The press conference was going to be tough, and all concerned had to have realized that.
Or so one might think.
The reaction from the Pitt community to the hiring of Kevin Stallings over the weekend was unlike anything I'd experienced in a really long time of doing this. It was instant, animated, angry and demonstrably legitimate, with people boasting online and elsewhere of having canceled their season tickets. My goodness, there were even West Virginia and Penn State fans expressing (mostly) troll-free consolations on social media, including here on this site.
And yet, from the moment Monday afternoon when Stallings and athletic director Scott Barnes were paraded through a line of cheerleaders on the Petersen Events Center court toward the makeshift stage where the coach was to be formally introduced by the media, it was eminently clear that only one of these two men was equipped for what was to come.
It was the coach.
And that's both encouraging and troubling for the future of the university's athletics.
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