Pitt and Kevin Stallings have parted ways after just two seasons, according to multiple reports.
Stallings was 24-41 in his Panthers tenure and finished this season with an 8-24 record and an 0-19 mark against ACC competition.
Since 2000, only six high-major coaches had been fired after just two seasons on the job and just two of the six — James Johnson at Virginia and Billy Gillispie at Kentucky — were fired because of on-court performance. Kelvin Sampson at Indiana, Sean Sutton at Oklahoma State, Gillispie at Texas Tech and Donnie Tyndall at Tennessee were all fired for various off the court issues.
Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports was the first to report the news.
Who Pitt hires now will be an interesting thing to track. It’s not going to be easy to turn that program around, and it will be important for their AD Heather Lykes, who was hired last March, to get this decision right. The issue that Pitt has run into in the last few years is that the way they built their program was on the talent that they could pull out of New York and sell on playing in the Big East. That pipeline is not going to work as well in the ACC.
Clearly the big name here is Sean Miller, who is a Pittsburgh native that may be looking for a soft landing, depending on what he knows or thinks the FBI may have on him. Pitt also should make Danny Hurley say no. Thad Matta is another name that has popped up. The former Ohio State head coach has a proven track record and can get players in the midwest, but he’s never coach in the ACC before and part of the reason that things ended for him early at Ohio State is that he didn’t put in the same hours on the recruiting trail.
Former Pitt assistant and current Towson head coach Pat Skerry is another name that has popped up, and Kentucky assistant Kenny Payne would probably get the Panther fan base excited if they could land him. If I was Lykes, one of the first calls that I would make would be to Paul Weir, the current head coach at New Mexico who took New Mexico State to the NCAA tournament in 2017. He has been able to recruit players from Canada — he’s from Toronto — and in order to succeed at Pitt you need to find some way to gain a recruiting advantage. Canada might just be it.
Lamont Smith resigned from his position as head coach at San Diego on Wednesday night, the school announced.
Smith was arrested on Sunday, Feb. 25th, at the Oakland International Airport following a domestic dispute at the team hotel on the previous night. The woman that accused Smith was taken to the hospital, but charges were not filed in the case.
“After reviewing all the evidence and completing their investigation, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office has discharged the matter and has declined to file any charges against Coach Smith,” a statement from Gail Shifman, Smith’s attorney, released on Tuesday said.
The 42-year old Smith is a USD alum that had been back with the program since 2015. The Toreros went 18-13 this season, which is the most wins the program has had in a decade.
Smith had been on administrative leave since he was arrested.
1. ARIZONA STATE, OKLAHOMA FALL IN THE FIRST ROUND OF CONFERENCE TOURNAMENTS
Although a handful of bubble teams lost games on Wednesday, the continued downfall of Arizona State and Oklahoma was the major story.
Both teams were in the top ten of the national rankings when 2018 began and now both of them are going to be waiting through a long four days.
We might be looking at the NCAA tournament without Trae Young and without the run-and-gun Sun Devils that won against Kansas and Xavier during non-conference play.
2. NOTRE DAME AND OKLAHOMA STATE KEEP NCAA TOURNAMENT HOPES ALIVE
While a few teams will be waiting to hear their fates, others advanced to see another day, as Notre Dame and Oklahoma State were among the bubble’s big winners.
The Fighting Irish made a major statement with a comeback win over Virginia Tech as they continue to try to get as many wins as possible with Bonzie Colson back. Head coach Mike Brey had some strong thoughts about his team as CBT’s Rob Dauster was in Brooklyn for the game. Notre Dame probably has to beat Duke tomorrow as well.
Oklahoma State knocked off in-state rival Oklahoma as the Cowboys continue to enhance their intriguing profile ahead of a game with Kansas. The Cowboys have already beaten the Jayhawks twice and Kansas will be without big man Udoka Azubuike. That game should be interesting.
3. BUCKNELL CLAIMS AN AUTOBID FROM THE PATRIOT LEAGUE
Wednesday was also a slow night for autobids at the Patriot League was the only conference to punch a bid. For the second consecutive season, Bucknell is in the NCAA tournament as they’ll likely be a very dangerous double-digit seed.
The Bison ran past Colgate in the title game as they’ve won 18 of their last 19 games. They return the top four players from a team that lost to No. 4 seed West Virginia by only six in the first round last season. Learn more about Bucknell here.
Texas guard Kerwin Roach lost a tooth on Wednesday night as the Longhorns were battling Iowa State in the Big 12 Tournament.
Roach was guarding Iowa State guard Lindell Wigginton when Wigginton’s elbow inadvertently caught Roach in the face as he was driving to the basket. A video replay showed that Roach lost the bottom part of his tooth as teammate Matt Coleman picked it up off the ground.
Thankfully for Roach, everything looks like it will be okay as his tooth has been re-attached and he’s playing the second half with a mouth guard.
Wednesday was the last slow day of college basketball we’ll see for the rest of the week.
Only one ranked team was playing (No. 12 North Carolina) and one autobid was decided. The major conference tournaments don’t really pick up until Thursday.
The only storyline to follow on Wednesday was the bubble. And two months ago, nobody would have expected that Arizona State and Oklahoma would both lose in first-round conference tournament matchups that leave them seriously sweating on Selection Sunday.
That’s exactly what happened on Wednesday. The Sun Devils lost by double-digits to Colorado in their first Pac-12 Tournament game while Oklahoma lost a rubber match with in-state rival Oklahoma State in the Big 12 Tournament.
On Jan. 1, Arizona State was 12-1, previously the last unbeaten in the nation, and the No. 4 team in the national rankings. Oklahoma was the No. 7 team in the country and freshman guard Trae Young was the heavy frontrunner for National Player of the Year. Both teams were among the darlings of college basketball; surprise teams with fun, uptempo styles of play.
Now both former top-10 teams are waiting a long four days to see if they’ll even be playing in the Big Dance at all. There’s a chance that both teams could be playing in the NIT next week. The downfall of Arizona State and Oklahoma the past two months shows why conference play is still very important in college basketball.
The Arizona State situation is probably been more shocking. The Sun Devils have the two best non-conference wins of any team in college hoops after they picked up a road win at Kansas and a neutral court win over Xavier. Then unbeaten Arizona State entered Pac-12 play and went 8-11 against a very mediocre league that might only get two or three teams in the field.
Oklahoma ran through the buzzsaw of the Big 12 without much help for Young. The Sooners looked like they might be a potential top-four seed after wins over Wichita State, Texas Tech and TCU. They bottomed out after a difficult stretch through conference play as Oklahoma hasn’t won two straight games in almost two months.
Conference play exposed both of these formerly top-ten teams for what they actually are: deeply flawed teams limping into the postseason. If the bubble weren’t weaker, you could even argue that both of these teams could have been out of the NCAA tournament picture awhile ago.
It just goes to show that ruling the rankings after non-conference play doesn’t mean much of anything if you can’t put together a solid stretch in your own league. It doesn’t matter how good you look after non-conference play; you still need enough conference wins to play in March.
NEW YORK — Mike Brey knows how good his team is.
He also knows that his Notre Dame roster led by seniors like Bonzie Colson and Matt Farrell don’t, at this point in their careers, need to be micro-managed. That’s why, with his team trailing a must-win game by 13 points at the half and 21 points early in the second, he gave the floor to them.
“They do the talking in the huddles,” Brey said. “I didn’t say much at halftime. ‘Y’all figure it out.'”
And figure it out they did.
The tenth-seeded Fighting Irish held No. 7 seed Virginia Tech to 1-for-16 shooting for a ten-minute stretch at the end of the second half, going on a 40-12 run that turned that 21-point deficit into a seven-point lead as the Irish landed a 71-65 win that gave them a shot to beat Duke on Thursday night and convince the selection committee that they deserve a bid to the NCAA tournament.
That’s where we are right now with this Notre Dame team.
When they are healthy, there isn’t anyone in the country that doesn’t think this group is good enough to get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. But being good enough and being deserving of a spot in the big dance are two totally different things.
As it stands, after two ACC tournament wins, Notre Dame is 20-13 on the season and 8-10 in league play. They have two Quadrant 1 wins, a 7-10 mark against the top two Quadrants and three losses to Quadrant 3 teams. Their best win — Wichita State in the Maui Invitational — doesn’t outweigh the fact that they lost to Ball State at home, or to Indiana, or at Georgia Tech.
That is not a résumé worthy of an at-large bid this year, but simply looking at their schedule buries the lede: The Irish played without their All-American power forward for two months and without their All-ACC point guard for the better part of three weeks. Their record without Colson was 6-9. Their record without Colson and Farrell was 1-4. They didn’t win a game for a full month, but four of those seven losses came without their two best players on the floor; all seven of them were without Colson.
“I’ve never been a big guy to campaign,” Brey said. “I don’t want to hear about best 68. When I have my guys back we’re a top 20 team, and I think the committee knows that.”
He’s got a point.
Even with all the time that duo missed, Notre Dame is still a top 30 team according to KenPom. They’re 14-4 at full strength, and that includes their win over Wichita State.
The problem is that two of Notre Dame’s three Quadrant 3 losses — Ball State and Indiana — came with Colson and Farrell healthy, at 100 percent and playing poorly enough to fall to a pair of in-state rivals.
It’s a tough argument to make — ignore the bad parts of our résumé because we were without our two best players even though the worst parts of our résumé came with both of them — which is what makes Thursday night so important. The Irish will be facing off with No. 2 seed Duke. That would be a great win, particularly when it would come on a neutral court in a city that might as well be Duke’s second home.
That’s the kind of win that the Irish would need to be able to convince the committee that they are, in fact, deserving of a bid, and not just because their roster looks like it should be on paper.
And when the score was 47-26 with 14 minutes left, I’m not sure anyone actually thought we’d be at a point where that was a possibility on Thursday night.
“All the stuff they’ve been through,” Brey said, “they’re just tough dudes.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been prouder of a group — and in a game that really mattered.”
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