Herb going home?

To Pitt?


maybe....

 

Guess I am not the only one watching Sportscenter

 

Derrick Whittenburg from Wagnor University?

 

Calipari

 

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

 

maybe not herb

i saw a link (that didn't work) on Sportingnews.com that said Pitt's interest is a little west of Raleigh....in Winston Salem.

Yup, Skip Prosser (or some Prosser) is a fave of the Panthers. I couldn't get to the story, tho. Check out sportingnews.com, it's off to the right in the headlines.

 

yeah...Skip is a Pittsburgh native.

 

Good recruiting class coming in at Wake though. Chris Paul is a winner!


Pittsburgh interested but Prosser stays mum
Panthers' basketball team has new arena, solid players returning
By Dan Collins, Winston-Salem Journal Reporter

Marc Boehm, the interim director of athletics at Pittsburgh, is in New Orleans this weekend for more than the Final Four.

"We're obviously here on business," Boehm said yesterday. "We're moving very quickly."

What business Pittsburgh's business is to Wake Forest was one of the juicier topics around the Crescent City. Sources in both New Orleans and Winston-Salem have confirmed that Boehm and the Panthers are interested in Coach Skip Prosser of Wake Forest as a possible successor to Ben Howland as Pittsburgh's new basketball coach.

Howland left Pittsburgh last week for UCLA.

As to how much of Pittsburgh's interest is being reciprocated by Prosser, neither Prosser nor Athletics Director Ron Wellman of Wake Forest is saying. Wellman declined to say last night whether he had been contacted by officials from Pittsburgh, citing his policy of not commenting on overtures, or possible overtures, from other schools. Attempts to reach Prosser were unsuccessful, but he has also steadfastly declined to comment on such matters.

"Every spring, if you're losing you're going to get fired and if you're winning you're going to go somewhere else," Prosser said recently. "I guess the latter is more preferable than the former.

"But it's something that I've never ever, ever commented on publicly and that's always worked best for me."

What may seem unfathomable to some who follow ACC basketball is that Prosser, after just two seasons, would leave Wake Forest. As popular as he has been successful, Prosser, the 2003 ACC Coach of the Year, has seven members of his eight-man rotation back from a team that went 25-6 and finished first in the ACC regular season.

Joining the program is a highly-regarded four-man recruiting class led by point guard Chris Paul of West Forsyth, one of the most heralded recruits to ever sign with Wake Forest.

As he assessed the direction of the program on March 24, the day after the Deacons lost to Auburn 68-62 in the second round of the East Regional, Prosser was decidedly upbeat.

"We won an NCAA Tournament game," Prosser said. "We won the league, by two games. We beat everybody in the league. So in terms of the process of respect for Wake Forest basketball, strides have been made.

"We're excited about our young players. We're excited about the players coming in. I think there's an energy about Wake Forest basketball. There was, in my opinion, a good connection between our team and our student body. I think with our fan base at the Joel, games became events, as opposed to just being basketball games. People had fun at the games. So again in terms of the total process, we're really excited about the future.

"We're in this for the long haul, to make it special for a long, long time."

Prosser, it would seem, is not about to leave Wake Forest for just any program. But Pittsburgh, especially for Prosser, is not just any program.

Born in Pittsburgh, Prosser was raised in nearby Carnegie and attended Carnegie High School, which is closed. He has often waxed eloquently about his love for his hometown, about standing in line in the freezing cold for nine hours to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers' playoff game in which Franco Harris made the Immaculate Reception to beat the Oakland Raiders, about seeing the first Pirates game ever played in Three Rivers Stadium, about watching Roberto Clemente of the Pirates lace the 3,000th and last hit of his career.

"It's my hometown," Prosser told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review this week. "I have a lifelong love affair with the City of Pittsburgh. It's home."

A further enticement might be the condition of Pittsburgh's basketball program.

The Panthers play their home games in the new Petersen Events Center, a $100-million showplace on-campus arena. They won 89 games and lost 40 in Howland's four years, and won the Big East Regular season the past two seasons. They reached the Final 16 the past two seasons.

Though star guard Brandin Knight - Pittsburgh's all-time leader in assists and steals - is a senior, the Panthers have enough talent remaining to again contend for the Big East championship. Carl Krauser, an understudy to Knight this season as a freshman, is expected to start at point guard. Regular contributors Julius Page, Jaron Brown, Chevron Troutman and Toree Morris also return to a team that finished 28-5 and won the first Big East Tournament championship in the history of the school.

Plus, Howland's last recruiting class was a strong one, ranked as high as No. 23 in the nation by Clark Francis' Hoop Scoop.

Chris Taft, a 6-9 forward who averaged 22.6 points, 11 rebounds and six blocks at Brooklyn Xavier High School, was the Player of the Year in the New York City Catholic High School Athletic Association. Aaron Gray, a 7-0 center, averaged 20 points, 12 rebounds and four blocks at District 11 Emmaus High near Allentown. Donte Milligan, a 6-8 forward, averaged 16 points and 8.7 rebounds for Pawling (N.Y.) Trinity School. And forward Walter Waters, a 6-10 forward, averaged 18 points and seven rebounds for Detroit Southwestern High School.

The job is decidedly more lucrative than when it was last available, before the 2000 season. Prosser, then coach at Xavier, was reported to have been approached by Pitt but showed little interest.

But that was then.

And this is now.

"When you think about it, who would have thought that when (Howland) arrived at Pitt four years ago, that Pitt would even have a chance of competing with UCLA to keep him," Prosser mused last week to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "That tells you how far Pitt as come, in that it's competing with UCLA for a coach.

"That's a credit to Pitt and to Ben."