If this was, in fact, the end of the Kevin Stallings era of Pitt basketball, it absolutely ended appropriately.
The Panthers were eviscerated by No. 1 Virginia, 66-37, in maybe the most lopsided intra-conference mismatch of the winter in NCAA basketball Saturday afternoon at Petersen Events Center, with seas of empty blue seats amid the 6,534 sold for the home finale senior farewell, with boos streaming down once it was mercifully done.
Then there was the performance itself ...
That's not CGI, I swear. Those were three of Pitt's first four shots, just a bunch of random 3-point prayers. And if those look familiar, they should. That safely summarizes the offense all season, including this team's lack of talent, lack of discipline and, if being blunt here, lack of instruction.
Which isn't to suggest there was a prayer to be had on this day, beyond the arc or otherwise. The Panthers are 8-22 overall, 0-17 in the ACC, and when they lose Wednesday at Notre Dame, they'll have completed a mercy killing on the worst season in the history of a program that was born in 1905.
What's more, this wasn't David vs. Goliath as much as it was David's little brother vs. Goliath experiencing roid rage. Virginia's the odds-on favorite to cut down the net this March at 26-2, 15-1. If Tony Bennett didn't have a heart and hadn't begun substituting as if he were facing the Shaler JV, it would have wound up something like 100-10.
I mean, my God, it was 30-7 at the intermission.
One Pitt field goal occurred on 22 attempts.
One.
As Jared Wilson-Frame, by far the Panthers' best player, worded it after being held to nine points himself, “We were already a little stagnant with moving the ball. But this ... we were just standing still."
How symbolic.
So, what happens next?
Well, I can't imagine how much more obvious that needs to be.
Heather Lyke, with the backing of Pitt's administration and the boosters and the Zoo and everyone else even remotely associated with the program, must replace Stallings.
Never mind this notion that the school can't afford the $10 million buyout. The school can't afford to not pay the buyout.
Even if the current interested parties don't succeed in lowering that buyout, as I reported Friday they're hoping to do, the buyout will pay for itself, theoretically, by reinstalling at least the concept of hope. Something that doesn't come close to currently existing on Cardiac Hill.
I'm not going to pile on here, but some of it's worth a revisit: Stallings inherited the ACC's most prolific scoring tandem in Mike Young and Jamel Artis and still couldn't win last season, crushing the silliness that Jamie Dixon had left the metaphorical cupboard bare. He then allowed Cam Johnson to get away, another quality item from the Dixon pantry. He then lost recruits. He then replaced them with next to nothing.
Too soon?
Please. Take a four-minute drive down Forbes Avenue to see what Keith Dambrot was able to pull off in a single summer. Duquesne's hardly some done deal, given the Dukes' finishing freefall in the Atlantic 10, but they've got transfers in waiting who are better than their current starters. The arrow's pointed way up on the Bluff, and that's because the head coach made progress, not excuses.
Stallings has done nothing of the sort. Not on any front. And that's by far the most troubling facet of his two years.
Not on the court. Certainly not off it.
This isn't written lightly. Nor is it rash. Stallings seems like a fine man, and there's plenty to be said for having been an NCAA head coach for two decades, between Vanderbilt and here. It isn't his fault that Pitt's administration lazily authorized a search firm to make the hire, or that the administration lazily hired Scott Barnes, a glaring lousy fit for this university on every level.
This is on Barnes, but ultimately it's on the administration.
But fine. Fix it now.
It's been a great program. Not good, great. Particularly when considering that Dixon and Ben Howland before him did things the right way in what's being increasingly exposed as a cesspool. And yeah, hello, Sean Miller!
This can be a great program again, a great scene.
No more of these sympathy speeches we hear night after night from the same podium where only recently opposing coaches used to speak sadly of how the the Panthers and the Pete were too much for them:
No more of these long-faced, walking-dead press conferences from the home team's coach, either:
Certainly no more of what's below, which was sent to me during the second half from the Oakland Zoo:
@Dejan_Kovacevic For your article today... pic.twitter.com/26igdu70B7
— S. Sherman (@shermars) February 24, 2018
Enough of all of that.
Mistakes were made in football, too, far worse than this one, and all it took was one intelligent hire in Pat Narduzzi for confidence in the program to surge right back. The same can happen here and, if you ask me, they can happen even more quickly. The Pete's not so far removed from being packed game after game, from pulsating. The football program's almost never had that. Basketball has.
As for the rebuilding itself, regardless of the coach, that can happen in short order, too. I'll cite Duquesne again, but I'll also repeat that Pitt's not so far removed from its status as a contender, from being recognized nationally and seen on networks. If the ACC isn't the best basketball conference in the country, it's in the conversation. If the Pete isn't the best basketball arena in the country, it's in the conversation. If the people behind the scenes with Pitt athletics aren't some of the best anywhere ... then I can't imagine who is.
There's so, so much a new coach can sell.
There's nothing left to buy from the current one.