After an entertaining as hell Rose Bowl, Paul Chryst gets to take the reins at Pitt. Before that game even finished, news leaked of another coach being hire — unofficially of course.

It’s not going to be an earth-shattering, wow type of hire. Instead, it is a guy with long ties to both Chryst and to the local high school scene.

Chris Haering, who won a WPIAL football championship as Mt. Lebanon’s coach, is headed to the college level.

Haering resigned today to become an assistant coach at Pitt under new coach Paul Chryst. Haering was at Mt. Lebanon for 17 seasons and also coached Hampton for one season. He was a social studies teacher at Mt. Lebanon and won the WPIAL Class AAAA title in 2000.

Haering handed in his letter of resignation today and also met with Mt. Lebanon’s players (he didn’t pull a Todd Graham).

“You’ll have to talk to him, but if you’re asking my opinion, it’s just the right situation for him,” said Mt. Lebanon athletic director John Grogan. “I think he’s had a relationship with [Chryst] for a long time. The fact that he wouldn’t have to move his family I think also played a big role in this.”

Haering played for WVU in the late 80s. His time overlapped while Chryst was a Grad Assistant with the Hoopies.

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Time for another Volvo Challenge. Reminder, keep voting for me. I’m not worried about getting the most votes, I just need to have a presence to have a shot.  This one could be considered a bit more obvious in the marketing side.

Create the Ultimate Pitt Volvo S60 — How would you customize a Volvo S60 to show your school spirit?

I’m okay with this, because it isn’t like I haven’t thought about what I’d like my Volvo S60 to look like and the little extras

Let’s start with the basic appearance. Now, tempting though it may be to get a custom paint job with Royal Blue and a Mustard Yellow Pitt Script on the hood, that just isn’t realistic for me. I’m a little too low key for that. So the whole racing stripe addition for that 70s-retro look is as out as custom Wannstedt Camero.

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Or hold on to the ball?

Ashton Gibbs has been really bad at 3-point shooting since having to take over point guard duties. That has become glaringly noticeable during this three game slide. He is a dismal 3-16 (18.75%) in the past three games. Sadly enough, no one else is helping. The rest of the team is shooting 5-32 (15.63%). In fact all but one of those 3s came from Lamar Patterson — and he had three of his four last night. Wright, Moore and Johnson have combined to be 1-14 during this losing streak.

Just as maddening as the missed 3s, though, are the turnovers. It isn’t exactly a huge leap of faith to suggest that Pitt would have won two of these past three games — regardless of the piss-poor 3-point shooting — if Pitt could have done somewhere approaching average against pressing defenses of Wagner and Cinci.

Heck, if they could have done either at a tolerable clip, Pitt wins both of those games. Maybe not with ease, but without the drama that accompanies this losing streak.

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