Delusional posts on this thread. If Heather wants to be the person to hire the next men's basketball coach, she will be. Athletics have progressed significantly if unevenly.
Does Lyke get any heat for the worst college basketball hire
- Thread starter Pres.
- Start date
She didn't hire Vidovich or Fisher. Her women's soccer and wrestling hires have been ok but not great. She hasn't done much.
I think a lot of us, including myself thought the Capel hire was good at the time because most of us thought we had no chance at all to get a "name" coach , especially not someone from Duke.
What does Pitt do next ? Hire someone with ACC ties , or someone that can recruit in the Northeast ?
What does Pitt do next ? Hire someone with ACC ties , or someone that can recruit in the Northeast ?
The Stallings hire is the worst hire in the history of Pitt athletics, any sport. It’s not even close. I’m not defending Capel, but the Stallings hire was mocked immediately, he took a NCAA team in his first year and finished under .500, and basically quit on the team in his second year and we didn’t win a conference game. It’s not even in the same ballpark as Capel, who is probably the most “disappointing” hire, in that it seemed like such a great pick, didn’t work out. Sorta like Willard, which was a home run hire at the time.
But the answer will always be Stallings.
If we win 3 or 4 or 5 games total on the season, add that to the fact that so many kids have left the program including mid-season, the arrests, recruiting misses all over the place, lack of staff changes, etc... I disagree with you. Capel would now win this honor.
“hire” is not the same as “tenure”. Capel might be worse, on balance, because he will be here 4/5 years, and Stallings 2. But there is no possible way the Capel “hire” was worse than Stallings. Stallings was openly mocked at his introductory press conference. Everyone liked the Capel pick. It’s not close.
I am only commenting as an outside observer. Two concrete facts are driving my judgement of the situation. 1. the undeniable discord among the top players in the last group-is an example of bad internal workings.
Example 1
Example 2,3
2. Then the next generation of players you have 2/9 (or so) players you bring in dealing with arrest issues, it is a bad look... ( in the mean time there are many people creating a narrative esposing what great mentorship these young men are getting? I am not blaming the staff for the "narrative" but to mention that as a positive, seems to be a "stereotype" that doesn't seem to fit reality
Reducing Dixon's buyout so you can hire Stallings is the worst decision in college sports history and that is not hyperbole. No one will ever find a worse coaching decision than that.
JC wasn’t a bad hire , as a matter of fact he was a great hire . No one wanted the job , Hurley used Pitt and the search was going nowhere . Hiring the top assistant at Duke with prior D1 experience who helped bring in the best talent in the country was a coup .
Think Pitt is going to hire someone with better credentials anytime soon ?
There’s no arguing the point that so far he’s been a huge disappointment.
Think Pitt is going to hire someone with better credentials anytime soon ?
There’s no arguing the point that so far he’s been a huge disappointment.
Not only that - paying Vandy for Stallings buyout when they were going to fire him!
Correction: everyone wanted the job for the right price. Pitt could have had Oats, Hurley, etc if they paid enough. And Miller wanted it badly and Pitt was very close to hiring him.
Vandy waived that to get rid of him, I am pretty sure. It was all part of the con.
Vandy needed to get rid of a coach but couldn't pay his buyout. Enter Barnes's old buddy Todd Turner who concocted the plan to pimp Stallings to Pitt so that Vandy could save the buyout money. I'd even guess bribes were paid to make this happen and I said for years this should have been investigated.
Yes. Part of our current failures are still related to landing in the dumpster during the Stallings era. Capel hasn't gotten the job done but, at the same time, it's very hard to recover from what happened. We essentially gave ourselves the death penalty.
This 100%. He had a roster of seniors (and a tournament team the previous year) lose at home by 55 points and got him self kicked out of the game so he wouldn't have to watch anymore of it. Never has a coach performed so miserably here (well maybe Paul Hackett).
I was actually in the let's give Stallings a chance camp. I thought a veteran team with a veteran coach might be able to do something. But the first warning sign was making no effort to try and find any point guard to come in immediately to play. And it just went downhill from there.
Capel, not sure what is happening. I guess the tea leaves kind of point to his recruiting prowess being tied to who he was recruiting to (Duke sells itself, and Oklahoma doesn't care about cheating). So if he isn't recruiting to a big name brand or using questionable techniques, there is nothing of substance left. Building a team culture and strategizing definitely aren't strong points.
Here's the thing. Many of us did indeed believe that Capel was a good hire and could produce. Obviously, Lyke thought that as well. The problem is that she pulled the trigger on a big contract way too early. Now we have to live with the consequences. Fans always have hope.... the AD needs too have good sound business decision making. And btw, she's getting paid close to $1M to make these decisions. When you're making that kind of coin you don't get to hide from bad decisions (unless of course, you're the AD at Pitt).
Even more so when TCU is an extremely donor rich school. My God, we should have taken those Baptists for a ride if they wanted Jamie so badly.
No it isnt. It takes a few players. He landed 3 legit players 5 minutes after getting the job and then Champagnie but got no one else and couldn't prevent those guys from screwing each other's girlfriends. Babysitting those 4 + landing one of his 29 Center prospects and its an NCAAT team in Year 2 or 3. Very easy
It's hard to rebuild in this current environment with transfer rules being what they are. Yes, it's easy to get transfers but it's just as easy to lose them and have any momentum go away.
He did well initially with recruiting but hasn't been able to sustain success. And yes, it seems like he was willing to take recruits of lower character with that first class.
I don't think anyone is "hiding" from anything. No AD is perfect. If Capel continues to go down the tubes, it is her job to fix it. Fortunately, we have decision makers that aren't knee jerk reactionaries like some schools that are constantly hiring and firing coaches and continue to go through that cycle over and over again.
I saw on twitter where some schools are so in the red with bad coaching contracts on their books from that never ending cycle, the donors have to continually bale them out. Tennessee and FSU are two examples.
My sentiments exactly, At the time, Capel was a good hire. The contract extension was the biggest screw up. A 15 mil buyout is ridiculous. They might as well fire him and have a $ 500,000 coach for the next 4 years. The games results would be the same.
