still.

** It’s further away because the Panthers have six legit guns who can garner double digits on any given night. Over the last nine games, Burton has led the Panthers in scoring three times, Nike twice, and Blake, Fede, Greg and Nelly once. All six have had a 20 point outing during that stretch.

** Toss in increasing contributions for GDiaz and Nate and we are becoming harder and harder to guard.

** So hard in fact that on a night when it took a better part of the game for Nelly or Blake to hit a shot, it really didn’t matter.

** In 16 halves of the Panthers 8 ACC games, we’ve scored at least 33 points in all except two of them -- the first half against Virginia (followed by a 45 point 2nd half) and the second half against Duke. That's some very consistent scoring.

** Pomeroy now ranks our offense at #42, but this still includes the three struggles to start the year.

** Perhaps another idea we Panther fans should be comfortable with is this team is never going to be afraid to shoot the ball. Sure, some of those will look like bad or untimely shots to us. But I suspect Capel and his staff never want the guys to question their shots.

** Maybe even during those early darker days, the staff never wanted the guys to question their shots. It sure looks like it’s paying off now.

** This doesn’t mean this team doesn’t have room to grow, most notably on the defensive glass. The Cards got about 8 easy points that way today, and without those, our win probability today may not have ever dropped below it’s starting point.

** So now we come home for three, and our win probability for each is over 60%. Get at least two of them and perhaps even the most skeptical fan will completely put to rest that a big slide could still make a mark. Maybe then the only statistic we all will be focused upon is the number of our seed.

** I’ll leave by putting in a plug for one last number. Let’s see if we if we can get a realistic five figure attendance to support on Panthers in person on Saturday. These guys are fun and they are good. They’ve come a long way since early in the season, and the Coaching staff and program has come an amazingly long way since they ended last year with a five game slide.

** And you don’t have to be a stat to geek to enjoy them!

In my post a few minutes ago I raised the concern about our over reliance on the 3 ball and suggested we need to get more points in the paint. But the problem is , where do we get those points given our current personnel. here is one thought.
To generate more inside offense i would consider having Hinson set up down low occasionally rather than constantly drifiting on the perimeter. Admittedly , he has a hair trigger release from deep but he is not a great % shooter and he is sub par as a ball handler if he attempts to slash to the hoop from outside. He does have some physical strength (although he cant jump a lick) so I think he could hold his own down low and power up to the basket for some points. I would do the same thing with Santos when he is in as he is largely wasted on the perimeter due to poor shooting and , just the opposite of Hinson, a VERY slow release that requires a ton of space to get off a shot but he DOES have decent strength.
Anyway, I think it is worth considering as we have no other hope for additional low post points at the moment.

I was thinking about possible road games for next year. I know ND will be the most popular one. But I like to make a long weekend out of road trips, and while South Bend has improved, I still don’t need to spend that much time there.

So I was kicking around the idea of flying into Chicago and taking the train down game day. Have any of you guys done that before? Any hiccups in getting a weekend train down or back after the game?

I am not used to seeing the entire staff so engaged in coaching and working with this team. In past years it has normally just been O'toole all fired up and passionate. It is clear that the staff is enjoying coaching this team way more than previous ones. Good chemistry all around this year.

Santos contributing even six or seven quality minutes each game is big for this team.

Still shocking to see how bad Louisville is when their roster is filled with top 100 players. Nice to get a blowout win with Hinson and Cummings having such off shooting nights.

Wondering what you guys think?

I'm thinking Pitt will be in the bubble talk the rest of the regular season. Gotta win their upcoming home games. And beat Louisville Wednesday night.