Stallings' biggest endorsement
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There probably aren’t too many names that were lower on Sheldon Jeter’s list of coaches he thought might get hired to replace Jamie Dixon than Kevin Stallings.
That’s not to say Jeter didn’t want to see his former head coach at Vanderbilt come to Pitt. He just didn’t expect it.
“I was a little shocked, as I imagine most people were,” Jeter said last Friday prior to Pitt’s first practice with Stallings. “I didn’t see that coming. But after talking to him and talking to (Pitt Athletic Director) Scott Barnes, I realized it was a very beneficial thing for me.”
When Stallings’ hire was announced in March, one of the first questions was how Jeter would respond. A 2012 graduate of Beaver Falls, Jeter signed with Stallings at Vanderbilt and played as a freshman before announcing that he intended to transfer closer to home.
Pitt was the obvious destination, but Stallings blocked the Panthers as a transfer destination. Jeter ultimately went to Polk State - a junior college in Florida - for a year before moving back to Pittsburgh, where he has played for the last two seasons heading into his redshirt senior year.
That backstory became a prominent angle in Pitt’s hiring of Stallings - Stallings was asked about it at his introductory press conference - but now, six months after Stallings was brought on board, Jeter says there’s no bad feelings in his relationship with his new head coach.
“No, none. None to speak of.”
It appears those aren’t just empty words. As word of the Stallings hire spread through the Pitt basketball team, the players reached out to the one person they knew would give an unfiltered view of their next head coach.
“Everybody was a little nervous,” Jeter said. “They didn’t know what was really going to happen. Being down there in Nashville with him for a year, I kind of knew what to expect, so when they asked me whether they should stay or leave, I told them that Coach is a genuine guy, everything he says, he means, he’ll take care of you and just trust his process and we’ll get where we want to get to.”
If the results are any indication, Jeter’s review was effective, since Pitt hasn’t experienced any attrition this offseason. Stallings said that he thinks the endorsement from one of the Panthers’ upperclassmen was helpful in getting the players on board with him.
“I think you’re always anxious any time you take over a new program,” Stallings said last week. “The buy-in was fairly immediate, I think. I thought they accepted me pretty quickly. I think Sheldon Jeter probably had a lot to do with that. I think that his voice in the locker room of saying, ‘Hey, this guy is a good guy, he’s going to help us, he’s going to be there for us,’ that probably went a long way, because I know Sheldon was doing that.
“But I think, over the course of time, one of two things happen: they either learn to trust you or they learn not to trust you, and I think that, for the six months that I’ve been here, I think there’s a pretty good level of trust, that they know they can count on what I say and they can count on what I do. I back up the things that I tell them, both good and bad, so I think, from that standpoint, they trust that I am who I say I am. That is, a guy that’s here to help them succeed.”