Gawd.
It used to be bees and gees that Pitt was more basketball than football school. Went to the Final Four in, 1974 I think, Paul Evans, Ben Howland, Jamie Dixon. Billy Knight, Charles Smith, Jerome Lane, Sean Miller, DeJuan Blair, even had Steven Adams for one year. A number one ranking. Twenty-win seasons were the expectation, even playing in the best basketball conference that ever was. There was even a 30-win season. The most physical college team in the country, opponents would visibly wilt under the pounding. The Peterson Events Center (“The Pete”) was packed every game. Pitt basketball was It.
And then it wasn’t. A move to the ACC, Jamie Dixon couldn’t adapt, Jamie never recruited at the elite level his teams played at. 
hoops grew stale, a plateau had been reached never to be surmounted again and was in fact receding. Fans were restless. So, Change! The natives were getting restless around Nashville, Tennessee too. Some were calling for head man Kevin Stallings' head. So Pitt athletic Director Scott Barnes let Jamie go "home" to TCU and plucked Stallings from Vanderbilt for Pitt. Fans were perplexed.
It was an unmitigated disaster. A 16-17 record, 4-14 in the ACC, a 55-point loss in January, 2017 that was the school's most lopsided since 1906--and that was the Stallings high water mark! The next year: 8-24 (0-18), the school's worst record since 1976/77. Barnes left after a year and a half for reasons that remain totally unconvincing (but I'm thankful he did). It was like Barnes was a Manchurian Athletic Director, a plant whose job was to eliminate a target. He eliminated his target and went to Oregon State. Fittingly, the narrative in Barnes’ Wilipedia entry is erased of any mention of his dirty work at Pitt.
Heather Lyke replaced Barnes. From her first day on the job Heather was determined to get rid of the Stallings pestilence, and she did. She made what I and so, so many others considered a home run hire, Jeff Capel from Duke, former head coach at Oklahoma. Jeff had a 30-win season in Norman but his time there was marred by scandal and two losing seasons at the end. He went to get cleansed by Father Krzyzewski, staying seven seasons, becoming Assistant Head Coach. Then Pitt.
Jeff just started his fourth season at Pitt. The basketball team is now an afterthought (I had no idea what their record was this year or who they had played.), The Pete is half, or mostly, empty. Jeff' has gone 14-19, 16-17, 10-12 his first three years. So having not given any thought to Pitt basketball in months and months I looked them up. See how they were doin'. Terrible. They're 2-4.
College basketball followers know this but more general readers may not: A team schedules cupcakes, almost all at home, as kind of a pre-season training before starting conference play. Teams that end up 16-17 will frequently enter league action with gaudy records like 9-0 or 8-1, glittery and fake as zirconium. That's what Pitt does too. They're still 2-3. "Umm, that's not good," to self. Their first game was against "The Citadel." Military school, The Citadel. Height restrictions. Tall enough to beat Pitt 78-63. Number two was at WVU, a substantial opponent. Lost 74-59. Back to cupcakes at The Pete, two W's over North Carolina-Wilmington by eight, and Towson by four. Then Vandy (non-cupcake) at The Pete. L 68-52. Then another cupcake, Maryland-Baltimore County and, another loss, 87-77. Two wins, both over cupcakes, four losses, two of those to cupcakes. Pitt basketball is now a cupcake for other cupcakes.
project was just getting started, we finished only 6-5, but got our first bowl invite in a long, long time and it was in the Fiesta against the Frank Kush-coached, Danny White-quarterbacked "Sun Devils." They waxed us 28-7 or something but it was the springboard. Three years later we dominated Georgia in the Sugar Bowl 27-3 to win our last national championship. "Pitt Is It" Sports Illustrated proclaimed on its cover.
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