Stallings believes in Pitt’s future
the Panthers next season. With new players and an extra year of experience for its woefully young roster, Pitt almost certainly will be better, if only because it’s harder to be worse than it is now, at 0-17 in ACC games and 8-22 on the season.
That positive outlook is met with a bleaker reality. Stallings believes in what the program can become under his watch, but whether he is around to see the change for which he hopes is uncertain.
“It’s not where we want to be, it’s not where we’re going to be, but I knew when I took the job, this was going to be a hard year. I didn’t know it was going to be this hard,” Stallings said. “I didn’t know some of the dynamics that played out would play out the way they did. We’ll be OK. We’re not a good team this year. It’s not for a lack of effort or a lack of trying. We have to grow the program up again and get it better in every way.”
The shock over the program’s fall, from being a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament to winless in conference play in not even seven years, is understandable, but outrage over what this team has failed to accomplish can be feigned. A squad with nine players in their first Division I season, none of whom were top recruits, was never going to be a viable contender for much of anything.
But it has, as Stallings mentioned, been harder than anticipated. It began when it was determined that senior forward Ryan Luther wouldn’t return this season after a foot injury. Without him, the team was down not only its leading scorer and rebounder, but a veteran presence on which its players could lean. Even before his injury, though, Pitt was giving close to 25 or even 30 minutes per game to freshmen who, in a more ideal situation at a more firmly established program, would be coming off the bench for 1012 minutes per game while learning from upperclassmen starters.
The woes that come with such an arrangement reached a head Saturday in the 66-37 loss to the No. 1ranked Cavaliers, when the Panthers scored just seven points and made 1 of 22 shots in the first half. The loss was their 22nd of the season, setting a program single-season record.
It’s the sort of ongoing public struggle that elicits a degree of sympathy from even opposing coaches, as it was Saturday when Virginia coach Tony Bennett removed the final one of his starters with eight minutes remaining and his team up 30 (55-25).
“They’re so young and have had some things happen, so you certainly feel compassion, but we were in the heat of the game and tried to be as focused as we can,” Bennett said. “I thought we tried to play it the right way. It’s a strange feeling, yeah. That may be the lowest [first-half point total he has seen], but I thought our guys responded the right way and respected them and respected the game.”
The reasons for belief in next season are clear. Luther ostensibly will be back after applying for a medical redshirt that would give him an additional year of eligibility. St. John’s transfer Malik Ellison, an athletic wing said by many to be the best player on the team’s roster, will be eligible after sitting out this season in adherence to NCAA transfer rules. Freshmen such as Terrell Brown and Parker Stewart who have shown rapid improvement this season should only continue to get better.
The public optimism, however, serves another purpose. It provides refuge from the dreary present and, for Stallings, it’s an effective talking point as his job security has gone from a whispered-about topic to an open and obvious source of speculation in the span of mere weeks.
Stallings’ stance on the subject has been as firm as his hope in what his team eventually can become. In a profession defined by control, he’s in a situation, with one regular-season game remaining (Wednesday at Notre Dame), in which he has very little of it.
“I’m pretty good about not worrying about things I don’t control,” Stallings said. “You tell that to your players, you tell that to your children. It was told to me, it was taught to me. I don’t control how long I coach here. I control how hard I work and what kind of job I try to do while I’m here. That’s all I can do.”