If Pitt beats Wake Forest Wednesday night and no one is at Petersen Events Center to see it, does it count as a win?
Apologies to 18th-century philosopher George Berkeley.
It is a bad game between two lousy teams, 0-15 Pitt against 3-12 Wake Forest. It will generate little interest nationally, in the ACC, even in Pittsburgh and Winston-Salem, N.C. The outcome quickly will be forgotten.
So why I am so intrigued?
I guess I want to see if Pitt’s abysmal season can get worse. If it doesn’t beat Wake Forest, it almost certainly will finish its ACC regular season 0-18. It has No. 1 Virginia here Saturday afternoon and plays at Notre Dame next Wednesday night. As much as I’d like to see Pitt beat Wake so its players avoid the ignominy of a winless conference slate, I don’t like its chances.
I also want to see if fewer than 2,500 fans come out. That’s a real possibility, considering the unattractiveness of the game and its late 9 p.m. tipoff. Pitt attracted just 2,835 for its game against Boston College Feb. 13 and 2,566 for N.C. State Jan. 24. It’s almost impossible to believe Pitt used to regularly sell out the 12,508-seat Petersen Events Center just a few seasons ago. The empty seats are telling. They can’t be ignored.
Most of all, I want to see if a Pitt loss and that subsequent 0-18 finish means the end of Kevin Stallings as Pitt coach after just two seasons. Of course, that wouldn’t be fair. Every coach deserves at least three years, if not four, to show what he can do. But we all know life isn’t always fair. Tough decisions have to be made when a team is mostly non-competitive and shows little improvement, when its once-passionate fan base has turned almost completely apathetic. Good people get terminated. It’s sad, but true.
I get that Stallings gets it. He’s a basketball lifer who knows what happens to coaches who not only don’t win but also lose the way Pitt is. I also know that Stallings is paid well and will continue to be well-compensated once he’s out. Many terminated employees aren’t so fortunate. They’re pushed to the door with nothing more than a good-luck wish.
But I still feel sorry for Stallings. He took the Pitt job at a really rotten time for the program, just three years after its football-driven move to the ACC, which crushed Jamie Dixon’s recruiting. Beyond that, many Pitt fans didn’t want Stallings and turned on him almost immediately. His greatest sin was that he wasn’t Sean Miller or Archie Miller. To the contrary, he was looked at as an old, washed-up, has-been from Vanderbilt. He never really had a chance here.
Stallings didn’t help himself in his first season last year by clashing with star players Jamel Artis and Michael Young. I blame him for that, but I blame the players more. Artis and Young hurt the program with their poor attitude. They never believed in Stallings, never bought into what he was selling. That’s the biggest reason Pitt went 4-14 in the ACC, lost at home to Louisville by 55 points, and missed out on the National Invitation Tournament let alone the NCAA tournament.
The results this season have been worse. It’s true, Pitt is a ridiculously young, almost brand-new team. It’s also true Pitt lost its best player, Ryan Luther, to injury. But 0-15 is 0-15. The attendance numbers don’t lie. The program is a mess.
But if Pitt does fire Stallings, who is it going to get as its coach? I’ve heard Tom Crean, who was fired after last season by Indiana, and Thad Matta, who was pushed aside by Ohio State. Couldn’t they wait for a better job? Wouldn’t you if you were in their position? Would either be interested in coming to a place that showed so little support to its coach that it fired Stallings after just two seasons? Would any established coach jump into that type of situation?
That doesn’t mean there aren’t good young coaches out there. There are plenty at the mid-major level, for starters. Maybe the right one would be able to turn around the Pitt program. But I don’t have a lot of faith that Heather Lyke, who has been noncommittal about Stallings’ future, will be able to find the right guy. Her predecessor as Pitt athletic director, Scott Barnes, had much greater ties to college basketball as a former chairman of the NCAA men’s tournament selection committee and was right to allow Dixon to leave for TCU because Dixon had grown stale at Pitt. And he gave us Stallings?
The harsh truth is clear, right?
There is no guarantee a coaching change will make Pitt basketball relevant again.
Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com and Twitter@RonCookPG. Ron Cook can be heard on the “Cook and Poni” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.
First Published: February 20, 2018, 11:18 p.m.
