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Paul Zeise in his mailbag thinks Stallings is gone after the season

That's true, when I lived in Pittsburgh I went to every football game and probably 75% of the basketball games, BUT SORRY, to me it's unreasonable to be expected to drive 4 hours one way for a game. Especially since, I HATE TO DRIVE more than say an hour or half hour straight. So sorry, I don't care THAT much. If I lived in Pittsburgh, I'd probably be a hypocrite and use this season's lack of attendance to score some basketball tickets cheap or free, but drive 4 hours, no, that depresses me and I only do that 3-4 times per year.
driving 4 hours one way for a hoops game is a bit over board. Maybe a good Saturday conference game but to drive 4 hours for a wed night game in January is border line insanity.

I used to live in Maryland, would occasionally drive up for a football game, that's about 3 hours. It was ok, had family in Pittsburgh so I'd stay the night. Even going back same day wasn't too big a deal but that's for football, on a Saturday, knowing I have no work on sunday.
 
I think Pitt needs to retain KS so the fans who wanted Jamie gone can continue to enjoy the change.

HAIL TO PITT!!!!
 
driving 4 hours one way for a hoops game is a bit over board. Maybe a good Saturday conference game but to drive 4 hours for a wed night game in January is border line insanity.

I used to live in Maryland, would occasionally drive up for a football game, that's about 3 hours. It was ok, had family in Pittsburgh so I'd stay the night. Even going back same day wasn't too big a deal but that's for football, on a Saturday, knowing I have no work on sunday.
Exactly, I do go to 1-2 football games per year, and I pair them up with Steelers games on Sunday. I have also paired up Steelers games with Saturday Pitt hoops games in December. I'm a Pitt fan, but not a FANATIC who feels guilty if they miss a game. And I always stay the night at my brothers house, he's a Pitt guy and we go to the games together. He's a Pitt season ticket holder. I've been on like 60-70 trips for football games in Pittsburgh the last 25 years and only once drove back immediately after a game, NEVER AGAIN! If I can't have FUN and drink at the tailgate and go out somewhere after the game, then crash out all night, I DON'T WANT TO GO.
 
Why didn’t we just fire him last year then?

I mean seriously what did anyone expect this year?

They are playing without Luther.... they don’t have one division 1 player that is a sophomore or older on the roster. They’ve actually been competitive in the last 3 acc games. And anyone we hire outside of Tom Creen will be another rebuild. And costing us 20 million.
 
Why didn’t we just fire him last year then?

I mean seriously what did anyone expect this year?

They are playing without Luther.... they don’t have one division 1 player that is a sophomore or older on the roster. They’ve actually been competitive in the last 3 acc games. And anyone we hire outside of Tom Creen will be another rebuild. And costing us 20 million.
We never should have hired him to begin with. If he had recruited some good players, then I’d be okay with giving him some more time. But his recruiting has been mediocre at best. He has landed 11 guys on his own, and re-recruited 3 guys that were verbals when he got here. None of these guys were Top 100 recruits. 4 of them were NEC level recruits, 3 of them are no longer here, and the last kid just got kicked off his Juco team.
 
Why didn’t we just fire him last year then?

I mean seriously what did anyone expect this year?

They are playing without Luther.... they don’t have one division 1 player that is a sophomore or older on the roster. They’ve actually been competitive in the last 3 acc games. And anyone we hire outside of Tom Creen will be another rebuild. And costing us 20 million.

My guess is that it has gotten to the point of no return. I don't really even think record matters...they could win 2-3 ACC games and I would still bet he's gone.

I could be wrong, just a sense of things.
 
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We never should have hired him to begin with. If he had recruited some good players, then I’d be okay with giving him some more time. But his recruiting has been mediocre at best. He has landed 11 guys on his own, and re-recruited 3 guys that were verbals when he got here. None of these guys were Top 100 recruits. 4 of them were NEC level recruits, 3 of them are no longer here, and the last kid just got kicked off his Juco team.

I didn’t want them to hire him either.

You keep putting people into 2 buckets.....

No one could turnover a roster like this and achieve results unless you are recruiting one and dones. Everyone wanted him to keep Kithcart and Manigault now we use it against him.

I actually hope they fire him as well because I’m sick of talking about it. He wasn’t given a fair shake here and short of hiring an established head coach and investing in the program we aren’t solving these problems
 
Let's be honest. $$$$$ is the only factor here. We don't want him (right or wrong he never was given a chance) and he had shown no inclination to connect with the community or fans at all.

Someone likened it to a divorce earlier. Both sides see it isn't working out so do you stay together for the kids/stay married because one of you can't financially live in a house anymore and have to downsize temporarily into a one bedroom apartment???? Or do you bite the financial bullet and just call it quits knowing it's going to hurt just as much a few years down the road?
 
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My opinion on Stallings does come with a caveat. If pitt has a donor that buys him out, I am 10000% behind that. However for pitt to buy him out would be completely disingenuous for how fiscally conservative they have been at every turn from an athletic department standpoint. So my bet is we get a few more years of Stallings because I am not sure what coach brings the fans back without completely taking the time to rebuild the roster.
 
Why didn’t we just fire him last year then?

I mean seriously what did anyone expect this year?

They are playing without Luther.... they don’t have one division 1 player that is a sophomore or older on the roster. They’ve actually been competitive in the last 3 acc games. And anyone we hire outside of Tom Creen will be another rebuild. And costing us 20 million.

When Cam Johnson transferred, I posted that you either fire Stallings then. New AD simply "correcting an error." 0-18 was a probability. I didn't understand any logic in firing him after Year 2. To me, it had to be last April or after Year 3 and I still believe that. In fact, I think Stallings knows this, which is why they are basically faking Luther's injury.
 
Why didn’t we just fire him last year then?

I mean seriously what did anyone expect this year?

They are playing without Luther.... they don’t have one division 1 player that is a sophomore or older on the roster. They’ve actually been competitive in the last 3 acc games. And anyone we hire outside of Tom Creen will be another rebuild. And costing us 20 million.

My guess is that it has gotten to the point of no return. I don't really even think record matters...they could win 2-3 ACC games and I would still bet he's gone.

I could be wrong, just a sense of things.

OK, but lets say you are Heather Lyke, last April/May. What would you have thought Stallings had to do to get a 3rd year? 5-13 with an expansion team playing in front of 5K every night? That seems completely ridiculous
 
very POSITIVE that Pitt fans aren't like Pirates fans and DON'T stay LOYAL when the team totally sucks. Empty arena, less income can bring action.
In a way. If it brings action from the administration sure that's great. But it certainly hasn't helped at all in football when nobody will come to a game the week after Pitt beats #2 on the road and only show up when Pitt is a 10+ win team. Somewhere there's a fine line between loyal and blind loyalty.
 
My opinion on Stallings does come with a caveat. If pitt has a donor that buys him out, I am 10000% behind that. However for pitt to buy him out would be completely disingenuous for how fiscally conservative they have been at every turn from an athletic department standpoint. So my bet is we get a few more years of Stallings because I am not sure what coach brings the fans back without completely taking the time to rebuild the roster.

Pitt does not have a donor to buy him out. If I was David Tepper, I wouldn't spend my money to fix Idiot Barnes's error.

Make Barnes and Turner buy him out. Sue them for a breach of fiduciary responsibilities.
 
OK, but lets say you are Heather Lyke, last April/May. What would you have thought Stallings had to do to get a 3rd year? 5-13 with an expansion team playing in front of 5K every night? That seems completely ridiculous

My guess is Heather wanted to replace him from day 1, but him winning 0-1-2 ACC games makes it a lot easier than firing him last summer. It gives her an out. What if we win 6 ACC games next year..you are going to fire someone with a 6 game improvement?
 
OK, but lets say you are Heather Lyke, last April/May. What would you have thought Stallings had to do to get a 3rd year? 5-13 with an expansion team playing in front of 5K every night? That seems completely ridiculous

My guess is Heather wanted to replace him from day 1, but him winning 0-1-2 ACC games makes it a lot easier than firing him last summer. It gives her an out. What if we win 6 ACC games next year..you are going to fire someone with a 6 game improvement?

Could be but I think its going to be harder to sell working for Lyke after she fires a coach for going 0-18 in the ACC with all freshmen. If she fired him last May, she could have just told coaches that she didn't hire Stallings, she thinks hes a good coach but the fanbase and donors hated letting Dixon walk to hire him and she is just correcting a mistake
 
I didn’t want them to hire him either.

You keep putting people into 2 buckets.....

No one could turnover a roster like this and achieve results unless you are recruiting one and dones. Everyone wanted him to keep Kithcart and Manigault now we use it against him.

I actually hope they fire him as well because I’m sick of talking about it. He wasn’t given a fair shake here and short of hiring an established head coach and investing in the program we aren’t solving these problems
I am not putting anyone into buckets. I am not basing my opinion on emotions. If he had done ANY of the following, then I’d say he deserves more time.

1) Made the NIT last year. There was enough talent to do this.

2) If last year’s team as a whole had continued to improve as the year went along.

3) If he brought in some Top 100 players over the last couple years.

4) If he wasn’t a jackass. Dropping f bombs on Luther while Jeter was hurt. Yelling at the fans in Louisville.

5) If he didn’t have a bunch of embarrassing losses. See Louisville from last year and PS this year.

6) If he had a system that might work at Pitt.

7) If we had some good players signed for next year.
 
My guess is that it has gotten to the point of no return. I don't really even think record matters...they could win 2-3 ACC games and I would still bet he's gone.

I could be wrong, just a sense of things.
I would agree that record/if they win 2-3 ACC games doesn’t matters at this point. If you think rationally, this record or something close to it was expected given the wholesale cast of new and inexperienced players compounded by the loss of Luther. If he gets fired after this year, it will be less about this year’s record and much more so about the dreadful attendance and how much Lyke and/or other decision makers feel that poor attendance is influenced by the pure fan hatred of Stallings as opposed to just bad W/L record. If they feel it is more about W/L record, then he may not get fired yet unless they have some extreme confidence/assurance of a ‘name’ hire. A lesser hire isn’t going to change next year’s record much.
 
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Could be but I think its going to be harder to sell working for Lyke after she fires a coach for going 0-18 in the ACC with all freshmen. If she fired him last May, she could have just told coaches that she didn't hire Stallings, she thinks hes a good coach but the fanbase and donors hated letting Dixon walk to hire him and she is just correcting a mistake

She can make that same pitch after this season, and he's going to be paid quite handsomely for his troubles. The notion that we are going to be hamstrung by some loyalty from opposing coaches to KS is bananas.

Who wouldn't want to follow KS here? Immediate good will, a clear honeymoon period. Just don't be him, and occasionally land a high ranked recruit.
 
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Why didn’t we just fire him last year then?
.

1.) Would have cost a couple million more than firing him at the end of this year
2.) We would have looked crazy to the "coaching fraternity" for firing a somewhat respected coach after one season. We won't look crazy firing him if he goes 0-18 in conference in front of 1000 fans.
3.) It seemed reasonable to give this mess of a roster (seemingly filled with nice young kids who get good grades, so I'm not bashing them on any personal level) a chance. But it's not working at all and recruiting for next year isn't looking like a game changer either.
 
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D
3 names that haven't been mentioned yet:

Mike Hopkins - doing well at Washington Maybe we should try to play that tough Syracuse zone to level the playing field

Fred Hoiberg - may get fired from the Bulls and want back in college game. This would be a similar hire.

Shaka Smart - on the surface, seems like a WTF move. But the natives may be getting a little restless may be getting a little restless in Austin. In 3 years, he may only have 1 1st Round NCAAT loss to show for it. The AD is new, Chris Del Conte and may want his BFF, Jamie Dixon. Smart was a candidate at Gtown last year and may want to get out. He even has some local ties. He played for Cal U coach Bill Brown, 3 hours away at Kenyon then was an assistant at Cal U while getting his Masters. He then coached under the legendary Greg Dambrot. Not sure how much that helps but it couldn't hurt.
Delusional
 
Don't let the folks on the other board know this. Most are boycotting that network. Could ruin your rep.
any sports channel where I can watch pitt on an HD channel, I like. Anything where I don't have to stream something online for my sports content, I like. ESPN sticks with sports, they will be ok. they start pushing the anti white male, social justice liberal snowflake garbage, that's when they get in trouble.
 
I hate to say this, but our coach turned down USC at a time, maybe twice. This ain't football. USC is not USC when it comes to basketball.
Neither Dixon or Stallings could recruit for the ACC at Pitt. Pitt has no established recruiting territory any more.

It is MUCH easier to recruit at USC (without cheating, but they do anyway) and the weather is a lot better.

I do understand they have had a reputation for being on the cheap side.
 
3 names that haven't been mentioned yet:

Mike Hopkins - doing well at Washington Maybe we should try to play that tough Syracuse zone to level the playing field

Fred Hoiberg - may get fired from the Bulls and want back in college game. This would be a similar hire.

Shaka Smart - on the surface, seems like a WTF move. But the natives may be getting a little restless may be getting a little restless in Austin. In 3 years, he may only have 1 1st Round NCAAT loss to show for it. The AD is new, Chris Del Conte and may want his BFF, Jamie Dixon. Smart was a candidate at Gtown last year and may want to get out. He even has some local ties. He played for Cal U coach Bill Brown, 3 hours away at Kenyon then was an assistant at Cal U while getting his Masters. He then coached under the legendary Greg Dambrot. Not sure how much that helps but it couldn't hurt.

Hopkins is in his first year and is in the process of redoing that program. I suspect he’d leave for the Syracuse job and that’s about it.

If the Mayor comes back to college it’s almost certainly going to be a Midwestern team, maybe Iowa where Fran McCaffery may be wearing out his welcome.

Shaka Smart ain’t coming to Pitt, no real discussion here.
 
Don't let the folks on the other board know this. Most are boycotting that network. Could ruin your rep.
any sports channel where I can watch pitt on an HD channel, I like. Anything where I don't have to stream something online for my sports content, I like. ESPN sticks with sports, they will be ok. they start pushing the anti white male, social justice liberal snowflake garbage, that's when they get in trouble.

I think they should just stick to sports also but I also think the conservative snowflakes are way too easily offended. I mean if Breitbart had a network and got the ACC TV deal, I'd watch it. As long as they don't make political commentary during games, sports is sports. I wouldn't boycot it because of the crazy other stufd they say. Some of these snowflakes need to toughen up. To boycott ESPN based on their political views is insane if you are a sports fan
 
3 names that haven't been mentioned yet:

Mike Hopkins - doing well at Washington Maybe we should try to play that tough Syracuse zone to level the playing field

Fred Hoiberg - may get fired from the Bulls and want back in college game. This would be a similar hire.

Shaka Smart - on the surface, seems like a WTF move. But the natives may be getting a little restless may be getting a little restless in Austin. In 3 years, he may only have 1 1st Round NCAAT loss to show for it. The AD is new, Chris Del Conte and may want his BFF, Jamie Dixon. Smart was a candidate at Gtown last year and may want to get out. He even has some local ties. He played for Cal U coach Bill Brown, 3 hours away at Kenyon then was an assistant at Cal U while getting his Masters. He then coached under the legendary Greg Dambrot. Not sure how much that helps but it couldn't hurt.

Hopkins is in his first year and is in the process of redoing that program. I suspect he’d leave for the Syracuse job and that’s about it.

If the Mayor comes back to college it’s almost certainly going to be a Midwestern team, maybe Iowa where Fran McCaffery may be wearing out his welcome.

Shaka Smart ain’t coming to Pitt, no real discussion here.

He did go to Cal U. I mean I don't think he's coming either but Del Conte may want Dixon and gently nudge Shaka out.
 
Find the best coach that will take the job and hire him. His name should not matter. Nobody knew who Ben Howland was.
You're right, nobody knew who Ben was, but fans really bitched because he was a no name and he was not from the east. Fans finally quit bitching after "the run" of the NIT year. At the time, a couple former players even complained to me about Ben not being from the east.
 
Find the best coach that will take the job and hire him. His name should not matter. Nobody knew who Ben Howland was.
You're right, nobody knew who Ben was, but fans really bitched because he was a no name and he was not from the east. Fans finally quit bitching after "the run" of the NIT year. At the time, a couple former players even complained to me about Ben not being from the east.

What about Ben Howland?
 
I think they should just stick to sports also but I also think the conservative snowflakes are way too easily offended. I mean if Breitbart had a network and got the ACC TV deal, I'd watch it. As long as they don't make political commentary during games, sports is sports. I wouldn't boycot it because of the crazy other stufd they say. Some of these snowflakes need to toughen up. To boycott ESPN based on their political views is insane if you are a sports fan
we are not offended, we are just turning the channel. Hence the reason they lay off 100 people every other week. quit playing the victim SMF, normal red-blooded americans don't care what color your skin is or what gender you think you are this week.
 
driving 4 hours one way for a hoops game is a bit over board. Maybe a good Saturday conference game but to drive 4 hours for a wed night game in January is border line insanity.

I used to live in Maryland, would occasionally drive up for a football game, that's about 3 hours. It was ok, had family in Pittsburgh so I'd stay the night. Even going back same day wasn't too big a deal but that's for football, on a Saturday, knowing I have no work on sunday.

Mrs Buffett and I attend the home football games which is a roughly 4.5-5 hour drive so we stay over which makes every home game as expensive as going to an away game for us.

I guess we spend close to $ 4k for football travel since we hit one away game each year.

We might hit a few basketball games each year pre Stalling not this year.

"it's five o'clock somewhere"
Signed: Mr Buffett
Go Pitt & CSU Rams!
 
Mrs Buffett and I attend the home football games which is a roughly 4.5-5 hour drive so we stay over which makes every home game as expensive as going to an away game for us.

I guess we spend close to $ 4k for football travel since we hit one away game each year.

We might hit a few basketball games each year pre Stalling not this year.

"it's five o'clock somewhere"
Signed: Mr Buffett
Go Pitt & CSU Rams!
you and the better half are true fans.
 
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