Pitt basketball mailbag: Why can't the Panthers recruit better players?
By Craig Meyer / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Well, how things have changed since the last time we ran one of these.
In the past seven days, Pitt has played two ACC games, experiencing the highs — a 12-point overtime win against No. 11 Virginia — and the crushing lows — an overtime loss to Notre Dame decided on a 3-pointer with 2.5 seconds remaining — that come with an unquestionably fun time of year in college basketball.
With those results come questions, so let’s get to them. For future mailbags, if you ever have something on your mind, email me at cmeyer@post-gazette.com or tweet me @CraigMeyerPG.
From Mike: much discussion about dixon's recruiting. Is there any inherent reason why Pitt can't land more high end talent?
There’s a pretty simple reason why Pitt can’t routinely land high-end talent, one that has little to do with the institution itself. If anything, it’s a fight against a history and geography those currently involved with the program can’t control. The Panthers are not one of the sport’s historical powers, nor are they located in a talent-rich area in which they can lure top prospects with the enticing proposal of playing at home.
If we look at the schools in recent top 10 recruiting rankings from scout.com, you’ll see a handful of exceptions, with programs like Mississippi State (shoutout to Ben Howland) and LSU (what’s up, Ben Simmons?) making appearances. Otherwise, it’s a whole lot of Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, North Carolina — schools that are as closely associated with college basketball as any, all with opulent basketball budgets — as well as Cal, Washington and Texas, all of which are programs in cities with easy access to elite talent (or, in Texas’ case, a state loaded with such prospects). Pitt, for all of its success under Howland and Jamie Dixon, doesn’t have that deep historical record on which to fall back, and Western Pennsylvania isn’t exactly a hotbed for basketball recruits, though it’s not as bad as some may lead you to believe.
This isn’t to say Pitt is eternally doomed and can’t lure elite players to Oakland. Heck, Dixon proved you could, signing 16 players between 2005 and 2013 ranked in Scout’s top 100. Some of that was luck — a transcendent talent like DeJuan Blair growing up and going to school in the shadow of Pitt’s campus — but many of the highly rated players Dixon brought in had little to no connection to the Pittsburgh area.
Even players who weren’t as highly rated coming out of high school developed in Dixon’s system and matured into integral pieces on nationally relevant teams. Though those guys weren’t four or five star prospects, you have to credit a coach who finds talent he believes fits well in the confines of his system. Now, beyond the current group of seniors, we’ve witnessed some of his recruiting shortcomings, with only two guys who have proven to be reliable college players (Cam Johnson and Ryan Luther).
Which brings us to...
Nick L: is this the first year in a while that there's no stud ready to step up for next year-- can't see it being cam?
The 2009-10 and 2014-15 teams immediately come to mind in the “replacing a whole lot of key pieces without a logical successor” department. The former lost four of its top five scorers and was led offensively by a sophomore — Ashton Gibbs — who averaged 4.3 points per game the previous season. The latter had to replace Lamar Patterson and Talib Zanna, and was ultimately guided the following season by the team’s two present leading scorers, Jamel Artis and Mike Young. The success experienced by those two teams varied greatly, as the first overachieved on its way to a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament and the second limped out of the NIT first round with a loss to George Washington, a game that can be best described as an affront to puppies, lollipops, Tom Hanks and all that is good and holy.
You’re right, though, that there doesn’t appear to be a logical successor to the go-to-player throne for next season, at least not at the moment. Johnson has had a breakout sophomore season, but he’s undeniably the beneficiary of playing with two supremely talented scorers and, as good as he is at it, he needs to excel at more areas of the game beyond draining 3s. Ryan Luther’s a great fourth or fifth option on a really good team, but if he’s your second-best player, you’ve got some problems. Justice Kithcart simply isn’t there yet. At this point, you’re hoping one of your incoming players — be it Jared Wilson-Frame, Aaron Thompson or Marcus Carr — can inherit that niche, but that’s a tall ask. Anybody beyond that, i.e the player who will hold one of the Panthers’ open scholarships, is purely hypothetical at this point.
Barry J: UVA!!!. Playing 7 guys is not a formula for future success. Will KG start to give people time and hope they develop?
It’s a balancing act, for sure. Do you try to capitalize on having arguably the top two scorers in the nation’s best conference? Or do you sacrifice some of that success in the short term to develop players who maybe aren’t ready for a good dose of minutes quite yet? I think, as a first-year coach who wasn’t an especially popular hire and will soon be working for a boss who didn’t hire him, the first of those two options is the best.
Pitt’s lack of depth is a very real concern that will only continue to surface until more players beyond its top seven begin to prove themselves worthy. Only seven players saw the court in the win against Virginia, an especially notable number since the game went into overtime, but that stands as more of an anomaly. In the Panthers’ six toughest games this season — SMU, Marquette, Maryland, Penn State, Notre Dame and Virginia — their average rotation included 8.8 players, just under the desired group of nine Kevin Stallings referenced in the preseason. For Pitt to have any kind of sustained success in the ACC, particularly playing at a pace faster than its players were accustomed to for years under Dixon, it will need to veer more toward that 8.8 figure than the septet that helped it down Virginia this week.
ThePittsburgHSkid: with 17 years of Vandy mediocrity why should one be optimistic about Stallings? Lost play in game last yr w/NBA talent.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to slap Stallings’ Vanderbilt with the “mediocre” label. In his 17 seasons at the school, he led the Commodores to the NCAA tournament seven times, matching the number of times they had been to the Big Dance prior to that. His win percentage of .603 was noticeably better than the .564 win percentage recorded in the 17 seasons prior to his arrival. He unarguably improved the program, doing so at a school with inherent and unavoidable academic restrictions.
There are, of course, holes in that rosy argument. Stallings accrued that resume in arguably the worst major conference, the SEC, that had just two consistently successful programs, Kentucky and Florida, during his tenure. And, as you mentioned, he made just one Sweet 16 despite having several NBA players come through Nashville in his time there. In all, seven of Stallings’ players got drafted in his 17 seasons at Vanderbilt, compared to the 11 who were drafted in the 33 seasons before then. He drew some big recruits in that time, like John Jenkins and Shan Foster, but many of his success stories — Jeff Taylor, Festus Ezeli and Wade Baldwin — were three-star players coming out of high school. That he never made it that far in the NCAA tournament with that kind of talent certainly isn’t great, but, like it was last year at Vanderbilt, there are sometimes other factors at play. The secret about basketball, as some have said, is that it’s not about basketball, as success can sometimes be tied to the personalities on a team and how well they form a cohesive unit.
His time at Vanderbilt should show that he was able to recruit some big recruits at an academically demanding school and develop other, less-heralded prospects into NBA players, but unquestionably under-performed at times with them. What that means for how things will unfold at Pitt is anyone’s guess.
Corey C: Should Pitt wear the gold uniforms all the time at home, or does the rarity help them? Also how about throwbacks?
Scott Barnes had previously told me that throwback basketball uniforms were a consideration, but they weren’t in any sort of substantive stage in making it a reality. With Barnes on his way out, it’s kind of moot at this point, anyway.
I completely agree on Pitt’s gold uniforms. After seeing them Wednesday, I couldn’t help but ask myself why those aren’t the Panthers’ full-time home jerseys. They’re beautiful. I’ve never understood the infatuation with wearing white as a home jersey if white isn’t one of your school’s primary colors. Pitt is, almost exclusively, navy blue and gold, with gold being a light enough hue to be a home jersey. It’s something other schools do, at least for more than the occasional special game, and it’s absolutely a path Pitt should consider wandering down.
By Craig Meyer / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Well, how things have changed since the last time we ran one of these.
In the past seven days, Pitt has played two ACC games, experiencing the highs — a 12-point overtime win against No. 11 Virginia — and the crushing lows — an overtime loss to Notre Dame decided on a 3-pointer with 2.5 seconds remaining — that come with an unquestionably fun time of year in college basketball.
With those results come questions, so let’s get to them. For future mailbags, if you ever have something on your mind, email me at cmeyer@post-gazette.com or tweet me @CraigMeyerPG.
From Mike: much discussion about dixon's recruiting. Is there any inherent reason why Pitt can't land more high end talent?
There’s a pretty simple reason why Pitt can’t routinely land high-end talent, one that has little to do with the institution itself. If anything, it’s a fight against a history and geography those currently involved with the program can’t control. The Panthers are not one of the sport’s historical powers, nor are they located in a talent-rich area in which they can lure top prospects with the enticing proposal of playing at home.
If we look at the schools in recent top 10 recruiting rankings from scout.com, you’ll see a handful of exceptions, with programs like Mississippi State (shoutout to Ben Howland) and LSU (what’s up, Ben Simmons?) making appearances. Otherwise, it’s a whole lot of Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, North Carolina — schools that are as closely associated with college basketball as any, all with opulent basketball budgets — as well as Cal, Washington and Texas, all of which are programs in cities with easy access to elite talent (or, in Texas’ case, a state loaded with such prospects). Pitt, for all of its success under Howland and Jamie Dixon, doesn’t have that deep historical record on which to fall back, and Western Pennsylvania isn’t exactly a hotbed for basketball recruits, though it’s not as bad as some may lead you to believe.
This isn’t to say Pitt is eternally doomed and can’t lure elite players to Oakland. Heck, Dixon proved you could, signing 16 players between 2005 and 2013 ranked in Scout’s top 100. Some of that was luck — a transcendent talent like DeJuan Blair growing up and going to school in the shadow of Pitt’s campus — but many of the highly rated players Dixon brought in had little to no connection to the Pittsburgh area.
Even players who weren’t as highly rated coming out of high school developed in Dixon’s system and matured into integral pieces on nationally relevant teams. Though those guys weren’t four or five star prospects, you have to credit a coach who finds talent he believes fits well in the confines of his system. Now, beyond the current group of seniors, we’ve witnessed some of his recruiting shortcomings, with only two guys who have proven to be reliable college players (Cam Johnson and Ryan Luther).
Which brings us to...
Nick L: is this the first year in a while that there's no stud ready to step up for next year-- can't see it being cam?
The 2009-10 and 2014-15 teams immediately come to mind in the “replacing a whole lot of key pieces without a logical successor” department. The former lost four of its top five scorers and was led offensively by a sophomore — Ashton Gibbs — who averaged 4.3 points per game the previous season. The latter had to replace Lamar Patterson and Talib Zanna, and was ultimately guided the following season by the team’s two present leading scorers, Jamel Artis and Mike Young. The success experienced by those two teams varied greatly, as the first overachieved on its way to a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament and the second limped out of the NIT first round with a loss to George Washington, a game that can be best described as an affront to puppies, lollipops, Tom Hanks and all that is good and holy.
You’re right, though, that there doesn’t appear to be a logical successor to the go-to-player throne for next season, at least not at the moment. Johnson has had a breakout sophomore season, but he’s undeniably the beneficiary of playing with two supremely talented scorers and, as good as he is at it, he needs to excel at more areas of the game beyond draining 3s. Ryan Luther’s a great fourth or fifth option on a really good team, but if he’s your second-best player, you’ve got some problems. Justice Kithcart simply isn’t there yet. At this point, you’re hoping one of your incoming players — be it Jared Wilson-Frame, Aaron Thompson or Marcus Carr — can inherit that niche, but that’s a tall ask. Anybody beyond that, i.e the player who will hold one of the Panthers’ open scholarships, is purely hypothetical at this point.
Barry J: UVA!!!. Playing 7 guys is not a formula for future success. Will KG start to give people time and hope they develop?
It’s a balancing act, for sure. Do you try to capitalize on having arguably the top two scorers in the nation’s best conference? Or do you sacrifice some of that success in the short term to develop players who maybe aren’t ready for a good dose of minutes quite yet? I think, as a first-year coach who wasn’t an especially popular hire and will soon be working for a boss who didn’t hire him, the first of those two options is the best.
Pitt’s lack of depth is a very real concern that will only continue to surface until more players beyond its top seven begin to prove themselves worthy. Only seven players saw the court in the win against Virginia, an especially notable number since the game went into overtime, but that stands as more of an anomaly. In the Panthers’ six toughest games this season — SMU, Marquette, Maryland, Penn State, Notre Dame and Virginia — their average rotation included 8.8 players, just under the desired group of nine Kevin Stallings referenced in the preseason. For Pitt to have any kind of sustained success in the ACC, particularly playing at a pace faster than its players were accustomed to for years under Dixon, it will need to veer more toward that 8.8 figure than the septet that helped it down Virginia this week.
ThePittsburgHSkid: with 17 years of Vandy mediocrity why should one be optimistic about Stallings? Lost play in game last yr w/NBA talent.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to slap Stallings’ Vanderbilt with the “mediocre” label. In his 17 seasons at the school, he led the Commodores to the NCAA tournament seven times, matching the number of times they had been to the Big Dance prior to that. His win percentage of .603 was noticeably better than the .564 win percentage recorded in the 17 seasons prior to his arrival. He unarguably improved the program, doing so at a school with inherent and unavoidable academic restrictions.
There are, of course, holes in that rosy argument. Stallings accrued that resume in arguably the worst major conference, the SEC, that had just two consistently successful programs, Kentucky and Florida, during his tenure. And, as you mentioned, he made just one Sweet 16 despite having several NBA players come through Nashville in his time there. In all, seven of Stallings’ players got drafted in his 17 seasons at Vanderbilt, compared to the 11 who were drafted in the 33 seasons before then. He drew some big recruits in that time, like John Jenkins and Shan Foster, but many of his success stories — Jeff Taylor, Festus Ezeli and Wade Baldwin — were three-star players coming out of high school. That he never made it that far in the NCAA tournament with that kind of talent certainly isn’t great, but, like it was last year at Vanderbilt, there are sometimes other factors at play. The secret about basketball, as some have said, is that it’s not about basketball, as success can sometimes be tied to the personalities on a team and how well they form a cohesive unit.
His time at Vanderbilt should show that he was able to recruit some big recruits at an academically demanding school and develop other, less-heralded prospects into NBA players, but unquestionably under-performed at times with them. What that means for how things will unfold at Pitt is anyone’s guess.
Corey C: Should Pitt wear the gold uniforms all the time at home, or does the rarity help them? Also how about throwbacks?
Scott Barnes had previously told me that throwback basketball uniforms were a consideration, but they weren’t in any sort of substantive stage in making it a reality. With Barnes on his way out, it’s kind of moot at this point, anyway.
I completely agree on Pitt’s gold uniforms. After seeing them Wednesday, I couldn’t help but ask myself why those aren’t the Panthers’ full-time home jerseys. They’re beautiful. I’ve never understood the infatuation with wearing white as a home jersey if white isn’t one of your school’s primary colors. Pitt is, almost exclusively, navy blue and gold, with gold being a light enough hue to be a home jersey. It’s something other schools do, at least for more than the occasional special game, and it’s absolutely a path Pitt should consider wandering down.
