By Craig Meyer / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
With the end of any season come lessons learned, whether its about players, coaches or teams as a whole. When a program experiences its worst season in 17 years, those lessons are a little more numerous.
So after those 33 games, what did we learn about the 16-17 Panthers? Beyond a lot of the usual descriptors — they were thin, poorly constructed and largely disappointing — what else is there to be gleaned about this group and coach Kevin Stallings?
Sometimes basketball is about more than just basketball:
Polarizing as he may be, Bill Simmons had a great passage in “The Book of Basketball” about a conversation he had once with NBA Hall of Famer (and failed executive) Isiah Thomas, who shared what he believed to be the secret of basketball — that it's not about basketball.
What he meant by that was a team is as much about its talent as how that talent and those personalities meld together. It goes beyond the statistics on to which so many cling. Success is as much determined by basic human interaction.
Last season's Pitt team as a group led by its four seniors, all of whom finished among the Panthers' five leading scorers. Pitt would go as they did. While it produced from a statistical standpoint, that quartet lacked a true leader, something that hampered the team for much of the season. Mike Young is a quiet, lead-by-example type. Jamel Artis, for all the unwavering confidence he exudes, is a reserved, soft-spoken individual. Sheldon Jeter and Chris Jones, between their friendly demeanors and more limited roles in the starting lineup, didn't have the commanding and forceful traits needed to be a leader for a senior-laden squad.
The seniors seemed to be a really interesting and engaging group, but there always seemed to be something missing or just off. It wasn't a toxic mix of personalities, but rather sort of an awkward one that made it possible for the team to produce the weird, inconsistent season.
Offensive freedom is a great buzz-term; it doesn't mean it's a practical solution:
Every coach has their go-to terms that, over time, elicit eye rolls. “Offensive freedom” isn't one to which Kevin Stallings consistently turned, but it, or derivations of it, was routinely mentioned by players entering the season. No longer would they be held down by Jamie Dixon's obtrusive and plodding offense, instead getting the chance to showcase the kind of skills and traits they weren't able to in previous seasons.
Those ideal visions of how the Panthers offense may function never fully materialized. Pitt posted its lowest shooting percentage as a team (44.2 percent) since the 1999-00 season, which had been the program's most recent losing season, though its effective field goal percentage, which takes into account that 3-pointers are worth more, was the highest it has been since 2012-13. Players looked out of place or aimless at times, sometimes settling for isolation, one-on-one opportunities instead of working for a good, open shot, something that showed itself most damningly in the stretches during ACC play in which the Panthers would go as long as 10 minutes without a made field goal. Pitt's play improved once it went back to a more structured, regimented scheme, beginning with the loss at North Carolina on Jan. 31 (before things began to fall apart as the season went on).
It's a privilege that, at best, was abused at times and, at worst, shouldn't have been granted in the first place. Some things sound much better in theory than they are in practice. Speaking of which ...
Non-traditional lineups sound great, but they have to have a chance of working:
Basketball is increasingly a position-less sport. It was something demonstrated at the college level a decade ago when Villanova went with a four-guard set and has been exemplified in the NBA recently by any number of teams, most notably the Bucks, who have a 6-11 extraterrestrial running the point. The highest-profile examples of that trend are, naturally, the most successful ones, so there can sometimes be a presumption that by implementing such a philosophy, you're undertaking a bold venture that's risky but worthwhile.
Pitt's starting lineup, on paper, looked like it would be just that. The Panthers trotted out a 6-7 point guard and had no starters shorter than 6-6, making them what appeared to be a nightmare matchup for most any opponent, particularly one that wasn't close to as vertically blessed. It didn't quite work out that way. Pitt was tall, sure, but as Stallings mentioned in a post-game press conference in February, it was tall in a way that didn't make much sense. Its point guard was plagued by fits of carelessness and slow decision-making. All three of its primary backcourt players had size but lacked the kind of speed to make them threats to penetrate to the basket and keep defenses honest. They lacked both meaningful size and a player with the girth and craftiness to create shots for himself on the low post or work to consistently get rebounds. That Jeter, at a spindly 6-7, was the team's best rebounder and interior defender speaks volumes to that fact.
That's not to say Pitt made a mistake by doing this. It used such a lineup out of necessity, one that utilized its five best players. But size without meaningful or logical niches is just size, something that many discovered as the season unfolded.
There's a reason this job wasn't as highly coveted as some may have thought:
The hiring of Stallings last March caught many off-guard in a not-so-pleasant way. For a fanbase that had higher hopes — Sean Miller, anyone? — getting a 55-year-old SEC coach with a solid record but just two Sweet 16 runs in 17 seasons felt like a gut punch. With Pitt's ACC status and an irrefutable track record of success under Dixon and Ben Howland for the past 17 years, it surely could've done better, right?
Not necessarily. Most any coach who considers taking a job looks at the roster he inherits and how he may fare in his first two or three years at the school, the time that will shape the early perception of his hiring and will help determine how his tenure may go. There was older talent on the Panthers' roster, but beyond that, assuming Dixon's 2016 class was kept intact (which wasn't a given), there were three classes that have produced all of two reliable contributors — Cam Johnson and Ryan Luther. Once this senior class departed, a rebuilding project awaited, turning what seemed like a great job into a risky one.
James Robinson was really important:
There's an inherent risk in projecting a team's success based on what percentage of its scoring is coming back, something that ties into the whole “secret of basketball” thing. It's not always about how many points you're getting back; it's what skill sets and what personalities are returning.
James Robinson's stat line from 2015-16 paints the picture of a careful game manager, a player who created good scoring opportunities for teammates while rarely turning it over. His shooting numbers were awful, but given those aforementioned qualities, he was a solid, consistent point guard whose scoring contributions could easily be made up for by the rise of another player. What Pitt couldn't replace, though, was that ability to efficiently and effectively pick apart opposing defenses, along with a steady leadership presence that could provide the Panthers' proverbial ship with some sense of direction, especially with a new coach. This isn't to say Robinson was criminally under-appreciated, but his absence, without a logical successor, was palpable.
The departure of James Robinson, right, forced Pitt into an unconventional lineup for much of the season. (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette)
The difficulty of the schedule lived up to its billing:
A major factor in Pitt's 12th-place spot in the ACC preseason poll, which actually turned out to be optimistic, was the schedule it was slated to face, with eight of its 18 conference games coming against North Carolina, Louisville, Virginia and Syracuse, all of whom were ranked in the preseason top 20 nationally. But it wasn't just the strength at what many expected to be the top of the conference that harmed the Panthers; it was everything else below that in a league that ultimately had just one team amounting to a gimme (sorry, Boston College).
Pitt went 2-6 against those four aforementioned repeat opponents in the regular season but went just 2-8 against everyone else. In all, including non-conference play, 16 of its 33 games came against teams that would make the NCAA tournament. It went 4-12 in those games, which helped give it, according to Sports Reference, the most difficult strength-of-schedule rating in program history. For a program that has spent the past 35 years in a conference with a legitimate claim at being the country's best, that's a heck of an impressive achievement.
This Panthers team was very likely worse than the 2015-16 group that preceded it, as evidenced by the five-win drop, but its schedule didn't do it any favors.
Mike Young and Jamel Artis are two of the most talented offensive players in Pitt history
Young and Artis consistently showed themselves to be superb talents on offense. Young and Artis finish their college careers as the seventh and 11th leading scorers, respectively, in program history. It's unclear how their time at Pitt will be remembered — we'll let the passage of time help us figure that one out — but for some of their deficiencies, they'll live in the Panthers' record book for some quite a while.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
With the end of any season come lessons learned, whether its about players, coaches or teams as a whole. When a program experiences its worst season in 17 years, those lessons are a little more numerous.
So after those 33 games, what did we learn about the 16-17 Panthers? Beyond a lot of the usual descriptors — they were thin, poorly constructed and largely disappointing — what else is there to be gleaned about this group and coach Kevin Stallings?
Sometimes basketball is about more than just basketball:
Polarizing as he may be, Bill Simmons had a great passage in “The Book of Basketball” about a conversation he had once with NBA Hall of Famer (and failed executive) Isiah Thomas, who shared what he believed to be the secret of basketball — that it's not about basketball.
What he meant by that was a team is as much about its talent as how that talent and those personalities meld together. It goes beyond the statistics on to which so many cling. Success is as much determined by basic human interaction.
Last season's Pitt team as a group led by its four seniors, all of whom finished among the Panthers' five leading scorers. Pitt would go as they did. While it produced from a statistical standpoint, that quartet lacked a true leader, something that hampered the team for much of the season. Mike Young is a quiet, lead-by-example type. Jamel Artis, for all the unwavering confidence he exudes, is a reserved, soft-spoken individual. Sheldon Jeter and Chris Jones, between their friendly demeanors and more limited roles in the starting lineup, didn't have the commanding and forceful traits needed to be a leader for a senior-laden squad.
The seniors seemed to be a really interesting and engaging group, but there always seemed to be something missing or just off. It wasn't a toxic mix of personalities, but rather sort of an awkward one that made it possible for the team to produce the weird, inconsistent season.
Offensive freedom is a great buzz-term; it doesn't mean it's a practical solution:
Every coach has their go-to terms that, over time, elicit eye rolls. “Offensive freedom” isn't one to which Kevin Stallings consistently turned, but it, or derivations of it, was routinely mentioned by players entering the season. No longer would they be held down by Jamie Dixon's obtrusive and plodding offense, instead getting the chance to showcase the kind of skills and traits they weren't able to in previous seasons.
Those ideal visions of how the Panthers offense may function never fully materialized. Pitt posted its lowest shooting percentage as a team (44.2 percent) since the 1999-00 season, which had been the program's most recent losing season, though its effective field goal percentage, which takes into account that 3-pointers are worth more, was the highest it has been since 2012-13. Players looked out of place or aimless at times, sometimes settling for isolation, one-on-one opportunities instead of working for a good, open shot, something that showed itself most damningly in the stretches during ACC play in which the Panthers would go as long as 10 minutes without a made field goal. Pitt's play improved once it went back to a more structured, regimented scheme, beginning with the loss at North Carolina on Jan. 31 (before things began to fall apart as the season went on).
It's a privilege that, at best, was abused at times and, at worst, shouldn't have been granted in the first place. Some things sound much better in theory than they are in practice. Speaking of which ...
Non-traditional lineups sound great, but they have to have a chance of working:
Basketball is increasingly a position-less sport. It was something demonstrated at the college level a decade ago when Villanova went with a four-guard set and has been exemplified in the NBA recently by any number of teams, most notably the Bucks, who have a 6-11 extraterrestrial running the point. The highest-profile examples of that trend are, naturally, the most successful ones, so there can sometimes be a presumption that by implementing such a philosophy, you're undertaking a bold venture that's risky but worthwhile.
Pitt's starting lineup, on paper, looked like it would be just that. The Panthers trotted out a 6-7 point guard and had no starters shorter than 6-6, making them what appeared to be a nightmare matchup for most any opponent, particularly one that wasn't close to as vertically blessed. It didn't quite work out that way. Pitt was tall, sure, but as Stallings mentioned in a post-game press conference in February, it was tall in a way that didn't make much sense. Its point guard was plagued by fits of carelessness and slow decision-making. All three of its primary backcourt players had size but lacked the kind of speed to make them threats to penetrate to the basket and keep defenses honest. They lacked both meaningful size and a player with the girth and craftiness to create shots for himself on the low post or work to consistently get rebounds. That Jeter, at a spindly 6-7, was the team's best rebounder and interior defender speaks volumes to that fact.
That's not to say Pitt made a mistake by doing this. It used such a lineup out of necessity, one that utilized its five best players. But size without meaningful or logical niches is just size, something that many discovered as the season unfolded.
There's a reason this job wasn't as highly coveted as some may have thought:
The hiring of Stallings last March caught many off-guard in a not-so-pleasant way. For a fanbase that had higher hopes — Sean Miller, anyone? — getting a 55-year-old SEC coach with a solid record but just two Sweet 16 runs in 17 seasons felt like a gut punch. With Pitt's ACC status and an irrefutable track record of success under Dixon and Ben Howland for the past 17 years, it surely could've done better, right?
Not necessarily. Most any coach who considers taking a job looks at the roster he inherits and how he may fare in his first two or three years at the school, the time that will shape the early perception of his hiring and will help determine how his tenure may go. There was older talent on the Panthers' roster, but beyond that, assuming Dixon's 2016 class was kept intact (which wasn't a given), there were three classes that have produced all of two reliable contributors — Cam Johnson and Ryan Luther. Once this senior class departed, a rebuilding project awaited, turning what seemed like a great job into a risky one.
James Robinson was really important:
There's an inherent risk in projecting a team's success based on what percentage of its scoring is coming back, something that ties into the whole “secret of basketball” thing. It's not always about how many points you're getting back; it's what skill sets and what personalities are returning.
James Robinson's stat line from 2015-16 paints the picture of a careful game manager, a player who created good scoring opportunities for teammates while rarely turning it over. His shooting numbers were awful, but given those aforementioned qualities, he was a solid, consistent point guard whose scoring contributions could easily be made up for by the rise of another player. What Pitt couldn't replace, though, was that ability to efficiently and effectively pick apart opposing defenses, along with a steady leadership presence that could provide the Panthers' proverbial ship with some sense of direction, especially with a new coach. This isn't to say Robinson was criminally under-appreciated, but his absence, without a logical successor, was palpable.
The departure of James Robinson, right, forced Pitt into an unconventional lineup for much of the season. (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette)
The difficulty of the schedule lived up to its billing:
A major factor in Pitt's 12th-place spot in the ACC preseason poll, which actually turned out to be optimistic, was the schedule it was slated to face, with eight of its 18 conference games coming against North Carolina, Louisville, Virginia and Syracuse, all of whom were ranked in the preseason top 20 nationally. But it wasn't just the strength at what many expected to be the top of the conference that harmed the Panthers; it was everything else below that in a league that ultimately had just one team amounting to a gimme (sorry, Boston College).
Pitt went 2-6 against those four aforementioned repeat opponents in the regular season but went just 2-8 against everyone else. In all, including non-conference play, 16 of its 33 games came against teams that would make the NCAA tournament. It went 4-12 in those games, which helped give it, according to Sports Reference, the most difficult strength-of-schedule rating in program history. For a program that has spent the past 35 years in a conference with a legitimate claim at being the country's best, that's a heck of an impressive achievement.
This Panthers team was very likely worse than the 2015-16 group that preceded it, as evidenced by the five-win drop, but its schedule didn't do it any favors.
Mike Young and Jamel Artis are two of the most talented offensive players in Pitt history
Young and Artis consistently showed themselves to be superb talents on offense. Young and Artis finish their college careers as the seventh and 11th leading scorers, respectively, in program history. It's unclear how their time at Pitt will be remembered — we'll let the passage of time help us figure that one out — but for some of their deficiencies, they'll live in the Panthers' record book for some quite a while.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
