In the waning moments of a 13-minute news conference Monday in which he spent at least 10 minutes bemoaning his Pitt team’s lack of intensity in a 99-80 victory against Gardner-Webb, Kevin Stallings injected a dose of caution into an assessment delivered in the tone of a disappointed father.
“We just have to be an everyday group,” the Pitt basketball coach said. “Maybe I’ve made too much about it, honestly.”
The peril of early season basketball is the tendency to create hyperbole, where every shot, disconcerting sign or result that would have maybe been glossed over two months later is analyzed exhaustively.
The predicament facing Stallings is entirely different and more understandable. His downtrodden tone following the decisive win, which stood in stark contrast to his upbeat tenor after the double-overtime win Friday night against Eastern Michigan, wasn’t out of frustration or desperation; he’s simply a first-year coach trying to figure out his team and his players.
As the Panthers prepare for their most difficult stretch of their early schedule — with a game against SMU tonight and either Michigan or Marquette Friday at Madison Square Garden — it’s a learning process that might need to be accelerated.
“I take responsibility for that,” Stallings said after the Gardner-Webb win. “Maybe I sent the wrong message about tempo and offense and things like that because we’re not ready to beat anybody that’s equivalent to us in terms of talent because we don’t sustain our defensive intensity. We have two short days to get that fixed before we go play some high-level teams in New York City.”
Throughout the offseason, there was little, if anything, Stallings saw that concerned him about sluggishness from his team. But for all he witnessed in that time, and for all he bonded with his new players, those experiences came in a vacuum, one in which they worked out and played exclusively against each other. Against other teams in games that actually count, the dynamic changes.
Why the loss of focus arose in the first place is a mystery, one that could be easily attributed to a Monday night game against a non-descript opponent before the smallest crowd (4,614) for a regular-season game in the Petersen Events Center’s history.
The environment, listless as it may have been, wasn’t a factor for the players.
“I didn’t think that was the case,” forward Sheldon Jeter said. “I think the energy just wasn’t there. I think some people feed off the attendance at times. We brought it up multiple times that it doesn’t matter how many people are up there; just play hard.”
That Jeter — who had 14 points and 13 rebounds against Gardner-Webb — was one of the players Stallings singled out to praise is telling since the Beaver Falls native played for his current coach at Vanderbilt in 2012-13. Stallings, in short, knows what he’ll be getting from Jeter on a consistent basis.
For everyone else, even for senior standouts such as Mike Young and Jamel Artis, it’s an ongoing education. That’s part of the reason why Monday night, with his team nursing a comfortable lead, Stallings played all 11 scholarship players, far exceeding the nine-man rotation he espoused in the preseason.
Some of what he saw from those younger or lesser-used players was encouraging. But how Pitt responds in New York will likely tell more about where this team is mentally with a new coach and where it can go.
“The lesson is this: If you’re only going to get excited to play teams that have some brand-name [recognition] or whatever, ultimately you’re only going to be good enough to beat the teams you’re more talented than because you’re not going to be an everyday group,” Stallings said. “If you’re only good enough to beat the teams you’re more talented than, you’re not going to have the kind of season you want to have.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
First Published: November 17, 2016, 5:00 a.m.