Well said.the problem wasn't hiring Stallings. The 2 guys you name would've been the ONLY 2 that Pitt fans would've accepted at the time. How could we go from Jamie Dixon to... Kevin Stallings? The same thing would've been said about Brandin Knight.
Is Kevin Stallings a good basketball coach? I don't think that's a debate. Say what you want about the guy, but he's a proven coach at the P5 level. He has almost 500 wins as a coach, and wins 60% of his games. The issue was that he wasn't Jamie Dixon, or even close to Jamie Dixon.
I said this earlier - this wasn't a Stallings issue when he got hired. It was Pitt issue thinking we could replace Jamie with someone comparable. Unrealistic expectations. When you hear about the facilities and how outdated everything was, we probably outdid ourselves hiring Stallings.
I don't want to continue down this rabbit hole, but you're basing your argument off of theories. What Barnes was thinking. Publicly announcing a sitting P5 coach and then couldn't back track. Barnes hired his buddy. They have the same agent.
At the end of the day, Kevin Stallings just came off of a tournament appearance at Vandy. He had a solid 5 year stretch of being a staple in the top 20 at Vandy. He went to the tourney 8 times at Vandy - way more than any coach in school history. Is easily the best coach they've ever had. Before that, he took Illinois State to the tournament twice as well as the NIT twice in 6 years. Illinois State! and it was his first coaching stop.
He was Roy Williams right hand man for 6 years at Kansas. Before that, he was an assistant under Keady at Purdue for 7 seasons - their all time winningest coach.
He wasn't a bad hire - you can point out any theory you want, but his resume at the time was better than every Pitt coach in our school history besides Jamie. You understand that, right? We can point to any theory you want, but his resume absolutely checks out and was more than fitting for the position he got hired for.
People cling to their conspiracy theories.