Are the eggheads intent
- Thread starter tetonpanther
- Start date
Yeah, I'm getting visions of the second coming of Dean Mary Briscoe (but a level higher).
Relax. A player was let go, possibly for hitting a woman. It's not like they didn't want to pay a coach the going rate.
What coach wants to coach for a university that dismisses his starting PG 3 days before classes start?
Dior is this years Hugley. Just let go before the season. Maybe Capel knows how to run a TEAM now.
This isn't the 80s. We are in the mix on NIL and spending big money on coaches and facilities. We let Hugely and Horton come back. Dior did something worse and cant stay at any one school.
There is a long history of this sh!t at Pitt. And we never learn. The kid got in trouble 8 months ago. He stays with the team, goes to Spain, and gets tossed 3 days before school starts. Not a good look.
To be accurate, the incident happened Sept 5, 2022. For this to be finally adjudicated by Pitt nearly one year later is pretty ridiculous.
Or you could look at it the other way that the university and the AD gave the guy more chances than he actually deserved? I mean, he has been taking classes all this while so obviously he has proven his academic level (which must not be very good).
Oh and let’s not forget this guy’s very checkered past, both pre-Pitt and at Pitt.
As in the other thread, you seem to be purposely ignoring the details. Yeah, if he hit a woman, let him go. But that was known months ago and the decision was made to keep him here. If nothing new has happened since then, not a very upstanding move by the Pitt admin now.
Do you really believe that “nothing happened?” When has this guy ever had a 3-month period in his life over the last 3-4 years where nothing has happened?
I have no idea if anything new happened, that’s why I said ‘if’.
If anything new happened, I guess it must have been fairly recent as in Spain or since then, otherwise he wouldn’t/shouldn’t have been on that trip.
My only comment, if nothing new has happened either in the way of one out of line incident or multiple minor questionable ones slightly astray from his agreed behavior when reinstated, then this is a poor action by Pitt.
Sorry. Poorly worded. What I meant to say is that he has had a year to prove what his academic record is so if the issue is purely academic there is a body of work there. Maybe he did poorly in summer classes? Either way, I’m glad this is resolved now.
But that adjudication from last year was that he could come back WITH CONDITIONS. If he met/is meeting all the conditions then that is one thing. But what if he wasn't? What if they said you have to perform to a certain standard in your classwork, and he didn't? Or if they told him that he had to go to anger management classes (or something similar) and he stopped going? Or one of any number of other things that he could have been required to do that he did not?
I get that it's Pitt and Pitt does a lot of stupid stuff, so Pitt might not deserve the benefit of the doubt. But good god, given his track record how does someone like Dior Johnson deserve the benefit of the doubt instead?
Everything I’ve been told by people who would know is that he met all conditions.
Wel, IF he did meet "all conditions," I would agree that he should still be
here. But then again, that's just my opinion.....an opinion from an outsider.
I'll take you at your word when you say you were told "by people
who would know." I also know that there's usually more than what meets
the eye in situations like this. It's so easy to sit back and be critical of
these types of decisions. So far, I've seen nothing more than pure
speculation on here when it comes to this situation.
Anyone else think that it may have been Dior's and not Pitt's decision for him to leave?
His past history strongly suggests that as a possibility.
In any event, I don't see this as being a big loss. Based on the limited picture from the two games in Spain I wasn't expecting him to be the #1 PG on the team in terms of minutes.
But, maybe I am nuts on both counts?
Leggett is the starter, Carrington the backup, and Lowe #3 at PG, IMHO. The position was too crowded with DIor.
His past history strongly suggests that as a possibility.
In any event, I don't see this as being a big loss. Based on the limited picture from the two games in Spain I wasn't expecting him to be the #1 PG on the team in terms of minutes.
But, maybe I am nuts on both counts?
Leggett is the starter, Carrington the backup, and Lowe #3 at PG, IMHO. The position was too crowded with DIor.
That this was an appeal was allowed to go far too long giving most everyone the impression he was coming back. But basically he lost the appeal. But this was handled very poorly.
I wondered the same at first but from everyone I’ve talked to this was not at all Dior’s decision to leave.
Wow, if this is the way it went down, then it was very very poorly handled. Bad for Johnson, and bad for the basketball program. Makes the administration look bad.
And let me be clear … talked to people who would know means people very close to Pitt hoops who are more or less briefed on the decision. These are not people who were in the room for the decision so there’s always a little more to it like there is for most everything.
But no one I have talked to has received any information of any kind saying that something else happened causing the loss of the appeal. Basically, it sounds like they finally got around to making a “final ruling” and it was decided that what happened last September (and the subsequent pleas) were the reason he wasn’t allowed back to Pitt.
Why this happened now and not 6 months ago is pretty ridiculous to me.
This is pretty simple. After Dior’s plea, you keep him or you don’t. Why it was left to drag on like it did is certainly bad, and quite frankly is actually pretty close to irresponsible.
You keep stating that he was reinstated. All indications are that isn't true. He was allowed to stay while he appealed. The unstated question is what was he appealing. Logic makes one think that he was appealing a dismissal. That dismissal became official when his appeal was denied. It has nothing to with his behavior or "conditions" since his previous "apparent" dismissal.
While I do see it was a big loss, it’s not as if we have to “replace” any production.
I think the truth is probably that everyone on the athletic department side believed that the matter would be finalized, one way or another, months ago. It seems like that’s the normal procedure, but the timeline was significantly longer than that in this case, for whatever reason. That’s where the ball was dropped: this probably should have been finalized in April or May.
This is the rub …
I’ve been getting the impression too that he was allowed to stay while he was appealing. But public comments from Capel made it seem otherwise. Allowing Dior to practice with the team makes it seem otherwise. Showing him on the team roster on the web site makes it seem otherwise. Playing in Spain makes it seem otherwise.
If it was a real possibility that Dior would not win the appeal, there sure as heck should have been better communication with Pitt athletics that this was going to be the case.
Or maybe Pitt athletics was given the blessing to operate as if he would be coming back and the administration did a huge about face. I don’t know of course.
But at the very least we can all agree that this was handled very, very poorly.
And if it would have been finalized in April or May, I think everyone involved (including fans) would have gotten it and moved on accordingly.
Really terrible and inexcusable job by Pitt then. Basically, they screwed over the basketball program. If Dior had been shown the door back in April, we may have been able to lure in a PG in the portal. Now, we're pretty much SOOL on recruiting anybody decent to fill a spot.
And that’s where the timeline comes into play. The approach makes sense if you believe that the matter will be resolved one way or another in the spring. He already wasn’t playing in 2022-23; whether he’s on the roster or practicing with the team is ultimately pretty trivial. But if we get to April or May and the appeal is successful and he’s reinstated? No problem. If the appeal is unsuccessful and he’s dismissed? He enters the portal, he’s removed from the roster, we find a point guard in the portal and everyone moves on.
But the timeline created challenges. As the months wear on, do you remove him from the roster? Do you leave him home from Spain? Even as the months wear on and you start to think that maybe it’s gonna result in a dismissal, making those public moves creates a big headache and becomes the dominant topic of discussion publicly - “why’s he not on the roster? Why isn’t he on the trip?” They had already decided not to feature him in the program’s social media posts. By midsummer, they kinda stopped referencing him in any of the press releases that mentioned returning players, even though they always referenced Will Jeffress coming back from injury.
They were put in a shitty position. I think it could have been handled better on both ends. Clearly they wanted him back, but IMO it’s also likely that they thought this inflection point would have happened months ago.
Until I know all the facts (and they will likely never be known), I can't agree with that. While Capel and the athletics dept may have been confident in his reinstatement, what was the reason for that confidence? It just seems to me that a decision was made to dismiss him early on. Then he appealed. If anything, Pitt was overly generous in allowing him to practice and travel while the appeal process was ongoing. I have no idea if the typical process takes this long or not. If it is typical, then it was not handled poorly. Regardless, the confidence in a reinstatement was not justified as the initial decision to dismiss was upheld.
I say this as someone who is highly critical of the university in many of its decisions.
This came out from Jeff Goodman yesterday in quote on his social media page.
"Talked to Jeff Capel the other day for The Almanac and he said Dior Johnson had matured and was also optimistic he could really help an extremely young backcourt. “He’s very, very talented,” Capel said.
I mean, you can read into that however you want. The way I read it is, Jeff Capel was certainly expecting him to play next year and play a significant role and he literally just had this conversation with Goodman before Dior was kicked out of Pitt.
And as I noted from both Spain games, Dior's body language was good both on the court and off the court. So its obviously not Capel and its obviously not Dior. It was other people at Pitt that made the decision for him not to play.
I understand completely why a school would not allow Dior to play to begin with. However, I find it to be a pretty big joke with regard to the actual timing of how things played out. This decision could have been made a long time ago. And while we still have talent to work with, we are 1 backcourt injury away from being in some serious trouble next year.
Capel has to be pretty pissed off right now.
I have often been critical of Heather Lyke. However, this is not the way that she handles things. This certainly was not her decision. Is it ironic that we have a new chancellor? I don’t know what else it could be. This certainly gives the entire university a bad look. Decisions like this get people like Barnes and Stallings into our athletic department. None of this makes any sense.
Similar threads
Latest posts
-
-
-
-
OT: Would you pay $30,000 for this Super Bowl experience?- Latest: pghsonj1325