Panthers schedule two-game series against Vanderbilt
Pitt men’s basketball will play a two- game series against Vanderbilt, with the first matchup coming Nov. 24 this year at Petersen Events Center and the second happening in the 2022-23 season in Nashville, Tenn., the program announced Monday.
The Panthers and Commodores have just three alltime meetings, with the former winning two of those games, but the history between them has been primarily painful for Pitt.
In 1988, Vanderbilt upset the No. 2-seeded Panthers in the second round of the NCAA tournament, 80-74, a game that was sent into overtime by a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from Barry Goheen. The loss, which marked the most recent time the two sides played, abruptly ended one of the best seasons in program history and one of Pitt’s most realistic shots at a national championship.
In 2016, then-Panthers athletic director Scott Barnes replaced longtime head coach Jamie Dixon, who had left for TCU, with Kevin Stallings, who had spent the previous 17 seasons at Vanderbilt and amassed a 332220 record in that time. After missing the NCAA tournament in three of his final four seasons with the Commodores, Stallings compiled a disastrous 24-41 record in two seasons at Pitt, the second of which saw his team go 8-24 overall and 0-19 in the ACC. He was fired about 48 hours after the end of the 2017-18 season.
The ties that now bind the two programs are much less macabre. Panthers coach Jeff Capel and Commodores coach Jerry Stackhouse were AAU teammates growing up in North Carolina before heading to rival programs for college — the former to Duke, the latter to North Carolina. The two faced off four times in college, which included a thrilling 102-100 victory in double overtime for the Tar Heels, a game in which Capel hit a half-court buzzer-beater to force the game into a second overtime. Stackhouse went on to play 18 seasons in the NBA, where he was a twotime All-Star.
“He teaches a fast-paced, aggressive style of basketball and his teams compete at a high level,” Capel said in a statement. “This matchup will be a great test for our team and will help ready us for conference play.”
Two seasons into his tenure, Stackhouse’s Vanderbilt teams have largely struggled, going 20-37 overall and 6-28 in Southeastern Conference competition.
The Commodores were winless in the SEC the season before Stackhouse’s arrival, the low point of a fiveyear period in which the program has failed to recreate the success of Stallings, who led Vanderbilt to seven NCAA tournaments, including two trips to the Sweet 16.
Last season, the Commodores finished 9-16 overall and 3-13 in SEC play. That team lost four of its top seven scorers, though it received a boost when Scotty Pippen Jr., son of NBA Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen, withdrew from the NBA draft earlier this month after averaging a team-high 20.8 points per game as a sophomore.
Vanderbilt becomes the fourth team from one of college basketball’s six major conferences that is featured on Pitt’s non- conference schedule this season, joining West Virginia, St. John’s and Minnesota. The Panthers reportedly also have matchups scheduled against The Citadel and Jacksonville.