MORE HEADLINES - Four-star CB looking to visit Pitt | Pitt offer 'means a lot' for local wing | Standout WR planning to return soon | Pitt offer brings a smile for a familiar family | Austin saw more of Pitt on recent visit | JUCO hoops target: 'Pittsburgh seems like a really good fit'

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re talking about bad luck, good luck, recruiting prowess, an AD’s scorecard and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Bad luck
There aren’t many Pitt players in recent years who have been the victim of circumstance - both in and out of his control - more than Quintin Wirginis.

2017 was supposed to be his year. He spent three years as Matt Galambos’ backup at middle linebacker, playing in 38 out of 39 games but spending almost all of that time on special teams or working in defensive subpackages. Pat Narduzzi’s hiring prior to the 2015 season brought the “Delta” package to the Panthers’ third-down defense, and Wirginis found a role in that personnel grouping as a pass-rushing outside linebacker.

That worked well for him, as it translated into four sacks in 2016. But it was ultimately just a setup for 2017 when, as a fourth-year senior, he would step into the middle linebacker job, start every game and position himself as a pro prospect.

That was the plan.

And you know what they say about the best-laid plans or something like that.

Wirginis took himself out of the first three games of his breakout season with a suspension for a violation of team rules. Then, during the suspension, he suffered an injury that cost him the remaining nine games.

Just like that, he went from being on the cusp of a triumphant senior season to taking an incomplete grade on 2017. But he got a reprieve, a redo, a mulligan: Wirginis never redshirted, so he used his redshirt in 2017 and tried again in 2018.

The story hit the reset button. Wirginis, now a fifth-year senior, was ready to step into the middle linebacker job, start every game and position himself as a pro prospect.

That was the plan.

It worked a little better this time. Wirginis was Pitt’s leading tackler through the first half of the season, averaging nearly seven tackles per game with nine each against Penn State and North Carolina and eight against Syracuse. He had seven tackles for loss and three sacks in the first six games and also forced a pair of fumbles, including a crucial one in the win over the Orange.

The problem is, as you well know, he never made it to the seventh game. His season was ended by a midweek injury prior to the Notre Dame game. Projected over Pitt’s full 14-game schedule, Wirginis was on pace for 96 tackles, 16 tackles for loss and seven sacks - all of those would have been team-leading numbers.

Instead, he watched the final eight games from the sidelines. And when spring came, that crucial time of year when college players can put the finishing touches on their NFL potential with pro days and workouts and the such, Wirginis still wasn’t able to do anything.

It’s got to be especially tough right now for Wirginis. He’s in Pittsburgh, trying to do as much as he can as he recovers from the most recent injury. The players who came to Pitt at the same time as him, the guys he played with for five years, the people he worked next to as they all pursued the same goal, they’re signing with NFL teams and getting ready for minicamps.

Wirginis is sitting at home.

That can’t be easy to stomach. And he’s still got more rehab to do, so he’s not going to be getting a call anytime soon. There seems to be some interest among pro teams, but they’re not going to use a spot on a guy who can’t really do anything right now.

So Wirginis has to wait. Again. He's not clear of all responsibility in this saga - the suspension in 2017 is certainly on him - but overall, it's hard to look at his situation and not feel a little sympathy for a really good player with some really bad luck.

Better luck
Elsewhere in Pitt’s offseason there was, of course, Qadree Ollison getting selected by the Atlanta Falcons in the fifth round of the Draft. And then there were seven guys who signed with NFL teams as rookie free agents.

To wit:

Dewayne Hendrix - Miami Dolphins
George Aston - Denver Broncos
Alex Bookser - Detroit Lions
Darrin Hall - Cleveland Browns
James Folston - Arizona Cardinals
Mike Herndon - New Orleans Saints
Elijah Zeise - Los Angeles Chargers

Congratulations to all of those guys, but I want to highlight one of them, in particular:

George Aston.

We’ve talked plenty about Aston before, recounting his path from walk-on linebacker to scholarship fullback to 10-touchdown scorer to legend. We know where he came from and what he did once he got here. What’s interesting to me now is the path he’s taking, because it’s one that another Pitt fullback took with a pretty good amount of success.

Of course, I’m talking about Henry Hynoski. He left Pitt after the 2010 season; he still had one year of eligibility remaining, but the uncertainty around the program in the wake of Dave Wannstedt’s firing had him looking to the NFL.

Like Aston, he went undrafted, but he signed with the New York Giants and spent four years there - including the Giants’ Super Bowl-winning season in 2011.

Hynoski didn’t get drafted, but six fullbacks that year did. Here’s what happened to those six guys:

- Stanford’s Owen Marecic went to the Browns in the fourth round; he played three seasons
- UConn’s Anthony Sherman went to the Cardinals in the fifth round; he’s still active and made the Pro Bowl in 2018
- UCF’s Bruce Miller went to the 49ers in the seventh round; he played five seasons
- Georgia’s Shaun Chapas went to the Cowboys in the seventh round; he played four seasons with four teams
- Yale’s Shane Bannon went to the Chiefs in the seventh round; he never made it onto a 53-man roster
- USC’s Stanley Havili went to the Eagles in the seventh round; he played four seasons

So Hynoski’s four seasons ranks right in the middle of the success rates of those players who got drafted, but he was also a contributor on a Super Bowl winner and a big part of his story is that he was able to choose his team as an undrafted free agent. That allowed him to find a team that actually used a fullback in its offense, and Hynoski made a good choice with the Giants.

Similarly, Aston had options. A dozen or so NFL teams were interested in him, from what I’ve heard, and he chose the Broncos as his destination. It’s not hard to see the appeal. According to The Denver Post, Bronco fullback Andy Janovich played 239 snaps last season; that’s a decent total. But this offseason, the Broncos hired Rich Scangarello to be offensive coordinator this offseason, and he comes to Denver from San Francisco, where the 49ers fullback saw 662 snaps last season.

If Scangarello believes in that style of play, where the fullback is on the field a lot and lined up in a variety of positions, Aston might have made a pretty good choice, too.

The three (recruiting) amigos
People often ask: who is the best recruiter on Pitt’s football staff? And I don’t always have a good answer. I don’t ever have a good answer, in fact, because I think that’s a really difficult question.

If we go to a game, we can watch the quarterback throw and the lineman block and the running backs run and the receivers catch. We can see the defensive linemen pass-rush and the linebackers tackle and the defensive backs track passes through the air.

We can see these things and evaluate these things and determine who gets credit for each touchdown, for each third-down stop, for each turnover. It’s an 11-man game - the ultimate team game, right? - but we can say, definitively, “That player scored that touchdown.”

Evaluating recruiting (and, more specifically, recruiters) is a bit trickier. We see the end results, which would be the recruits who sign, but we don’t see the way the process actually happens. It would be like attending a game but standing outside the stadium, receiving dispatches like “Team A scored” or “Team B got a turnover;” with no additional context, we would be left to guess or draw conclusions based on incomplete information.

That’s kind of how recruiting is: we know that a kid from Geographic Area X signed with Pitt, so we are left to conclude that the coach who recruits Geographic Area X must have been the one who convinced him to sign, so he should get the credit for it.

And that’s usually more or less accurate, but it doesn’t account for the variety of personnel - coaches and players and staffers - who are involved in the recruiting process. In our semi-accurate comparison to a game, it would be like hearing there was a touchdown in 2016 and assuming James Conner scored it because that’s what he did a lot that year, but not really knowing because you didn’t see how it went down.

It could have been Quadree Henderson; he scored a bunch of touchdowns that year, and some of them were run from fake handoffs to Conner, so Conner can get some credit on it, too. Or it could have been a pass to Jester Weah; he scored quite a few touchdowns of his own.

And then there was Nate Peterman; in this metaphor, he’d be the head coach. Just like Peterman ultimately had a hand in every touchdown Pitt scored, so too does the head coach get involved in every recruitment. Sometimes he’s just handing it off, sometimes he’s doing more work and throwing it, and sometimes he brings it home all on his own.

I don’t know if this metaphor holds up, but I think you get the point. And I should also get to the point:

We’re not in the room when the recruiting is happening, so we can’t really know for sure who should get the credit. That said, there are other ways of drawing conclusions, other sources of information that can help us make judgments about who should be considered the best recruiters on the staff.

And to that end, I think it’s safe to say that Charlie Partridge, Archie Collins and Chris Beatty appear to be the top three right now. That’s not to disparage the efforts of Tim Salem (whose relentlessness makes him better than you think), Cory Sanders (who is one of the most personable guys on the staff) or any other Pitt coach, but if you polled recruits who are seriously considering the Panthers, I bet you would hear more mentions of those three guys - Partridge, Collins and Beatty - than the rest of the coaches.

Partridge has been a recruiting ace for Pitt for a long time, tapping his ties to south Florida to find and establish relationships with recruits who are above and below the radar. Collins is a Detroit native who is also working in Georgia for Pitt in his second year on the staff. And Beatty is the new addition who came to the Panthers from Maryland with a history scoring recruits from Virginia.

So far in the 2020 class, those three coaches are succeeding. Partridge and Collins each have a commitment on the board and Beatty played a big role in Pitt putting together one of the most impressive springs for recruiting visits in a long time.

Those three coaches are doing pretty well on the recruiting trail for Pitt right now.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Can Pitt survive on out-of-state recruiting?
The funny thing about those three coaches I talked about - Partridge, Collins and Beatty - being arguably Pitt’s top three recruiters is that all three have primary recruiting areas that are outside Pennsylvania.

Sure, Partridge is responsible for part of the WPIAL (generally speaking, the southern part) and Collins and Beatty are involved with local prospects, but that’s not what each of those guys is known for: Partridge is south Florida, Collins is Michigan and Beatty is Virginia.

So if your three best recruiters are all focused outside the limits of the commonwealth, what does that say about your in-state recruiting?

Well, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the focus, obviously, is outside Pennsylvania.

Now, we don’t need to establish any kind of recruiting superiority for Partridge, Collins and Beatty to deduce that Pitt is focusing outside its home state. We can tell that by looking at other metrics. Like the offer sheet; that’s a pretty reliable indicator of where the focus is, and while it’s not without its imperfections, it’s pretty telling.

In the class of 2020, for instance, Pitt has offered 10 prospects from Pennsylvania. Compare that to 33 in Georgia, 22 in Maryland, 17 in New Jersey, 16 in Virginia, 15 in Michigan and, of course, 100+ in Florida.

2021 is a stronger year for Pennsylvania than 2020, and Pitt already has 14 in-state offers on the board. But that’s still only third-most behind Florida (26) and Virginia (18), and it’s fair to assume that the number of Florida offers (and likely Virginia, too) will keep growing at a high rate while Pennsylvania probably will hover in the teens, possibly pushing to 20 by the time the recruits have finished their junior seasons.

Now, we don’t need to go too far down the roads of population decline and waning talent and all of that; we’ve spent more than enough time on those topics in the past. Setting aside the matter of whether Pitt needs to put so much emphasis outside Pennsylvania - and the coaches seem to believe that they do, in fact, need to do that - there’s also the question of whether Pitt can succeed with that approach?

I mean, the current roster doesn’t exactly reflect that recruiting focus. In the spring, Pitt had 35 players from Pennsylvania on the roster; Florida was the next biggest number with 12. Now, that’s a lot from Florida, and six more are coming this summer with the 2019 class. But Pennsylvania is still the state that’s putting the most players on Pitt’s roster.

Even when the 2019 class arrives, Pa. will have every other state doubled with 39 players, and that’s not counting any additional walk-ons who join the team in the summer. My guess is Pennsylvania will always have a plurality of the roster, the mode, if you will.

One other thing to consider with all of the out-of-state offers is that maybe it’s not simply a matter of, “Pitt wants more kids from out of state.” Maybe it’s more about finding a way to fill a class. If the overall numbers in Pennsylvania are down - or Pitt’s success in-state is producing less numbers, which it is - then the staff is going to have to supplement from beyond the borders. But it’s going to be tough to get 6-10 kids out of Florida with only 40 offers out. So they take something of a blanket approach, offering a ton of guys to get the half-dozen or so they can land.

It’s not a shift away from Pennsylvania; it’s a carpet bomb to make sure they get enough players from Florida and Georgia and anywhere else to build a complete class in addition to the in-state scores.

Where does the time go?
I was thinking this week about Heather Lyke’s tenure at Pitt, which is approaching the 26-month mark, and I can’t decide if I think that’s a long time or a short time.

It’s long compared to Scott Barnes’ tenure (he was at Pitt for about 19 months) but it’s short compared to Steve Pederson, Episode I: A New Hope (74 months) and Steve Pederson, Episode II: The Phantom Menace (84 months).

(Really, the first edition of Pederson was probably more akin to Revenge of the Sith, while the second was comparable to Attack of the Clones, if we’re going to nerd-out over this.)

So, it’s a short time in the grand scheme of things, but it’s long in the context of accomplishments. Since she’s been at Pitt, Lyke has overseen the building of the Pitt Studios, an impressive project that has created some very cool resources for the University as a whole. She is also guiding the development of the Victory Heights project, a mega-investment that could transform upper campus (if the money can be found to pay for it).

And, of course, Lyke has ushered in the revamp of the uniforms. I’ve talked about that a lot, about how Pitt nailed the reveal event pretty much as well as could have been expected. And while there have been a few number-related hiccups - like the font for the numbers or the inclusion of three specific numbers on the football helmets - I think you’d have to say Lyke and the Athletic Department gets a notch in the win column for the overall rebranding efforts.

She has also been in charge for some considerable turnover. Between retirements, resignations and straight-up firings, Lyke has been tasked with hiring head coaches for eight of Pitt’s 19 varsity sports (I guess it’s 18 now since they deep-sixed the tennis program).

That’s a lot in the span of two years, and most of them happened in less than that time. Lyke’s most recent hire was Jodi Hermanek, who took over the softball program last August - or just about 18 months after Lyke took over the Athletic Department at Pitt.

Samantha Snider (women’s gymnastics)
Keith Gavin (wrestling)
Jeff Capel (men’s basketball)
Lance White (women’s basketball)
Randy Waldrum (women’s soccer)
Mike Bell (baseball)
Jodi Hermanek (softball)

Throw in turnover on an even larger scale within the Athletic Department, which is pretty much standard when a new executive is hired, and you’ve got a department that has been pretty much remade in the last 26 months. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this has been the most change Pitt athletics has seen in such a relatively brief period since the beginning of Steve Pederson’s initial run with the Panthers.

Lyke has been traveling at the speed of light, making a supersonic department out of Pitt or at least attempting to. Much as she did at Eastern Michigan, in fact, where she had put in place a major facilities overhaul before taking the Pitt job.

No one will accuse Lyke of sitting around waiting for things to happen.

JUST ONE MORE THING

The scorecard (or, this was going to be one long section but then I divided it into two)
26 months looks like a long time in the context of the sheer number of coaching hires, but at the same time, it’s not all that big a window through which to put together a scorecard.

Of Lyke’s hires, none has coached more than two full seasons; only three have even reached that number, and two are still finishing their first seasons.

So yeah, it’s still early, but let’s look at the records of each of Lyke’s new hires, just to see where things stand so far:

Samantha Snider (women’s gymnastics): 2 seasons, 17-41 overall, 4-7 EAGL
Keith Gavin (wrestling): 2 seasons, 17-14 overall, 5-5 ACC
Jeff Capel (men’s basketball): 1 season, 14-19 overall, 3-15 ACC
Lance White (women’s basketball): 1 season, 11-20 overall, 2-14 ACC
Randy Waldrum (women’s soccer): 1 season, 4-12-1 overall, 0-10 ACC
Mike Bell (baseball): season in progress, currently 16-28 overall, 4-17 ACC
Jodi Hermanek (softball): season in progress, currently 10-41 overall, 4-17 ACC

The other coach with two seasons under her belt is Katie Hazelton, but I’ll be honest: I don’t have much context with which to quantify or qualify the success (or lack thereof) she has had with Pitt’s diving team. No Pitt divers received postseason ACC honors, although Amy Read was one of 16 freshmen nationally to qualify for the NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, so that seems good.

Similarly, I don’t know a lot about gymnastics, but Pitt did have six all-conference selections this season, including four first-team nods on various individual events. That also seems good.

Keith Gavin’s wrestling squad was 4-11 in his first year and 13-3 this past season, but the individual accomplishments are probably more relevant here. This spring, three Pitt wrestlers advanced to the round of 12 in the NCAA Wrestling Championships, needing just one more win for All-America honors.

Randy Waldrum took over a Pitt women’s soccer team that went 3-12-3 overall and 0-9-1 in 2017 and pretty much produced the same numbers this past season. Like some other coaches on this list, he’s got a lot of rebuilding to do.

Jeff Capel and Lance White inherited some difficult situations. Capel had a low bar to top - his predecessor went 8-24 overall and 0-18 in the ACC - but he managed to win three games in the conference plus one in the ACC Tournament; that plus some impressive first-year recruiting (this year is still coming together) makes his hire look pretty good. The jury is still out on White as he rebuilds the women’s hoops program.

And then there are the baseball and softball programs. Mike Bell replaced Joe Jordano, whose program had one final hurrah in last year’s ACC Tournament to cap a season that was more or less a .500 performance. So far, the Panthers have struggled under Bell in his first year, but that’s the operative phrase: his first year.

Along the same lines, Jodi Hermanek isn’t having much success this season with the softball team, posting a 9-41 record so far - I had to double-check that number - and winning just four ACC games with four regular-season games remaining before the ACC Tournament.

That last one is the hire that might be most intriguing (aside from the obvious choice of Capel). Pitt’s softball team had, by almost any measure, a good season last year. The Panthers were 33-18-1 overall and 16-6 in the ACC, and they advanced to the finals of the conference tournament before losing a heartbreaker to Florida State.

Despite that success, head coach Holly Aprile resigned after the season, and from what I’ve been able to gather, there wasn’t much effort made to retain her. Softball is Heather Lyke’s sport - she was a standout at Michigan in her playing days - and she seemed to have a desire to put her own mark on the program. So Aprile was allowed to leave; curiously, her next stop wasn’t far, in terms of conferences, as she’s now the head coach at Louisville. In her first season, the Cardinals are 33-17 overall and 12-9 in the ACC.

Now, that phrase - “first season” - is just as relevant for Hermanek and Bell as it is for Capel and White (and Aprile, for that matter). Everyone should get time to build their programs as they see fit; after all, that’s why they were hired in the first place. So we can look at Hermanek’s struggles and Aprile’s success and compare them, but it would probably be prudent - and fair - to give it a couple years before fully rendering a verdict on those coaching moves.