Kevin Stallings has now completed the perfect season, 0-18. Pitt is just the 2nd ACC school to
ever accomplish this feat. By the time
we wake up tomorrow Stallings could and should be fired. There is no sense in Athletic Director
Heather Lyke delaying the inevitable any longer. Fire Stallings now and hire the next Pitt Men’s
Basketball Coach ASAP (even if it is not announced for another few weeks
because the new head coach still has his team playing.) The key however, is this hire. After the disastrous Kevin Stallings
Experiment, Chancellor Patrick Gallagher and Lyke cannot afford to miss on this
hire.
Let me say once again, that I am 100% hitched to the Dan
Hurley wagon. If you missed my Rant a
few weeks back making a case for him to be the replacement, here it is.
Obviously, I am not making the hire, so I am sure that
others will be considered by the decision makers at Pitt as well. If they don’t get Hurley from Rhode Island, I
don’t really have anyone in particular that I would really pull for to be
hired. I like the idea of a guy like Ron
Sanchez, the Associate Head Coach at Virginia under Tony Bennett. I think Mick Cronin, at Cincinnati, might be
someone to talk to and maybe gauge his interest. Steve Forbes at ETSU was going to be a hot
name, but he reportedly just agreed to an extension recently. Who knows if that holds up. I’m intrigued by some other names that I have
heard mentioned as well, but I am going to keep those names to myself for the
time being.
One thing I can say is that I know who I DON’T want Pitt to
hire as their next basketball coach. Being
that this has been a hot topic between Pitt fans since roughly mid-January, I
have heard tons of suggestions for the next coach. I have seen them on Twitter, on Pitt message
boards, in text conversations with friends.
Some have been good suggestions.
Others have been awful. Those are
the ones that I am going to address here.
(NOTE: I wrote this in
Early-February in anticipation of Stallings being fired. This was BEFORE the Sean Miller information
came out late last week. He was however
on my original list of coaches I DID NOT want at Pitt, so I left the original
comments and thoughts as to why. What
happened to him last Friday night doesn’t change anything in my mind. Anyone that was paying close attention to the
situation knew that there was another show to drop. He was a HARD PASS for me before the news
came out and he still is today.)
SEAN MILLER: This
is the same Sean Miller that just 2 years was running away from this job, and
the rumors of being tied to the job, as fast as humanly possible. It ended with his dad bad mouthing Pitt and basically
saying that his son would never coach at Pitt.
If that same Sean Miller, now suddenly wants the Pitt job, then his
situation at Arizona with the FBI investigation is WAY worse than any of us
think. As I said before, this is a VERY
important hire. The last thing that Pitt
needs is to hire a guy whose top assistant for the last 11 years was in court
last week on bribery and fraud charges in connection with the ongoing FBI
investigation into the NCAA. NO THANKS!
BRANDIN KNIGHT: Remove the name “PITT” from Brandin’s
coaching resume and replace it with schools like Seton Hall, Virginia Tech,
Georgetown, Michigan, or Ohio State.
Would you still want Brandin Knight as the next head coach at Pitt? I didn’t think so. I’ll never understand why so much importance
is put on whether or not someone is from Pitt (or Pittsburgh). Being a Pitt guy really isn’t all that
important. Being able to coach and
recruit is. Nobody knew who Ben Howland
was before he got to Oakland and he is the guy that turned the whole program
around. Heck, I bet most people reading
this now, couldn’t tell me where Howland coached before coming to Pitt. I know people wanted Knight to get the job
when Dixon left and looking back, he probably couldn’t have done much worse
than Stallings. But if he were that good
of a coach, don’t you think someone else would have scooped him up and given
him a head coaching job? Don’t you think
Dixon would have at least offered him a spot on his staff at TCU? Knight is currently at Rutgers. And he isn’t even the top assistant
there. BY THE WAY… Ben Howland coached at Gonzaga, UC Santa Barbara and his
only head coaching experience before Pitt hired him was at Northern Arizona.
KEVIN WILLARD: If Pitt had to hire a “Pitt Guy” I’d
rather have Willard over Knight, at least he has head coaching experience. Still, hiring a Pitt guy is not important and
there are much better candidates than Kevin Willard out there, even if he is a
Pitt Alum.
ARCHIE MILLER: See “SEAN MILLER” and re-read the first
two sentences.
RICK PITINO: See “SEAN MILLER” and re-read the last four
sentences.
TOM CREAN: He was a winner at Marquette, as Pitt
fans know all too well. He also took a
dumpster fire at Indiana and turned it around.
In 9 years at Indiana he went to 3 Sweet 16’s and won 2 Big Ten Titles,
but he also missed the NCAA Tournament completely 5 times. Maybe most importantly though, the reason I
don’t want Tom Crean is because he is an ass. He had issues with discipling his players and
keeping guys on the roster. There is a
reason that Indiana canned him last year at the first hint of a struggle. He had the Hoosiers at #3 in the country
before they fell apart, eventually losing in the 1st Round of the
NIT.
ANDY TOOLE: I think Toole is a very good basketball
coach, but he just doesn’t have the experience needed for the ACC. He is also another guy that is only getting
mentioned because he is in Pittsburgh. He just finished 7th in the NEC this
year. If he coached at Mount St. Mary’s
or a different school in the NEC other than Robert Morris, nobody would know
who he is. I think Toole could
eventually do some nice things at a bigger school, but Pitt can’t afford to
take that risk right now.
THAD MATTA: This name gets brought up a lot because
of his connection to Pitt AD Heather Lyke.
He was at Ohio State when she was an assistant AD there. Matta was very successful at Ohio State,
taking them to the postseason in 11 of 13 years there, including two Final
Four’s. He retired after last season at
just the age of 49 due to back injuries that made the job too difficult. I have no idea how he is recovering or if he
even wants to get back into coaching.
Due to the questions about his health, and the long-term rebuild that
the Pitt program has ahead of itself, Matta doesn’t make any sense right now
for the Panthers.
BEN HOWLAND: After getting fired from UCLA, Howland
has found himself rebuilding the Mississippi State program, and has them on the
cusp of an NCAA Tournament appearance in just Year 3 in Starkville. There is no doubt that he can coach, and he
would certainly be embraced at Pitt if he were to return, however I have two
big draw backs on bringing Howland back to Pitt. 1) He is 60 years old. I would prefer a younger coach to take over a
rebuild, because it will take time. This
isn’t just a 1 or 2 year fix sadly, it will likely take 3 or 4 years. That’s why Pitt will probably have to offer a
6-year deal with lots of guarantees to whoever they get for the job. That would
put Howland at 66. I don’t think Pitt
wants to go through this hiring process again in 5 or 6 years. Ideally, they get someone younger, like Dixon
was, who will be there for a long time, again, like Dixon was. 2) This is pure speculation, but I think
Howland is dirty. His long-standing
connection with Adidas and his sudden ability to get top tier talent to play at
Mississippi State scares me. With the
recent reports stemming from the FBI investigation talking about there being
many, many other schools involved in the corruption case, I just don’t trust
him.
Bottom line is that any coach at this point would be an
upgrade over Stallings. However, the
guys listed above are not guys that could get Pitt back to prominence, like
they were within the last 10 years.
