By Craig Meyer:
Even at its best, questions always faced the Pitt men’s basketball program. What did it need to keep doing to remain in the top tier of the ruthlessly competitive Big East Conference? Could a program so often on the cusp of greatness break through and make a Final Four?
The questions now are more dire. A program that won an average of 26.5 games per season, captured some form of a conference championship five times and made the NCAA tournament 12 times in 13 seasons from 2001-14 has averaged 18.7 wins the past three seasons and has missed out on the NCAA tournament twice. It’s reeling from its first losing season since 2000 and is slated to return all of two players from that underachieving squad, a duo that averaged a combined 7.9 points per game.
What was already a difficult situation for coach Kevin Stallings has devolved from bleak to alarming. Next season will be the first of several that will determine whether the Panthers’ recent slump is a momentary dip or something more damaging.
In the past three years, going back to its later years under former coach Jamie Dixon, the program has faded from the national relevancy it once relished. In that time, it has posted a win percentage of .560, down significantly from the .763 percentage it posted in its 13-year peak from 2001-14. If anything, its recent mark is a regression to the mean, much closer to the .550 all-time win percentage the program owned prior to the 2001-02 season.
With those numbers come pressing queries. What can this program become? And where does it go from here?
“It’s as pivotal a point in Pitt basketball as there has probably been since [former coach] Ben Howland was hired in 1999,” said Jon Rothstein, a college basketball analyst for CBS Sports. “It’s all of a sudden time where you’re going to be starting from scratch with a brand-new roster in the ACC. That doesn’t make for a lot of sleep-filled nights.”
A fall from grace
The stakes of Pitt’s present situation are unquestionably high. The history of college basketball is littered with examples of programs rising to join the sport’s elites for a brief period. Some recovered after a stretch in which the wins dissipated, while others never returned to the lofty standing they once enjoyed, at least not on a consistent basis.
Arizona and Georgetown, after a few years of tumult following the retirement of legendary coaches, both re-established themselves with successful hires (Sean Miller and John Thompson III, respectively). Maryland, an ACC power in the 1970s and 1980s, floundered for seven years after the resignation of coach Lefty Driesell before regaining its footing under Gary Williams, who led the Terrapins to their only national championship in 2002.
Then there’s the less desirable end of the spectrum. Once a Big East bottom-feeder, Seton Hall made a surprise run to the NCAA championship in 1989, but in the 21 seasons after coach P.J. Carlisimo left for the NBA in 1994, it made the NCAA tournament just three times. Georgia Tech, a perennial top-20 team under coach Bobby Cremins, has averaged 16.3 wins per season and has made it past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament once since 1996.
Perhaps the most recent and hopeful example of a turnaround from a non-traditional power is the school that deprived Pitt of its best chance at a Final Four since World War II — Villanova. Jay Wright returned a languishing program to relevance, leading it to a Final Four in 2009, before the Wildcats began to slip, going 37-43 over an 80-game stretch from 2011-13. Over the next four seasons, though, they never won fewer than 29 games, a run highlighted by a national title in 2016.
What exactly changed? While the move to a rebranded, 10-team Big East helped, Wright returned to a recruiting philosophy that had helped him achieve what he had earlier in his tenure. Instead of continuing to chase top-10 recruits he felt compelled to given Villanova’s newfound standing, he refocused his efforts on top-50 or top-100 prospects he believed had a better chance of staying in school for three or four years.
“That’s the lesson to learn, that you have to understand the lane you’re in and realize how to maximize it,” said college basketball writer Dana O’Neil, author of ‘Long Shots: Jay Wright, Villanova, and College Basketball’s Most Unlikely Champion.’ “Don’t try to be something that you’re not. Be who you can be and figure out how to make that successful.”
For Pitt, that search for an identity comes at the highest level of the sport. The Panthers thrived under Howland and Dixon as a quintessential Big East team, one defined by its rugged, physical and deliberate style. Since joining the ACC in 2013, however, their fortunes have waned, with a win percentage of .603 and just one season with at least 25 wins (it had nine such seasons in the previous 12 years).
After Stallings replaced Dixon in 2016, the style-of-play questions surrounding the move to the ACC became more moot. The concerns about what Pitt can become in a relatively unfamiliar league, though, remain. The Panthers are financially competitive, with a men’s basketball budget of $8.8 million, the sixth-most of any ACC school, according to the most recent data from the Department of Postsecondary Education. Given the ages of coaches at some of the conference’s top programs — Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim (72), Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (70), North Carolina’s Roy Williams (66), Louisville’s Rick Pitino (64) and even Miami’s Jim Larranaga (67) — there’s a prevailing sentiment that there might be a window of opportunity for those outside the league’s upper echelon once those coaches retire.
Though it’s unrealistic to expect Pitt to compete annually with more storied and better-resourced programs, there is what many believe to be a model of success for it that utilizes well-regarded prospects who become three- and four-year players. If that sort of recruiting is done on a consistent basis, there’s a level of depth that is built, meaning that losing players to graduation or the professional ranks doesn’t deal a devastating blow and it can be annually competitive. The recent accomplishments of programs such as Virginia and Notre Dame lend credence to that philosophy and are a reminder to Pitt of what it can once again be.
“If your program wanes, it’s going to take some time to recover because most of the programs in the ACC are developmental programs,” Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman said. “That’s not to say we don’t get great players; we do. But everybody gets great players in the ACC. How are you going to develop those players? That isn’t done in a year or two. It takes some time to establish that mindset. It takes some time to develop those players.”
Finding a niche
Beyond the nuances of the ACC, the key to building any program, particularly a non-traditional power, is determined almost entirely by two things — coaching and recruiting. It’s a simple but all-important formula.
“There’s no big secret about that,” said Larry Keating, Seton Hall athletic director from 1985-97. “As you see teams come up periodically for a couple of years, typically it’s because they’ve latched on to someone who was probably a better coach than anybody thought when they hired him and ends up doing a good job and gets players. That’s really what it’s all about.”
Despite an underwhelming first season at the school, and a turbulent offseason, Stallings’ 17-year run at Vanderbilt, one in which he compiled a 332-220 record, only provides so many clues into how he might fare at Pitt. It’s simply too early to judge what he and his teams might be able to do.
Whether his tenure is a success or failure will be determined primarily by how he is able to recruit and, more specifically, whether he can identify a recruiting niche in which his program can thrive.
The New York-New Jersey pipeline that helped transform Pitt into a power has dried up with the move from the Big East, which has forced it to look elsewhere for players in recent years, particularly with little in the way of high-level local prospects. At Vanderbilt, due in some part to the school’s academic restrictions, Stallings had to be selective and creative, recruiting nationally and internationally. His 2017 class features two players from Canada, a growing hotbed for basketball talent that, if connections are forged, could be a valuable asset.
“It doesn’t feel like there’s a niche out there for us right now,” Stallings said. “We have to find one. We have to get one. I think that’s going to be something that’s going to be critical to our success moving forward is establishing some places we can get players. We’ve got our ideas about that without making them public, but that’s something we’re pursuing.”
There’s a belief, according to a national recruiting writer, that the program has lost some momentum on the recruiting trail, particularly after guard Aaron Thompson, one of the Panthers’ top signees in their 2017 class, was granted a release from his national letter of intent in late April. Though Pitt is less than a decade removed from the height of its greatest success, time is a precious resource for a program in its position. Perception can change quickly and sometimes irreparably for an entity with a smaller margin of error than some of its conference counterparts.
While they’ve unquestionably regressed from where they once were, the Panthers haven’t been objectively bad the past three seasons. With at least seven new players on the 2017-18 roster, six of whom currently have no Division I experience, next season has the potential to be one of the program’s worst in the past 40 years.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
Even at its best, questions always faced the Pitt men’s basketball program. What did it need to keep doing to remain in the top tier of the ruthlessly competitive Big East Conference? Could a program so often on the cusp of greatness break through and make a Final Four?
The questions now are more dire. A program that won an average of 26.5 games per season, captured some form of a conference championship five times and made the NCAA tournament 12 times in 13 seasons from 2001-14 has averaged 18.7 wins the past three seasons and has missed out on the NCAA tournament twice. It’s reeling from its first losing season since 2000 and is slated to return all of two players from that underachieving squad, a duo that averaged a combined 7.9 points per game.
What was already a difficult situation for coach Kevin Stallings has devolved from bleak to alarming. Next season will be the first of several that will determine whether the Panthers’ recent slump is a momentary dip or something more damaging.
In the past three years, going back to its later years under former coach Jamie Dixon, the program has faded from the national relevancy it once relished. In that time, it has posted a win percentage of .560, down significantly from the .763 percentage it posted in its 13-year peak from 2001-14. If anything, its recent mark is a regression to the mean, much closer to the .550 all-time win percentage the program owned prior to the 2001-02 season.
With those numbers come pressing queries. What can this program become? And where does it go from here?
“It’s as pivotal a point in Pitt basketball as there has probably been since [former coach] Ben Howland was hired in 1999,” said Jon Rothstein, a college basketball analyst for CBS Sports. “It’s all of a sudden time where you’re going to be starting from scratch with a brand-new roster in the ACC. That doesn’t make for a lot of sleep-filled nights.”
A fall from grace
The stakes of Pitt’s present situation are unquestionably high. The history of college basketball is littered with examples of programs rising to join the sport’s elites for a brief period. Some recovered after a stretch in which the wins dissipated, while others never returned to the lofty standing they once enjoyed, at least not on a consistent basis.
Arizona and Georgetown, after a few years of tumult following the retirement of legendary coaches, both re-established themselves with successful hires (Sean Miller and John Thompson III, respectively). Maryland, an ACC power in the 1970s and 1980s, floundered for seven years after the resignation of coach Lefty Driesell before regaining its footing under Gary Williams, who led the Terrapins to their only national championship in 2002.
Then there’s the less desirable end of the spectrum. Once a Big East bottom-feeder, Seton Hall made a surprise run to the NCAA championship in 1989, but in the 21 seasons after coach P.J. Carlisimo left for the NBA in 1994, it made the NCAA tournament just three times. Georgia Tech, a perennial top-20 team under coach Bobby Cremins, has averaged 16.3 wins per season and has made it past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament once since 1996.
Perhaps the most recent and hopeful example of a turnaround from a non-traditional power is the school that deprived Pitt of its best chance at a Final Four since World War II — Villanova. Jay Wright returned a languishing program to relevance, leading it to a Final Four in 2009, before the Wildcats began to slip, going 37-43 over an 80-game stretch from 2011-13. Over the next four seasons, though, they never won fewer than 29 games, a run highlighted by a national title in 2016.
What exactly changed? While the move to a rebranded, 10-team Big East helped, Wright returned to a recruiting philosophy that had helped him achieve what he had earlier in his tenure. Instead of continuing to chase top-10 recruits he felt compelled to given Villanova’s newfound standing, he refocused his efforts on top-50 or top-100 prospects he believed had a better chance of staying in school for three or four years.
“That’s the lesson to learn, that you have to understand the lane you’re in and realize how to maximize it,” said college basketball writer Dana O’Neil, author of ‘Long Shots: Jay Wright, Villanova, and College Basketball’s Most Unlikely Champion.’ “Don’t try to be something that you’re not. Be who you can be and figure out how to make that successful.”
For Pitt, that search for an identity comes at the highest level of the sport. The Panthers thrived under Howland and Dixon as a quintessential Big East team, one defined by its rugged, physical and deliberate style. Since joining the ACC in 2013, however, their fortunes have waned, with a win percentage of .603 and just one season with at least 25 wins (it had nine such seasons in the previous 12 years).
After Stallings replaced Dixon in 2016, the style-of-play questions surrounding the move to the ACC became more moot. The concerns about what Pitt can become in a relatively unfamiliar league, though, remain. The Panthers are financially competitive, with a men’s basketball budget of $8.8 million, the sixth-most of any ACC school, according to the most recent data from the Department of Postsecondary Education. Given the ages of coaches at some of the conference’s top programs — Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim (72), Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (70), North Carolina’s Roy Williams (66), Louisville’s Rick Pitino (64) and even Miami’s Jim Larranaga (67) — there’s a prevailing sentiment that there might be a window of opportunity for those outside the league’s upper echelon once those coaches retire.
Though it’s unrealistic to expect Pitt to compete annually with more storied and better-resourced programs, there is what many believe to be a model of success for it that utilizes well-regarded prospects who become three- and four-year players. If that sort of recruiting is done on a consistent basis, there’s a level of depth that is built, meaning that losing players to graduation or the professional ranks doesn’t deal a devastating blow and it can be annually competitive. The recent accomplishments of programs such as Virginia and Notre Dame lend credence to that philosophy and are a reminder to Pitt of what it can once again be.
“If your program wanes, it’s going to take some time to recover because most of the programs in the ACC are developmental programs,” Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman said. “That’s not to say we don’t get great players; we do. But everybody gets great players in the ACC. How are you going to develop those players? That isn’t done in a year or two. It takes some time to establish that mindset. It takes some time to develop those players.”
Finding a niche
Beyond the nuances of the ACC, the key to building any program, particularly a non-traditional power, is determined almost entirely by two things — coaching and recruiting. It’s a simple but all-important formula.
“There’s no big secret about that,” said Larry Keating, Seton Hall athletic director from 1985-97. “As you see teams come up periodically for a couple of years, typically it’s because they’ve latched on to someone who was probably a better coach than anybody thought when they hired him and ends up doing a good job and gets players. That’s really what it’s all about.”
Despite an underwhelming first season at the school, and a turbulent offseason, Stallings’ 17-year run at Vanderbilt, one in which he compiled a 332-220 record, only provides so many clues into how he might fare at Pitt. It’s simply too early to judge what he and his teams might be able to do.
Whether his tenure is a success or failure will be determined primarily by how he is able to recruit and, more specifically, whether he can identify a recruiting niche in which his program can thrive.
The New York-New Jersey pipeline that helped transform Pitt into a power has dried up with the move from the Big East, which has forced it to look elsewhere for players in recent years, particularly with little in the way of high-level local prospects. At Vanderbilt, due in some part to the school’s academic restrictions, Stallings had to be selective and creative, recruiting nationally and internationally. His 2017 class features two players from Canada, a growing hotbed for basketball talent that, if connections are forged, could be a valuable asset.
“It doesn’t feel like there’s a niche out there for us right now,” Stallings said. “We have to find one. We have to get one. I think that’s going to be something that’s going to be critical to our success moving forward is establishing some places we can get players. We’ve got our ideas about that without making them public, but that’s something we’re pursuing.”
There’s a belief, according to a national recruiting writer, that the program has lost some momentum on the recruiting trail, particularly after guard Aaron Thompson, one of the Panthers’ top signees in their 2017 class, was granted a release from his national letter of intent in late April. Though Pitt is less than a decade removed from the height of its greatest success, time is a precious resource for a program in its position. Perception can change quickly and sometimes irreparably for an entity with a smaller margin of error than some of its conference counterparts.
While they’ve unquestionably regressed from where they once were, the Panthers haven’t been objectively bad the past three seasons. With at least seven new players on the 2017-18 roster, six of whom currently have no Division I experience, next season has the potential to be one of the program’s worst in the past 40 years.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
