I agree, for all the reasons you stated.
But to the point about recruiting, there's where my worry lies.
He had huge opportunity to sell ACC playing time with his first class, and his results were OK at best.
He went the route of roster turnover, and his short term replacements are not players who are making a significant impact.
The recruiting class for next year has been underwhelming.
I agree completely with needing a fair shot. But he needs to start getting some higher end players soon, or his time here will not be a long one.
This is EXACTLY how I feel. There's no doubt Stallings can coach and knows his stuff. But a big part of college coaching is recruiting.
We HAD a really good COACH. Dixon was one of the best at getting the most out of what he had, even as he started struggling recruiting wise, better than Stallings.
The thing is, Stallings was supposed to bring in good players. I was fine with Dixon leaving and didn't want Stallings obviously, but at least grew with the idea he'd bring in better players. He's a brilliant offensive mind, knows his stuff, and I thought with the higher level players he'd bring in than what we got the past few years prior, he'd be able to get us back on track. However, the recruting is very scary for the future. We have lots of good complimentary pieces, but no big time players , and in the ACC thats a recipe for disaster.
Lastly, not to you DT, but overall, stop talking about how it would be so hard to recruit here if Stallings leaves to try to get another coach.
In basketball, it's all about the coach. Western Kentucky had a top recruiting class last year, and there's examples like that yearly. There's tons of programs with less history or that seem worse perceptionally than Pitt that get top players, but they have good recruiters.
That's all it takes. So spare me all of the excuses of why Pitt just can't recruit good players. Just make a committment and hire some coaches that can recruit and get them what they need. It's not like football where you have to get 25 guys a year. If we could simply have our 2018 class like PSU's sophomores are now, there'd be a lot of optimism when you combine that with Carr, Stevenson, Davis... and thats PENN STATE BASKETBALL. People need to stop feeling so bad for Pitt. Pitt makes themselves what they are. No we won't be Kentucky, Duke, etc., but that next tier is full of teams and programs just like us.
