Pittsburgh Basketball: Kevin Stallings deserves credit for recent wins

Pittsburgh basketball’s three-game winning streak has given fans recent optimism for ACC play and this streak is due to head coach Kevin Stallings.

It’s amazing how a few short weeks can change the feelings of a season. Including myself, many Pitt fans had admitted that the 2017-18 basketball season would be a rough one, especially in conference play, in the preseason.

There were still expectations, though, of how the Panthers would play on the court, with the same grit and grind that made this program a constant presence in the NCAA Tournament in the past. After the first three games, which included losses to Navy and Montana as well as a close win over UC-Santa Barbara, combined with the lowest attendance ever at the Petersen Event Center, I was just about done with the Stallings era.

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But I seem to have been too early to pull the proverbial hook. Pittsburgh has now won seven of their last eight games with the only loss coming to a nationally ranked West Virginia team in what was a hard-fought game all the way to the final minutes. The Panthers won the other rivalry game, avenging a loss from a year ago to Duquesne in the “City Game”.

The latest victory came at home over Towson, a team from the Colonial Athletic Conference that came in with a record of 10-2, including solid wins over Penn, Georgia Southern, and Manhattan. Despite the game being at home, Pitt came in as the underdogs in the game.

The game itself was never separated by many points and the leading scorer for the Panthers, Jared-Wilson Frame, went 3/16 for the field. Considering that the best overall player on the team, Ryan Luther, was out again with a foot injury, this game should’ve been a loss for Pitt.

Instead, the Panthers stayed around until taking the lead in the final moments, winning 63-59. It capped off a three-game streak without its senior forward, all which ended up in wins. And before you mention the quality of opponents, there have been upsets all week, showing that no game can be taken for granted.

In regards to Stallings, his coaching has to be commended for the past couple of weeks. At the beginning of the year, there were questionable rotations and minutes given out, but now everything has a rhyme and a reason to it.

But what’s most impressive of late hasn’t just been winning without Luther, but how the Panthers have been doing it. There has been tough, hard-fought, and sometimes even ugly basketball to win games, a signature of how Pitt won in the Jamie Dixon era. Back at Vanderbilt, Stallings had a reputation for his teams being talented, yet soft.

Instead of using his style on players who don’t fit it (like last season), he’s changed it up to fit the style of play to his current roster. The game has slowed down, and he seems more comfortable winning games in the 60s, rather than getting it to the 80s.

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To be clear, I’m not disillusioned to think that conference play won’t be rough. In fact, I’m mentally preparing myself for a 3-15 conference record as the best-case scenario. But this is the perfect opportunity for Stallings to exceed expectations. I mean, if Pittsburgh can get 50 points, that could lead to wins over Georgia Tech and Virginia. If Stallings can embrace the style of play that made Pitt relevant before, more wins will be around the corner.