Crowds continue to dwindle
the longest losing streak (15 games) in its 111-year basketball history.
Wasn’t it like 20 minutes ago Pitt basketball was as hot as any ticket in town? Listen hard enough, and you can still hear the echoes of this joint jumping when the likes of Connecticut or Syracuse would visit.
“It was like a rock concert in here,” said Rick Drescak, 61, of White Oak, who sat with his buddy Ron Moran, 65, of Greentree in Section 123.
Now it’s more like Peter, Paul & Mary circa 1965, although the loyalists in attendance heated up when Pitt threatened to beat a bad Wake Forest team before dropping a 63-57 decision. Drescak and Moran had a row to themselves. Just about everybody did.
Drescak has been a season-ticket holder since 1995. He’s not in the mood for a rebuild. Neither is Moran.
“We keep telling everybody we don’t have too many five-year plans left,” he said.
I guess I’ll start here with the on-court scene: They aren’t even announcing Kevin Stallings’ name on its own anymore. They used to introduce the Pitt coach — be it Ben Howland, Jamie Dixon or Stallings — after the players. Now it happens before the player intros in quick conjunction with “Pitt Panthers” in an obvious effort to spare Stallings as many boos as possible.
The “Oakland Zoo” student section is more like a miniature exhibit these days. It used to stretch across eight sections of Petersen Events Center real estate. It no longer fills even two on most nights.
An arena worker showed me an instruction sheet before the game, on which employees were told to prepare for a maximum crowd of 4,000. It wasn’t close to that. The 15 smallest crowds in the arena’s history have come under Stallings’ watch. This was one of them, and at 2,420 the lowest for any conference game at Petersen Events Center.
On the opposite side of our sleeping friend sat one Doug Martin, a 59-year-old Plum resident and literally the only person in a threesection corner area of about 200 seats.
“I got my [season tickets] at the tail end of Jamie Dixon’s career here … and … oh well,” Martin said. “You gotta give [Stallings] a little time I guess.”
That’s a nice thought, but I’m guessing time is the one thing Stallings doesn’t have. He cannot possibly survive two years of utter disaster. Can he?
Stallings was not the choice of athletic director Heather Lyke but rather that of her predecessor, “West Coast Basketball Guy” Scott Barnes, who promised Stallings would “move the needle” with his brand of exciting, uptempo basketball.
Stallings figured recruiting pipelines that were closed to him at Vanderbilt would burst open at Pitt. He might never get the chance to find out. The buyout on his six-year deal, if it’s not negotiated down, would be exorbitant — close to $10 million — but Lyke might consider that to be money well spent.
She has to be asking herself whether she can afford to keep Stallings, not whether Pitt can afford to let him go.
I’m guessing Stallings is gone.
That might not be fair. I almost always believe a new coach deserves one natural recruiting cycle — four years — to make a case. But this has been way worse than any reasonable person could have imagined.
One could argue this is Pitt’s worst team since its very first team in 1905-06, the one that lost a 106-13 squeaker to Westminster.
Pitt came into the game looking to avoid any chance of becoming the first Pitt team in 49 years of conference play to go winless in a league (and the only other chances to avoid such a fate would be Saturday against No. 1 Virginia and next Wednesday at Notre Dame).
Stallings’ conference record coming in was 4-29. The crowds are literally dwindling toward zero.
I asked loyal Pitt fan Matthew Klocek of Mount Pleasant, who sat with his mother, Carole, if he would renew his season tickets, which he has held since the arena opened.
He paused for a good five seconds.
“It’s debatable,” he said. “Depends on what the price is.”
If things keep going like this, free might be too expensive.