Just before the weekend, articles were published following a sit-down with basketball head coach Kevin Stallings. A transcript of the interview was also put out on Saturday, to help flesh things a little further.

This is Stallings at his best and worst as far as a public figure. He is candid, open about a lot of things and doesn’t hide behind as much coachspeak. That same honesty, though, can make him come off like an ass, and someone who puts the blame everywhere but on himself.

[Editor note. I had this drafted on Sunday, I swear. But I kept revisiting, and adding to it. SO much to chew on in this.Just posting it at this point before I do more revisions.]

His major talking point: I have a plan in the midst of this seeming chaos.

“In some regards, it helped accelerate some of the panic. Any time a kid leaves, the uninformed probably view it as a negative. Sometimes, change is a positive. Again, I just looked at it and had some very direct conversations with guys. I didn’t tell anybody they had to leave in the conversations, other than the one kid I dismissed, but I told them ‘Here’s what your future looks like here.’ In being honest, that put the ball in their court as far as what they wanted to do. You kind of know what’s coming next. We’re very supportive of those kids. We want all of them to go places where they can play and have success and be happy.”

Bit of splitting hairs on running a kid off versus, “you will never get off of the bench.” But sure.

“But I think the timing of that and Cam’s departure, that set off a little bit of panic. It will all work itself out in the long run. After I was on the job for about six months, I realized fully what we had undertaken. It was a little different than what I had thought. But there’s a plan in place. It’s being executed on a daily basis, it’s fundamentally sound and it will be a winning plan.“

[Emphasis added.]

Been staring at this quote for a while. I’m not reassured.

Talking about the roster from the past year:

“I think I inherited six guys that were ACC-caliber basketball players and some other guys that weren’t ready or able to be ACC-caliber players. I would say that was kind of it. I’m not trying to make kids look bad. I don’t have any desire to make a kid look bad in this.”

I can’t really argue that as far as what he had coming into the season. Perhaps seven if Crisshawn Clark hadn’t been re-injured in preseason. We all have questions about how much of the rest of the players will never be quite that good or if they just didn’t have a chance or weren’t developed enough during the season (or for the future). But really, this is something most fans should be able to agree. Now, what he did with those players is a different issue.

Talking about Pitt fans getting a bit nervous agitated that Stallings is destroying the program. In the question before, Stallings talked about not being surprised by a lot of the transfers that had taken place. That they were players he could see weren’t going to fit and/or were likely to move on. Or in the case of Josh Newkirk, had to be removed from the team.

When Cam transferred and Thompson got out of his letter of intent, that seems to be when your fanbase really started to panic like this whole thing is falling apart. It sounds like you’re basically saying those are the only two things that really kind of caught you by surprise.

“Those are the only two things I was not anticipating. I tried to change both of them. It wasn’t to be. I think that unexpected things tend to cause fans to be concerned and to panic and that sort of thing, and I understand that. The plan is in place. It’s evolving. Yes, the plan adjusts from time to time, but neither of those unexpected departures, if you will, are going to prevent us from building a winning culture and recruiting high-level players that can help us succeed in this league.”

I think fans were already unnerved by the number of transfers. As common as they are, most programs don’t have that many in a season. And Pitt has seemed to be accelerating on transfers after being behind the curve for a number of years on transfers. But yes, many fans with good reason went from concerned to panic with the losses of Johnson and Thompson. Stallings won’t go any further then saying that he just didn’t see it coming.

Having Corey Manigault leave — even though it was widely expected — was disappointing for me. Manigault looked, in my view, as the type of player that with a little time and good coaching to become a solid frontcourt college player. That he felt he was not going to get the opportunity and/or coaching to develop increased my concerns. Especially with the state of Pitt’s frontcourt for next year.

Not that Stallings won’t go into a little bit of hedging and coachspeak with respect to expectations for next year.

Is it realistic to think you can bring in 10 new guys and compete in the ACC? Are you treating next year almost as year one?

“I would call it chapter one as opposed to year one. My answer to that is I have some confidence we’re going to be moving in a very positive direction. What that looks like in terms of wins and losses, at this juncture, because we’re several months away from the season, I’m not even concerned about that right now. But I’m very confident by establishing the kind of culture we’re going to need here in order to sustain long-term success that we’ll be building toward that. We’re going to be closer to being the kind of program we want to be with whatever happens this year because we’re doing the very best we can to recruit the kind of kids, as I talked about before, that have the core values we deem important that can give us that chance.”

This is what Stallings has no real choice but to push as the narrative. Frankly there is no way Pitt is competing in the ACC other then with the bottom four or five teams of the conference. Stallings has to sell the idea of building for the future. Laying a new foundation. Even if he is looking hard and leaning on transfers.

Is that what makes some of these graduate transfers attractive to where you’re at, because theoretically they can help you compete, but they’re not blocking a scholarship for the long term, so now you have four or five scholarships for next year?

“Correct. What we need to do is we need to obviously finish this recruiting class, but then the 2018 becomes very important to us to put behind our 2017 class because we need two or three really good classes back to back to back in order to start the process of culture and success we’re looking for. I feel badly for the fans that see it as a panicked or hopeless proposition. There are always points in any kind of program or any kind of business, for that matter, where significant change has to happen in order for progress to occur. I took over a situation where that was in fact the case. We’re closer than we’ve ever been to having it where we need it. Are we as close as we want to be? No. Are we there yet? Heck no. But are we closer than we were a month ago or two months ago or five months ago? Yes, we are. That’s something I’m very certain about.”

I freely admit my affection remains undiminished for Jamie Dixon, but Stallings isn’t wrong that this coming year was going to be rough no matter who the coach was. The confluence of four seniors — all starters — meant that the 2017-18 squad was going for some wholesale changes and a definite step back.

Stallings is overstating how much closer the program is now, but that is part of trying to sell very skeptical fans that the plan is in place and that it is going to work. Just as he does in the interview when he talks of how much new AD Heather Lyke is supportive of him. Nothing else he can say at this point.

Probably one of the most contentious thing in the interview was his feelings about transfers and releasing players from their National Letter of Intent (NLI).

“You don’t know from the outset who it’s going to be, but you know there are going to be some. As that started taking shape, I could have told you who would fall into that category. But the unexpected departures are the things that are becoming more common than uncommon in college basketball. You have guys constantly trying to transfer up. You have guys going pro that have never played a minute of college basketball after they’ve sat out a year at a school. You have guys asking out of their letters of intent with frequency. We’re dealing in a landscape in college basketball right now that is as probably as difficult and peculiar as it’s ever been. It used to be if a kid signed his letter of intent and he wanted out of it, you had to play a year of junior-college ball to get out of it. The media didn’t basically force institutions to let people break a binding agreement. It’s kind of interesting now the media tries to put so much pressure on programs, whether it be athletic directors or coaches, saying ‘Well, the coaches can move.’ Well, hey, guess what? I’ve got a great big buyout in my deal that prevents me from moving. I’ve got something in my contract saying I can’t go to another league school. It’s not as easy for coaches to go. That’s everyone’s rationale — ‘Well, the coaches can leave.’ We’re dealing in an environment right now that is as fluid as it’s ever been. It’s just where we’re at in the whole thing with the unexpected departures.”

[Emphasis added.]

This, to me, is false equivalence.

If you don’t know my bias by now, I’ll remind you. I think players should have plenty of freedom to transfer — especially as graduate transfers who should get some reward for actually propping up the whole “student-athlete” portion of the NCAA. Sitting one year as a regular transfer without any extenuating circumstances (the coach being fired or leaving) is reasonable enough. I don’t think the NLI should bind players to a school before they arrive on campus.

I certainly don’t think buyouts for coaches serves as much of a deterrent for the moving of coaches around. Whether assistants or head coaches. The buyouts, most of the time are negotiable (and as we’ve seen, sometimes simply waived). Heck, an entire contract is negotiable between the school and the coach.  And they also work both ways if the school decides to fire the coach. A kid doesn’t get a waiver to play right away if he is obviously forced out because his skill sets or abilities don’t live up to the expectations.

There are no negotiations between a school/coach and student. The terms are the same whether a 5-star McDonald’s All-American or a 1-star project. A scholarship is for one year with only the school/coach with the discretion to renew (bind the kid to) it each year.

And then there is what? Blaming the media for forcing him and other coaches to release kids from their NLI? Basically complaining that attention has been brought, and not ignored any longer.

Stallings would seem to be extra-sensitive on the issue because of the whole Sheldon Jeter affair from Vanderbilt. Where Stallings (was rumored to believe) felt (but could not prove) the Pitt coaching staff  encouraged Jeter to transfer. Stallings wouldn’t come out and say it, instead refused to release Jeter — not expecting it to get that much attention. Instead, it became a bigger deal and impacted Stallings’ reputation.

You can see, though, how much it bothered him that he had to release Thompson from his NLI. No coincidence it came shortly after, hmmm… Assistant Coach Jeremy Ballard — the lead recruiter on Thompson — left to go to VCU. A coach moving without restriction to another job? That Thompson had VCU as one of his final new choices before going to Butler? Total coincidence.

Finally a little grim fun for me. Paul Zeise did a column based on the Stallings interview. You may recall back in January when Zeise was all about the fun and Stallings being a great fit for this team. Not to mention making the NCAA Tournament. Which dropped to, this team not being good and that it was incumbent on Stallings to finish the season at least above .500.  Whoops.

Now, after conceding the season to be a disaster, the only arrow left is that it would be worse to jump the gun on firing Stallings and patience is the only option.

Kevin Stallings’ first full year at Pitt has been a bit of a disaster by pretty much every measure.

The Panthers finished with a losing record for the first time in nearly two decades. They won only four ACC games and have had a wave of departures since the season ended that has left only three scholarship players on the roster.

…

It is a hard sell at this point. Nothing the Panthers did last season suggests they are on the right course.

The reality is Pitt fans have no choice but to be patient and give Stallings a chance. He represents their only hope. And there is no better course for the program over the next two or three years than to stick with Stallings.

Stallings took over a fading program and needed to break it down and start over from scratch. To fire him before he coaches at least two more seasons would be silly. Pitt would struggle to find a good coach willing to take the job in its current state. A new coach would then turn over the roster again and set things back a few more years.

I agree with most of that. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have said most of that. I would debate “fading,” because if you look at any program outside of the elite ones — coached by truly elite coaches — there are going to be down cycles. Pitt has been in a down cycle. And no, I don’t know if Dixon would have been able to take Pitt back on an upswing (especially with most of the assistants on staff); but I sure would have more confidence in him doing it.

It’s a painful tumble in position from Stallings being a great hire and a guy Pitt fans will love for his style of play, to having no choice but to tolerate him. Zeise is now of the opinion that, “My opinion doesn’t matter, though, and neither does the opinion of the fans or others around the program. The only two opinions that really matter are those of Pitt chancellor Pat Gallagher and athletic director Heather Lyke.”

At least the plan is in place.