Semi OT: Who Killed Pitt Basketball? | The Boneyard

Semi OT: Who Killed Pitt Basketball?

Not sure I'd quite categorize that as "off topic". Seems like a cautionary tale for UConn. Including references to a $10 Million buyout for the current coach, sudden spikes in blowout losses, filling out the roster with graduate transfers and players transferring out of the program. Yikes! The AD at UConn should probably heed that warning. At least Pitt had the advantage of having "THE ACC" as a draw. Not so much the AAC.

The AAC is a much worse conference than the ACC, so it's probably not even possible for UConn to sink as low as Pitt going 0-fer in conference, but do you want to wait that long to make a change ?
 
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Taking grad transfers in and of itself did not bring down our program. Gambling on the wrong individual ones played a part.
 
The head coach taking a recruiting sabbatical brought down our program. The graduate transfers were just a half-assed effort to slap a bandaid on that wound.

Pitt fans brought down Pitt basketball.

They were pissed that Dixon never got them as far as they thought he should have - so he left.

Once he did, they discovered that their job was not particularly in demand and they hired a guy everyone knew was garbage.
 
Stainmaster said:
Taking grad transfers in and of itself did not bring down our program. Gambling on the wrong individual ones played a part.
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Are you saying we've chosen the wrong grad transfers or am I misinterpreting?
 
Stainmaster said:
Taking grad transfers in and of itself did not bring down our program. Gambling on the wrong individual ones played a part.
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The grad transfers were a symptom, not the disease. And to be honest, more of them have worked out (Kromah, Miller, Gibbs when KO finally utilized him properly) than not (Onuorah, arguably Anderson).

The problem was poor recruiting at the HS level, which included or led to:
1. missing out on most of our critical high-profile targets (Abu, Govan, Diallo, etc.)
2. identifying the wrong players:
a. overrated guys who lacked skill, toughness, or BBIQ (Facey, Enoch, Jackson)
b. damaged goods (Durham, Diarra, Gilbert)
3. relying too much on regular transfers (Purvis, Larrier) and putting more stock in their HS recruiting rankings (Top 20-50) than in their actual on-court performance in CBB (pretty mediocre)
 
Pitt faces similar problems that BC basketball faced when they moved to the ACC. I shared BC season basketball tickets during the Big East years (we used to buy our Big East Tournament tickets through BC which was a lot easier than buying through UConn) and we never had a hard time finding people to go to games. We knew people who went to UConn, Georgetown, Syracuse, Villanova, St. John's, Providence, Seton Hall... and they were excited to see their team play. We kept the season tickets the first year BC went to the ACC, but friends only wanted to go to the UNC and Duke games. We dropped the season tickets the next year and I have not been to a game at BC since.

Another similarity is that both BC and Pitt pushed out relatively successful coaches and the programs have had difficulty recovering. Unlike UConn, neither BC or Pitt have a strong historical basketball fanbase.

I would argue that is much easier for UConn to return to winning than it would be at Pitt. What teams in the AAC have advantages over us? Nobody. What schools in the ACC have advantages over Pitt? Most. The real surprise in my mind is that Pitt became a power in the Big East over St. John's, Georgetown, and Villanova.

Look at what the demise of the Big East did for Villanova. In Jay Wright's first 12 seasons, he was 114-91 in Big East play (including 24-30 the last 3 years), had one regular season championship, and no Big East Tournament championships. In the New Big East, Villanova has been dominant going 168-13 in NBE play, won four regular season championships, and 2 NBE Conference tournaments. Two years ago, they won the national championship.

I think UConn can rise again and be a national power. We should be dominant in the AAC and winning will bring more winning.
 
champs99and04 said:
Are you saying we've chosen the wrong grad transfers or am I misinterpreting?
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That's essentially the gist of it.

The mere act of having grad transfers on the roster did not lead to poor play, and the quality of play will not be improved by avoiding them altogether going forward. That being said, it would behoove whoever is in charge to avoid grad transfers with skill sets as limited as Onuorah's.
 
Tenspro2002 said:
The grad transfers were a symptom, not the disease. And to be honest, more of them have worked out (Kromah, Miller, Gibbs when KO finally utilized him properly) than not (Onuorah, arguably Anderson).
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I agree completely. Which I why I hope you understand why some of us are pushing back against wholesale opposition to recruiting grad transfers.
 
Stainmaster said:
I agree completely. Which I why I hope you understand why some of us are pushing back against wholesale opposition to recruiting grad transfers.
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I agree -- I don't oppose grad transfers in principle.

But I also don't think there's much disagreement in that the program would be much healthier if we actually attracted and retained high-quality talent over multiple years. Some cohesion is needed.
 
From the article: Pitt likes to launch threes, like a lot of teams these days, but it had several possessions in which it simply ball-screened aimlessly along the perimeter before rushing a shot or seeing the shot clock run out.

That’s our entire offensive philosophy.
 
UConnJim said:
Pitt faces similar problems that BC basketball faced when they moved to the ACC. I shared BC season basketball tickets during the Big East years (we used to buy our Big East Tournament tickets through BC which was a lot easier than buying through UConn) and we never had a hard time finding people to go to games. We knew people who went to UConn, Georgetown, Syracuse, Villanova, St. John's, Providence, Seton Hall... and they were excited to see their team play. We kept the season tickets the first year BC went to the ACC, but friends only wanted to go to the UNC and Duke games. We dropped the season tickets the next year and I have not been to a game at BC since.

Another similarity is that both BC and Pitt pushed out relatively successful coaches and the programs have had difficulty recovering. Unlike UConn, neither BC or Pitt have a strong historical basketball fanbase.

I would argue that is much easier for UConn to return to winning than it would be at Pitt. What teams in the AAC have advantages over us? Nobody. What schools in the ACC have advantages over Pitt? Most. The real surprise in my mind is that Pitt became a power in the Big East over St. John's, Georgetown, and Villanova.

Look at what the demise of the Big East did for Villanova. In Jay Wright's first 12 seasons, he was 114-91 in Big East play (including 24-30 the last 3 years), had one regular season championship, and no Big East Tournament championships. In the New Big East, Villanova has been dominant going 168-13 in NBE play, won four regular season championships, and 2 NBE Conference tournaments. Two years ago, they won the national championship.

I think UConn can rise again and be a national power. We should be dominant in the AAC and winning will bring more winning.
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You would rather recruit players into our conference rather than the ACC? The tv ESPN matchups in conference are much better competition and exposure with ACC, no contest. Calhoun built our program that way exactly.
 
According to Kenpom, Dixon had them 11th in the country in 2013, 16th in 2014, and 37th in 2016. Still, they weren’t getting NCAAT wins, so they got tired of Dixon (who in their defense really wasn’t doing well recruiting).

The Stallings hire was horrible though. Fans hated it from day one. Vanderbilt fans were happy to see the guy leave, and he was replacing a pretty damn good coach in Dixon. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it has.
 
The AAC has had a bunch of retread coaches in its short existence with decent success and the best Pitt could do was Kevin Stallings. What a fail.
 
I’ll never understand the Kevin Stallings hire. Dude was never that good.

Pittsburgh isn’t really a coaches’ paradise either. It’s not exactly a hot commodity, ACC or not.
 
CTBasketball said:
I’ll never understand the Kevin Stallings hire. Dude was never that good.

Pittsburgh isn’t really a coaches’ paradise either. It’s not exactly a hot commodity, ACC or not.
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Yet, they got the invite to the ACC and UConn didn't. Who is a better position, Pitt or UConn?
 
Living in Pittsburgh, most of my friends are Pitt diehards so I have to deal with their constant complaining and arrogance. They are without a doubt the most delusional fan base I’ve ever encountered.

Currently, boosters are leaking to the local media that they believed Stallings would accept 7.5M instead of the full 10M buyout and are now warning that it could get “messy” and they might try to fire him for cause. It’s hilarious how this school/athletic department consistently shoots itself in the foot, then reloads the gun and takes aim at the other foot
 
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