By Craig Meyer / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pitt’s 106-51 loss Tuesday night to No. 13 Louisville at Petersen Events Center was unprecedented, from concrete barometers like the margin of defeat — 55, the largest since 1906, when the school was named the Western University of Pennsylvania — to the eerie and surreal sense of resignation that resonated through a building long considered one of college basketball’s most daunting venues.
Tuesday night and the 32 hours that preceded it were defined just as much by something equally unheard of in the program’s recent history — a frustrated coach publicly criticizing his team.
Before the Louisville game, first-year coach Kevin Stallings, unprompted, questioned his team’s buy-in regarding his methods and philosophies and later chided what he saw as an overall lack of leadership from a team featuring four senior starters.
After the lopsided loss to the Cardinals, a game in which he was ejected early in the second half, Stallings didn’t lose his composure in the postgame news conference in a way that would conjure up memories of Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy or late Minnesota Vikings coach Dennis Green. Nonetheless, his biting evaluation of his team didn’t subside.
He spoke of fragmentation among the players. He lamented the lack of short-term solutions to increasingly urgent problems. While accepting responsibility for Pitt’s current woes, he mentioned what he believes to be a lack of competitiveness among his players and an inability to properly handle adversity.
“There’s a level of competitive character you’re supposed to be signing up for in a silent way when you become part of the team,” Stallings said Tuesday night. “That commitment to be a part of the team is ‘I will do my very best.’ Isn’t that pretty much the deal? You’re on a team, the expectations for each other should be ‘I’ll give you my best, you give me your best and let’s do our best and see what we can do.’ We don’t have that simple lesson down yet.”
For those who have followed the program for the past two decades, it’s a level of honesty that’s jarring and refreshing, particularly after Jamie Dixon’s 13-year tenure in which the former Pitt coach, true to his background as an actor, rarely deviated from script.
Stallings’ recent comments, however, aren’t out of character. In his 17 seasons at Vanderbilt, he would sometimes use pre-and postgame news conferences to cite his team’s flaws, seemingly using the media to relay messages to his players.
In February 2016, two days after the Commodores squandered a 17-point second-half lead in a loss to Mississippi State, Stallings said some of his players might be “too nice,” self-centered or have their own agendas while, as he has done at Pitt in recent days, accepting responsibility for the struggles and acknowledging his players aren’t “bad kids.”
“One of the mistakes I make is that I think it’s my responsibility to control everything — how they feel, how they think — and I’m not really in control of it,” Stallings said at the time, according to The Tennessean. “The longer the season has gone on, the more painfully obvious that’s been to me. We’ll do everything necessary to prepare them to play. Whether they show up to play at 11 o’clock Saturday morning, honestly, that’s up to them.”
Vanderbilt went on to win its next four games, a run that helped an underachieving team with two NBA first-round draft picks reach the NCAA tournament.
Stallings’ analysis can sometimes be simultaneously critical of himself and his players. In October 2014, he told reporters he made the mistake of bringing in “guys that probably didn’t belong here” after Vanderbilt experienced a rash of departures and suspensions that, among others, included current Pitt forward Sheldon Jeter transferring from the school the previous year.
While Stallings’ approach clashes with Dixon’s more reserved and sometimes defensive personality, it’s far from unique among Division I basketball coaches in the Pittsburgh area. Though they coach at lower-profile programs, Duquesne’s Jim Ferry and Robert Morris’ Andy Toole routinely use news conferences to air grievances about their teams.
Nor is it a particularly uncommon practice in college basketball as a whole; Sunday, for example, Manhattan coach Steve Masiello blamed his team’s recent struggles, in part, on what he described as our “fraudulent society.”
“Nothing is real so when things don’t go the way people want them to, people really struggle with if it’s not 75 degrees and sunny and the stars aren’t aligned, if it’s not exactly 4 p.m., they didn’t get exactly eight hours of beauty sleep … young people today struggle with it,” Masiello said. “Our society struggles with that, and for me — I can’t speak for other coaches — I see it more than ever. When adversity comes in, people struggle.”
Stallings’ openness with the media, he says, is a reflection of how sometimes brutally honest he is with his players. It’s one reason, among others, he doesn’t believe the loss Tuesday night was an indication of Pitt’s players rebelling against his edict from the previous day. Whatever he tells the media isn’t something he hasn’t already told his team.
In this instance, however, it raises questions of whether it worsened an already tenuous situation.
“I sure hope not,” Stallings said Tuesday when asked if he felt like he was losing his team. “I would say there are a guy or two perhaps on the bench whose mind is out the door because they’re not playing like they want to play. That might be right. I don’t think I’ve lost those guys that are starting the game. I just don’t think they see the need to play as hard as you have to play to compete well in this league. It’s not like they’re not capable.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
Pitt’s 106-51 loss Tuesday night to No. 13 Louisville at Petersen Events Center was unprecedented, from concrete barometers like the margin of defeat — 55, the largest since 1906, when the school was named the Western University of Pennsylvania — to the eerie and surreal sense of resignation that resonated through a building long considered one of college basketball’s most daunting venues.
Tuesday night and the 32 hours that preceded it were defined just as much by something equally unheard of in the program’s recent history — a frustrated coach publicly criticizing his team.
Before the Louisville game, first-year coach Kevin Stallings, unprompted, questioned his team’s buy-in regarding his methods and philosophies and later chided what he saw as an overall lack of leadership from a team featuring four senior starters.
After the lopsided loss to the Cardinals, a game in which he was ejected early in the second half, Stallings didn’t lose his composure in the postgame news conference in a way that would conjure up memories of Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy or late Minnesota Vikings coach Dennis Green. Nonetheless, his biting evaluation of his team didn’t subside.
He spoke of fragmentation among the players. He lamented the lack of short-term solutions to increasingly urgent problems. While accepting responsibility for Pitt’s current woes, he mentioned what he believes to be a lack of competitiveness among his players and an inability to properly handle adversity.
“There’s a level of competitive character you’re supposed to be signing up for in a silent way when you become part of the team,” Stallings said Tuesday night. “That commitment to be a part of the team is ‘I will do my very best.’ Isn’t that pretty much the deal? You’re on a team, the expectations for each other should be ‘I’ll give you my best, you give me your best and let’s do our best and see what we can do.’ We don’t have that simple lesson down yet.”
For those who have followed the program for the past two decades, it’s a level of honesty that’s jarring and refreshing, particularly after Jamie Dixon’s 13-year tenure in which the former Pitt coach, true to his background as an actor, rarely deviated from script.
Stallings’ recent comments, however, aren’t out of character. In his 17 seasons at Vanderbilt, he would sometimes use pre-and postgame news conferences to cite his team’s flaws, seemingly using the media to relay messages to his players.
In February 2016, two days after the Commodores squandered a 17-point second-half lead in a loss to Mississippi State, Stallings said some of his players might be “too nice,” self-centered or have their own agendas while, as he has done at Pitt in recent days, accepting responsibility for the struggles and acknowledging his players aren’t “bad kids.”
“One of the mistakes I make is that I think it’s my responsibility to control everything — how they feel, how they think — and I’m not really in control of it,” Stallings said at the time, according to The Tennessean. “The longer the season has gone on, the more painfully obvious that’s been to me. We’ll do everything necessary to prepare them to play. Whether they show up to play at 11 o’clock Saturday morning, honestly, that’s up to them.”
Vanderbilt went on to win its next four games, a run that helped an underachieving team with two NBA first-round draft picks reach the NCAA tournament.
Stallings’ analysis can sometimes be simultaneously critical of himself and his players. In October 2014, he told reporters he made the mistake of bringing in “guys that probably didn’t belong here” after Vanderbilt experienced a rash of departures and suspensions that, among others, included current Pitt forward Sheldon Jeter transferring from the school the previous year.
While Stallings’ approach clashes with Dixon’s more reserved and sometimes defensive personality, it’s far from unique among Division I basketball coaches in the Pittsburgh area. Though they coach at lower-profile programs, Duquesne’s Jim Ferry and Robert Morris’ Andy Toole routinely use news conferences to air grievances about their teams.
Nor is it a particularly uncommon practice in college basketball as a whole; Sunday, for example, Manhattan coach Steve Masiello blamed his team’s recent struggles, in part, on what he described as our “fraudulent society.”
“Nothing is real so when things don’t go the way people want them to, people really struggle with if it’s not 75 degrees and sunny and the stars aren’t aligned, if it’s not exactly 4 p.m., they didn’t get exactly eight hours of beauty sleep … young people today struggle with it,” Masiello said. “Our society struggles with that, and for me — I can’t speak for other coaches — I see it more than ever. When adversity comes in, people struggle.”
Stallings’ openness with the media, he says, is a reflection of how sometimes brutally honest he is with his players. It’s one reason, among others, he doesn’t believe the loss Tuesday night was an indication of Pitt’s players rebelling against his edict from the previous day. Whatever he tells the media isn’t something he hasn’t already told his team.
In this instance, however, it raises questions of whether it worsened an already tenuous situation.
“I sure hope not,” Stallings said Tuesday when asked if he felt like he was losing his team. “I would say there are a guy or two perhaps on the bench whose mind is out the door because they’re not playing like they want to play. That might be right. I don’t think I’ve lost those guys that are starting the game. I just don’t think they see the need to play as hard as you have to play to compete well in this league. It’s not like they’re not capable.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
