Vukovcan: Pitt Hoops Is in No Position to Turn Down Postseason Tournaments

When Pitt AD Allen Greene came out with the statement that the Pitt men’s basketball team planned to forgo any opportunity to play in the post season, I had mixed feelings.

This is the second-straight year that Pitt has declined postseason tournament play after getting snubbed last season.

However, I wanted to take a few days to think about it and see what else developed over the upcoming days before forming a concrete opinion.

Ok, times up and after thinking about it, Pitt passing on postseason action is complete BS.

I’ll preface that by saying that the only way that’s acceptable is if the university planned on making major changes in the coaching staff and to this point, nothing has happened.

So, I’m writing this under the premise that Jeff Capel and a majority of his coaching staff will be returning next season.

I’ll start this off by saying, the Pitt basketball program isn’t good enough and hasn’t accomplished enough to be turning down postseason appearances in consecutive seasons.

In the nine prior seasons, this program has only had two 20-win seasons and been to the NCAA Tournament once. They aren’t a Blue-Blood program and any postseason success and any chance to promote the program should be taken.

In the case of last season’s team, if they had entered the NIT Tournament in the right mindset, I believe they were talented enough to make a nice run. It would’ve been nice to see what Bub Carrington, Blake Hinson and company could have done in postseason games, regardless of which tournament.

With the way this season’s team ended the season, I’m not sure how long they would’ve lasted but my opinion doesn’t matter. We should have found out and this group of players should’ve been given the opportunity to see what they can do.

There’s some thought out there that this team had no interest in playing in the NIT after falling apart in the second half of the season. Even if that was the case, too bad. These players and coaches are being paid to perform and coach, skipping games shouldn’t be an option.

Capel is being paid to coach and the players are being paid to represent the university, so go do it.

Winning at any level is important and the Pitt athletic department has passed on that in consecutive years. That’s not acceptable.

In Greene’s statement, he said, “Coach Capel and I are fully committed to positioning Pitt Basketball for sustained success in the ACC and NCAA Tournament. Our responsibility is to relentlessly evaluate and enhance every aspect of our program, ensuring it reflects the championship spirt of our city. Because that work is already underway, we’ve determined that the best path forward for our program is to forgo postseason tournaments this year as we build for the future.”

First of all, saying ‘ensuring it reflects the championship spirit of our city’ is funny and meaningless when you let the program shutdown and quit for the season instead of trying to compete. That’s not ‘the championship spirit of our city.’ Pittsburgh doesn’t quit.

More importantly — and I’ll repeat — unless coaches and members of the basketball program have already been fired and it hasn’t been reported, it’s possible to “position Pitt basketball for sustained success” and at the same time go try and win a tournament.

Doing both isn’t impossible and the reasons given in this statement carry no water. They’re university/executive talk in other words, saying fancy things that amount to nothing.

Allen Greene is new here and he’ll soon find out that this stuff doesn’t work in Pittsburgh as people see right through it.

Right now, the Pitt basketball program needs to stop with the excuses and start getting serious about being a program that achieves real success.

68 teams qualify for the NCAA Tournament and if Pitt isn’t a member of the field next season, Greene might be releasing another end of the season press release with an entirely different message.