In the Panther-Lair.com 3-2-1 Column, we look at three things we know, two questions we have and one prediction.

Here’s what we’re thinking about this week.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

No answer is an answer
Hopefully everyone heard Heather Lyke’s interview on 93.7 The Fan this week. Pitt’s Athletic Director hadn’t spoken to the Pittsburgh media on the subject of basketball in months - outside of a brief statement to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - and there were obviously a lot of questions that merited some input from her.

To that end, kudos to Colin Dunlap, Josh Miller and Jeff Hathhorn; they handled the interview well and made the most of the opportunity, asking direct questions that most fans would want Lyke to answer but avoiding being confrontational - I think that elicited some good answers from the interview.

Of course, the biggest question is a simple one, and Dunlap went to it right off the bat:

“What is the future at Pitt with Kevin Stallings and when will it be decided?”

Here was her response, in case you missed it:

I appreciate the call and the direct question. You know, I would say that, where we’re at right now is, we’re in the midst of continuing to evaluate. I mean, we know the season is winding down and unfortunately it has not resulted in the effort I know that our kids have put in and our coaches have put in. And, you know, the program is about evaluating every aspect of the program. We talk a lot about comprehensive excellence within our Athletic Department and that’s being good just not on the court but in everything that you do. So a full comprehensive review of our program is ongoing. The season’s not over. We have another road game, our last game at Notre Dame, and obviously the ACC Tournament next week. And then we’ll make some decisions after that tournament.

Okay, so that’s a pretty long answer.

Except it’s no answer at all.

And that, in and of itself, actually is an answer, isn’t it?

Let’s look at what she said. Basically, Lyke said that no decision has been made and the matter will be addressed after the season ends. That’s a non-answer; putting the entire matter out of arm’s reach by saying nothing will be decided until after the ACC Tournament is an apt deflection, regardless of whether or not it’s true that she hasn’t made a decision yet.

And that’s fine. Questions like that don’t usually get answered by administrators or general managers in the midst of a losing season. That’s part of the deal: the question has to be asked, even if it’s asked with the understanding that a non-answer like that is expected.

Except this: questions like that do get answered - when the answer is positive.

Ask that question to an athletic director or general manager in the midst of a losing season when the head coach is under no threat of getting fired, and you’ll get a different response. You’ll hear that it was a rough season but there is still overall confidence in the direction of the program.

You’ll hear something like this:

I don’t think we had quite the performance on the field - we lost a number of really close games. But his vision and his preparation and his plan and the culture that he’s trying to create on this program, within the football program, is genuine and it’s real and he’s highly motivated to win an ACC championship.

That’s Heather Lyke again, talking in the same interview on The Fan. Except that was the answer to a general question on her assessment of Pat Narduzzi. She went on to praise the coaching staff he has assembled and share her excitement about the emergence of Kenny Pickett and look ahead to next season.

The key difference? Narduzzi isn’t on the hot seat. Not close. Maybe he will be if he has another 5-7 season, but he’s not right now. So there was no hesitation for Lyke when asked about Narduzzi, save for a brief pause to make sure she was clear that the 2017 season was disappointing. But once she had that out of the way - and she segued quickly into “We lost a number of really close games” - it was all positive and encouraging.

With Stallings, it’s not such a simple answer. It’s a hedge and a decision to be made and a “comprehensive review.”

When Heather Lyke was asked about Kevin Stallings’ future at Pitt, she gave a non-answer that really was an answer. Lyke was never going to say “We’re going to fire him after the next two games;” no one would say that. But her answer didn’t fall far from that territory, because if the future truly did hold anything other than the ending that seems inevitable, her answer would have reflected that with some kind of vote of confidence.

Of course, the decision - if it is still yet to be made - could ultimately come down in Stallings’ favor, but that seems highly, highly unlikely at this point.

No right-size fits all
Staying with the Lyke interview, another topic she was asked about on The Fan was tarps.

That became a prominent issue when it moved from the world of message board speculation to public discussion in November. Lyke was speaking in her hometown of Canton (Oh.) and said “there’s a way to make the stadium seem smaller,” adding that Pitt could “intentionally wrap” - aka tarp - some of the upper decks.

Lacking any follow-up conversation with the local media, Lyke never elaborated on that comment. So it lingered, despite some indications that Pat Narduzzi might not be fully in favor of having tarps at Heinz field.

On Tuesday, Dunlap took the opportunity to ask Lyke about it directly. After she confirmed that there will not be tarps at Heinz Field in 2018, Dunlap asked why. Here was the answer.

That’s, again, another really - these aren’t one quick-hit decisions that we make. This is a comprehensive review of our football program and game day experience at Heinz Field. So I’ve been there one season, right? And you take it all in, so you’re evaluating every aspect of it and frankly I believe that we can do a much better job in a lot of ways with regards to the game day experience for our fans, for our students, for everybody who comes to Heinz Field for a Pitt game. And that is going to be our focus moving forward at this point in time.

If you were - you know, right-sizing the stadium, many people are doing it. It’s not a bad decision. It’s just - I just don’t think it’s the best decision for us at <cut off>.

She didn’t totally back down from the idea - “It’s not a bad decision” - but pretty effectively put the tarps plans on the backburner for the foreseeable future, turning the focus instead to the “game day experience,” which is a noble, if difficult, cause.

I think the reality is, there were never going to be tarps at Heinz Field in 2018. For one thing, a whole lot of the seats in those upper deck sections are going to be sold as season tickets this year due to Penn State being on the home schedule. And if a seat is sold, you can’t put a tarp over it, even if you’re pretty sure no one’s going to be sitting there for the Albany game.

The same goes for 2020, when Notre Dame is coming to Heinz Field. Again, you’re going to sell a lot of season tickets that year; even if it’s not a sell-out, you’re probably going to have at least one season ticket sold in every section, so I don’t know how you can tarp a section where a season ticket has been sold.

Beyond that, I think the tarps project is bigger than a lot of people realize - largely the question of what to do with the people who have and, perhaps more importantly, want tickets in those upper deck sections that would be tarped. There is no easy solution to that situation. If you move people, they’re almost certainly going to be moved to new sections that cost more; is it good PR to make a profit by forcibly switching people’s seats? And if you try to give them the same price point in a new section, how does that work? Do they keep that old price in perpetuity? Does it last for one year and then the cost goes up?

I think it would take time to put a program like that into action.

We can all agree that Pitt isn’t going to draw 68,000 to every game, even if the team achieves consistent success. The 2008 season should have been a good one for attendance, with lots of momentum and excitement about the 13-9 game, but the loss to Bowling Green sapped that. Although later that season, Pitt was 5-1 and ranked No. 17 in the country, and 51,000 showed up for a game against Rutgers (a game that sapped the momentum with another loss).

2010 was another small-sample comparison. There was a lot of hype after the 2009 season, and while the team lost to Utah on the road in the opener, 50,000 showed up in Week Two for a game against New Hampshire (50k for an FCS game!) A blowout loss in the next game against Miami - in front of 58,000 - put a dent in the excitement, but they still drew 50,000 for a Rutgers game even though they were 3-3. And the next week’s game against Louisville brought out 48,000 - which is 7,000 more than any game in 2017.

So it can be done. Even the specter of sustained success can bring out fans. Pitt averaged 49,352 in 2008, 53,445 in 2009 and 52,165 in 2010 (of course, they had West Virginia on the schedule in 2008, Notre Dame in 2009 and Miami and WVU in 2010, but still - 50k against an FCS team!).

If Pitt reaches that sustained success, season ticket sales will inevitably climb. They won’t reach sell-out levels, but they can be high enough that I just don’t know if it will be feasible to “right-size” the stadium with tarps. That’s a good problem - selling too many tickets to tarp - but it renders the seeming quick-fix option untenable.

I understand the desire to improve the atmosphere at Heinz Field. It stands out to me, even from the press box, and I wish Pitt could do something to simply get people into the stadium for the start of the game. The opening kickoff should be loud and raucous, and it’s really not that way at Heinz Field.

(Some venues have taken to offering discount concessions prior to the start of an event, be it a game or a concert or what have you, in the hopes of enticing people to get in their seats sooner; Heinz Field should do that for Pitt games.)

So I can see why they want to consolidate the fans to try to make it louder. My best suggestion is to find ways to entice fans in the upper deck to buy tickets in the more populated areas. Incentivize it in some way. Study tarps and see how - or if - you can make it work. But I think there are other solutions that could accomplish the same thing in a more long-term fashion.

There are some important contrasts to note

I think something else is worth mentioning as it relates to Heather Lyke and some of the comments she made on The Fan - particularly when she addressed some of the same topics she commented on back in November on that sort-of fateful day in Canton last fall.

When she made those original comments, she was in her hometown, attending the Hall of Fame Luncheon Club meeting at Tozzi’s on 12th, a “steak, seafood and Italian” restaurant that has been around for more than 100 years.

I mention that detail to set the scene: it was relaxed, colloquial even. That’s where the quote about the tarps came out. And she followed that with this elaboration:

“It’s 68,000 seats right now,” The Repository, a newspaper in Canton, reported, “which is in the top quartile of the Power Five schools and there’s really only 10-20 schools in the country that really consistently draw over 80,000…There’s a way to make the stadium seem smaller, but the amenities at Heinz Field are phenomenal. We’re going to make the best of it.”

That seems like an off-the-cuff comment - despite the use of “quartile,” which I had to look up to confirm as an actual word (it is one) - and the gist is clear:

Pitt can’t consistently fill a 68,000-seat stadium. The fan base is not strong enough and the product isn’t big enough of a draw.

Now, you and I probably agree with those statements and likely have uttered them more than a few times. But should the Athletic Director be quite so blunt about it? No, probably not. I suspect that if Lyke were speaking in a press conference at the Petersen Events Center, she might have chosen her words differently. But perhaps the setting - Tozzi’s on 12th - created the atmosphere; it just so happened that Joe Scalzo from The Repository was in the house, and he recorded those comments for posterity.

In her second public comments about tarps - the interview on The Fan that we discussed in the last section - Lyke’s stance was a little different. She still wants to explore tarps, but the focus is on the game day atmosphere. Even if she’s still thinking of tarps when she says that, she’s phrasing it a different way and pushing a different and arguably more palatable priority.

That’s a subtle shift, but a notable one. And I saw a similar adjustment on the matter of Penn State. When she was at Tozzi’s on 12th, Lyke said this about renewing the Penn State series (again, as reported by The Repository):

“We have two games left in football,” she was quoted as saying. “We play them next year on Sept. 9 at Heinz Field and it’ll be the 99th meeting between Pitt and Penn State. Then we play the Century Game back in Penn State in 2019. We have a contract very close to being done and being sent to Penn State to extend the football deal and I think that’s a huge priority and a huge rivalry and it’s necessary, so we’re working hard on that.”

Let’s think about what Lyke put on the table with those comments:

1. Pitt wants to keep playing Penn State

Fair enough. I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone. I suspect most people would expect Pitt to want to want to keep playing Penn State and understand why Pitt would have that desire.

2. Pitt is sending a contract for Penn State to sign

Here we run into a little trouble, at least perception-wise. Now the desire to play Penn State has turned into more of a request than a two-sided negotiation. Now Penn State is in position to either make the series happen or shut it down.

Maybe this is a moot distinction - and certainly, it’s really only relevant to perception, since we know PSU was always the one who would decide - but, as with the “right-sizing” discussion, there’s a difference between knowing something and laying it out like that.

Fast-forward to that interview on The Fan this week. Here’s what Lyke said to a question about extending the Penn State series.

We'd love to play. We'd love to do a home-and-home. We'd love to do another four-game series. If it works, great. And if not, we'll move in a different direction.

That’s a different tone.

“If it works, great. And if not, we’ll move in a different direction.”

That’s not the same as saying you’re about to send a contract to PSU in the hopes of getting a “yes.” A subtle change? Perhaps. But a change nonetheless, and a good one at that.

Overall, I’ve heard a lot of good things about Heather Lyke, and I’m really interested to see how she handles the next 11 months. She’s going to have to make a decision on the basketball program, obviously, and that will be a two-part test (deciding to make a change and then deciding who to hire). She’s going to be held accountable for the attendance at Heinz Field this season. And if the football team struggles again in 2018, she’s going to face some questions about Pat Narduzzi’s future that might not be quite as easy to brush aside.

TWO QUESTIONS

Whose team is it anyway?
We’re less than two weeks away from the start of spring football, and inevitably one of the bigger and more relevant storylines this spring - and this season - will be the makeup of the team.

It’s Year Four for Pat Narduzzi, and that’s the time when talk of “inherited players” really starts to fade away and “it’s his team” becomes a common phrase.

So just how much is the 2018 Pitt team one of Pat Narduzzi’s making? Well, we’re at the point where it’s easier to count the players Narduzzi didn’t recruit rather than the ones he did.

To wit:

George Aston
Qadree Ollison
Alex Bookser
Conor Dintino
Mike Herndon
James Folston
Shane Roy
Seun Idowu
Jalen Williams
Quintin Wirginis
Elijah Zeise
Phillipie Motley
Dennis Briggs

That’s 13 scholarship players out of the current projected total of 87. Obviously they still need to cut two scholarships to make it all fit, but I think we all know they’ll figure that out. If all 13 of those guys stay and the attrition comes from the underclassmen, then you’re looking at 13 out of 85 - or 15.3% of the roster.

That’s a small percentage, and it’s even a bit smaller if you look at which of those 13 are likely to start and/or contribute. Bookser, Roy, Idowu and Zeise are legitimate returning starters from last season. Aston, Ollison and Wirginis will have significant roles, to be sure, and could end up as starters. Herndon and Folston will also compete for starting jobs, too. You’ll likely see Williams, Motley and Briggs on special teams and in the mix on defense as well, but really, you’re probably looking at a half-dozen or so starters from that group of 13.

That’s a pretty small group, which means I think we can say pretty definitively that this is Pat Narduzzi’s Team in that grandiose way of deeming a coach fully responsible for the on-field product (or, at the very least, taking the excuse of “not his players” off the table). And really, when you consider that those inherited players are now entering their fourth seasons under this coaching staff, they might as well be players this staff brought to the team, since they have enough experience at this point.

So while I don’t think many fans will be interested in excuses if 2018 goes sideways for the Pitt football team regardless of the makeup of the roster, I think it’s safe to say that this year’s Panthers will be a squad built in Pat Narduzzi’s image. And what’s even more relevant is that the staff will be relying on players who have experience; almost all of the key players for this season saw the field last season.

We’ll probably repeat this more times than I care to count between now and the season opener and beyond, but yeah, this is Pat Narduzzi’s team.

Did the staff improve this offseason?

This is an interesting question to me. Pitt had three changes to the staff this offseason - three and a half, kind of - and that’s a fair amount of turnover. It’s more than Pitt had in each of the last two offseasons, going from one change after 2015 (Jim Chaney to Matt Canada) to two changes after 2016 (Matt Canada to Shawn Watson and Tom Sims to Charlie Partridge) and now three this offseason.

Of course, this year’s changes are as follows:

- Randy Bates replaced Josh Conklin as defensive coordinator
- Dave Borbely replaced John Peterson as offensive line coach
- Archie Collins replaced Renaldo Hill as secondary coach

And then Cory Sanders joined the staff as the 10th assistant; he’ll coach safeties, so he kind of replaced Hill as well.

We come back to the question, then: did Pitt improve the staff this offseason?

I’m sure Pat Narduzzi would say yes. As for the rest of us, it probably depends on your first-glance impressions of Bates, Borbely, Collins and Sanders and your three-year impressions of Conklin, Peterson and Hill.

Looking at the guys who left the staff, Hill was the rising star. He took a lot of heat in his first two seasons because Pitt’s corners really didn’t play very well, but in 2017, that changed. By the end of the schedule, Avonte Maddox and Dane Jackson were arguably the two best players on defense, and no one made as much improvement from the offseason to the Miami game as Jackson. He was a revelation, and a lot of credit for his development goes to Hill.

Conklin wasn’t viewed quite as favorably. The performance of his defenses improved in the second half of the 2017 season, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the memories of what Oklahoma State and North Carolina and Georgia Tech and quite a few other teams had done to the Panthers in the last three years.

As for Peterson, there was initially some optimism about his coaching, based largely on Brian O’Neill’s transition from tight end to offensive tackle (a move so successful that O’Neill left early for the NFL Draft). But on the whole, there seems to be something lacking in the development of Pitt’s offensive linemen, and that fell on Peterson.

To the matter of upgrades - or, rather, the question of upgrades - we’ll see. Narduzzi clearly didn’t feel like the offensive linemen developed well enough under Peterson, so that will be Borbely’s task. His resume doesn’t scream much either way, but he’s experienced and seems to know his business; that’s a good place to start.

Collins and Sanders make an interesting replacement for Hill. Both have reputations as strong recruiters, and while neither has proven himself in that regard as a full-time assistant at the Power Five level, there’s a school of thought that good recruiting is good recruiting - you can either do it or you can’t. The only real change of being at a higher level, in theory, is that it opens the door to recruit higher-caliber athletes. But in relative terms, good recruiting should be good recruiting.

And then there’s Bates. Aside from one year at Louisiana Tech, he doesn’t have any experience as a defensive coordinator, but he has definitely been around for awhile and has worked for a pretty good defensive coach in Pat Fitzgerald for a long time. The reality of the situation for Bates for Bates, though, is likely the same as it was for Conklin:

This is Pat Narduzzi’s defense. As was the case with Conklin, Bates will have the opportunity to put his stamp on it, adding tweaks and adjustments as he sees fit, but the defense probably isn’t going to change much. Still, whatever becomes of Pitt’s defense over the next three years will be a reflection on Bates (and, in all likelihood, determine whether Narduzzi is still the head coach in four years).

Similarly, the conclusion to this question - Did the staff improve this offseason? - will be determined over the next few years. I don’t think there are any answers that jump off the page, whether it’s a clear upgrade or a clear downgrade at any one position.

ONE PREDICTION

There will be big some projects
Getting back to the administrative side for a second here, I have a feeling that 2018 will see Pitt announce plans for some bigger projects - not just for football or basketball, but for athletics overall.

This isn’t based on any inside info and it certainly doesn’t pertain to an on-campus stadium, but as I look at Pitt’s facilities and setup on campus and try to get a sense of where it might be lacking and where it can improve, I think there are some things that Heather Lyke and the rest of the Athletic Department will explore.

Say what you want about Scott Barnes - and I know people have plenty to say - but he was on this path, too. The facilities master plan that has been sometimes mocked but largely forgotten was a big step in this direction. Barnes wanted to take stock of Pitt’s assets in terms of facilities, determine what needed to be improved and find ways - and space - to improve them.

That started with the Petersen Events Center. The night Pitt unveiled the new uniforms in all sports a few years ago, there were other announcements as well, like a new court, improvements to the practice gym, etc. From what I understood at the time, that was the tip of the iceberg, and those efforts continued with other behind-the-scenes projects.

The Petersen Events Center is a great venue, but it was also built 16 years ago. That’s a lifetime in college facilities, and aside from some locker room upgrades, there really weren’t any major updates done until the last two years. So you’ve seen things like the Willis Academic Center Enhancement Fund - they want to raise money to create a better academic center for the student-athletes.

And, of course, we’ve seen the updates to the South Side (another building that’s been in use for more than 15 years). Pat Narduzzi did a lot of heavy lifting on that front from the time he arrived, but he’s also not one to rest on his laurels - there are plenty of other things Pitt wants to do down there. I also would think they’d like to get some upgrades to their locker rooms at Heinz Field; I haven’t been told that, but I’m pretty sure nothing has changed there in a long time.

Finally, there’s the matter of the Fitzgerald Field House. Like Trees Hall, the Field House is a long-standing institution of Pitt’s upper campus, but it’s also really old (built in 1951). Heather Lyke’s commitment to sports beyond football and basketball - what we used to call Olympic sports - is going to, at some point, manifest as considerable work on that building. And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we see some move toward that kind of project in this calendar year (again, not based on anything I’ve been told; just speculation).