In one of her first meetings with Pitt men’s basketball coach Kevin Stallings, athletic director Heather Lyke asked him a simple question.
“Do you want to be here?”
According to Lyke, there was nothing uncertain about his response: Stalling is committed to coaching at Pitt and getting his program back on track. That meeting was scheduled to last an hour, and it ended up going for about three and a half, Lyke told reporters during a sitdown Tuesday morning at Petersen Events Center.
She’s about 90 days into the job, stepping into a situation where the football team is stable but fan excitement has waned for what was the university’s flagship sport for much of the decade.
Asked about some of her top priorities so far at Pitt, Lyke said, “Obviously, there’s a huge focus on building our basketball brand back. I think that’s a necessity, it’s important and it’s doable here.”
Last season, in Stallings’ first year, the Panthers finished just 4-14 in ACC play, missed the NCAA tournament, then lost Cameron Johnson, their leading returning scorer, in a highly publicized transfer struggle between him and the athletic department.
But Lyke sounds confident that once fans meet the team’s host of newcomers and hear about Stallings’ vision for the future, they’ll be back on board with plenty of enthusiasm even for a roster that has been entirely revamped.
“I’ll just tell you, [Stallings] parks right next to me, and his car’s usually here in the morning before I get here and often here after 11 o’clock when I leave,” Lyke said. “His staff is working incredibly hard to get the right kids here. We’re obviously in a very unique and unusual recruiting situation, one we hope to never have to be in again.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
“Do you want to be here?”
According to Lyke, there was nothing uncertain about his response: Stalling is committed to coaching at Pitt and getting his program back on track. That meeting was scheduled to last an hour, and it ended up going for about three and a half, Lyke told reporters during a sitdown Tuesday morning at Petersen Events Center.
She’s about 90 days into the job, stepping into a situation where the football team is stable but fan excitement has waned for what was the university’s flagship sport for much of the decade.
Asked about some of her top priorities so far at Pitt, Lyke said, “Obviously, there’s a huge focus on building our basketball brand back. I think that’s a necessity, it’s important and it’s doable here.”
Last season, in Stallings’ first year, the Panthers finished just 4-14 in ACC play, missed the NCAA tournament, then lost Cameron Johnson, their leading returning scorer, in a highly publicized transfer struggle between him and the athletic department.
But Lyke sounds confident that once fans meet the team’s host of newcomers and hear about Stallings’ vision for the future, they’ll be back on board with plenty of enthusiasm even for a roster that has been entirely revamped.
“I’ll just tell you, [Stallings] parks right next to me, and his car’s usually here in the morning before I get here and often here after 11 o’clock when I leave,” Lyke said. “His staff is working incredibly hard to get the right kids here. We’re obviously in a very unique and unusual recruiting situation, one we hope to never have to be in again.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
