How a Determined AD Sparked Pittsburgh Athletics’ Stunning Turnaround

The school has revitalized its sports under Heather Lyke, including a men’s basketball program that’s no longer an ACC doormat.

When Heather Lyke arrived at Pittsburgh as the new athletic director in 2017, she asked where the school’s Atlantic Coast Conference championship hardware was displayed. The answers were underwhelming.

Turns out, there wasn’t much of it since joining the league in 2013—the ’13–14 wrestling team was the lone Pitt team to have won an ACC title to that point. As for the trophy commemorating that feat? Lyke went searching for it and found it in the “wrestling dungeon” basement of Fitzgerald Field House, a relic built in 1951. It was sitting in a volunteer assistant coach’s office.

“The one ACC championship trophy is on an end table in a tiny office,” Lyke recalls. “I was mortified at the lack of visible pride.”

Today, whatever happens to be the most recent ACC title trophy at Pitt is displayed in a well-trafficked location in Petersen Events Center, the school’s basketball arena. And there is newfound competition to earn that spot. The championships have come with greater frequency.

Lyke hugs Pitt football coach Pat Narduzzi :: Charles LeClaire/USA TODAY Sports

There was an ACC softball divisional title in 2018, women’s volleyball titles from ’17 to ’19, a men’s soccer divisional title in ’20, football in ’21. And what’s this? The downtrodden Pitt men’s basketball team has revived itself and currently is tied for the ACC lead with a 10–3 league mark, 17–7 overall. The program’s first winning record in ACC play in nine years is all but assured, and its first NCAA tournament bid in seven years is within reach.

Pitt athletics, once one of the weakest links in the well-rounded ACC and all of the Power 5 conferences, has become a broad-based success story. The Learfield Directors’ Cup standings, which calculate all-sports prowess, show dramatic upward mobility for the Panthers.

From 2014 to ’22, Pitt never finished higher than 73rd nationally in the Directors’ Cup. The average finish was 97th, with a low ebb of 137th in ’19. When Lyke left Eastern Michigan for the Pitt job, her brother told her, “Heather, there’s nowhere to go but up.”

They’ve gone up. Through the 2022–23 fall sports season, the Panthers currently are tied for sixth in the nation. Pitt’s 302 points accrued (based on NCAA postseason competition results and rankings) in just fall sports are the most the program has ever scored for an entire academic year combined.

Volleyball made the Final Four for the second straight season. Men’s soccer made the Final Four for the second time in three seasons. Women’s soccer made the Sweet 16 for the first time. Football won nine games and finished the season ranked No. 22 in the AP poll. Men’s cross-country also earned points for having NCAA qualifiers.

“This fall has been so clearly superior to any other Pitt athletics year ever,” says volleyball coach Dan Fisher, who has been at the school since 2013. “When you have multiple teams winning, it’s contagious. I think recruits look at Pitt differently now in a lot of sports.”

So do the fans. Winners draw attention and attendance, where previously the Panthers had competed almost in a big-city vacuum.

“When I started, we had maybe a couple girlfriends and a couple dogs in the stands,” says longtime men’s soccer coach Jay Vidovich. “Now it’s a packed house, standing-room only.”

Pitt’s upswing has been a testament to Lyke’s combination of seemingly conflicting characteristics: aggressiveness and patience. She came to the city school ready to overhaul a lot of things, but also prepared to play the long game in other areas.

After playing softball at Michigan and working as an assistant AD at Ohio State, Lyke had plenty of familiarity with how successful broad-based athletic programs operated. Her stint at Eastern Michigan was a valuable first job as the boss—learning how to do a lot with a little—but the lessons learned in the Big Ten were more applicable to the Pitt job.

Job one—other than finding that missing ACC trophy—was igniting a renewed passion within the department.

“There was apathy,” she says. “People were comfortable.”

Some began to grow uncomfortable quickly. Lyke says she changed nine head coaches in her first year and a half at Pitt, a turnover rate that put everyone on notice—even the attendant in the university lot where she parks. Lyke recalled him jokingly telling her she could park wherever she wants as long she didn’t fire him, too.

“We had to invest in people,” Lyke says. “I wanted to find coaches who had courage and confidence,” Lyke says. “They’ve got to have an internal confidence that, yeah, I can do this.’”

Lyke also propped up the coaches she inherited, who simply needed more support in terms of budget, staffing and infrastructure. Almost everything was in Fitzgerald Field House, and Lyke undertook ambitious projects to build new facilities and renovate the old ones. The Victory Heights fundraising campaign, which began in 2020, is moving through a seven-year plan to upgrade just about everything in the athletic department.

“I had to convince my superiors we needed things,” says Vidovich, who came from Wake Forest. “I told them, ‘This is what Wake and Clemson and Virginia have. We’ve got to get close to that.’ Literally, my office in Fitzgerald was a janitor’s closet—it was tough to put more than four people in there at the same time. Now I’m looking out of my office at my field.

“Previous coaches were at Pitt as a stepping stone. Now people want to build it and make it their own at Pitt.”

Football coach Pat Narduzzi has become that guy. Now heading into his ninth year, he’s had just one losing season. In the past two years he’s won 20 total games. When Lyke schedules a meeting, she knows Narduzzi will have a food spread waiting. (“He’s such an Italian, always trying to feed you,” she jokes. “He’s the right leader for our football program; we had to build what he needed to maintain continuity there.”)

The most obvious fix that needed to be made was in men’s basketball, which had become a power in the Big East and was one of the biggest reasons the Panthers were accepted into the ACC. But Lyke’s predecessor, Scott Barnes, made a pair of catastrophically bad decisions in succession. Barnes lowered the buyout of consistent winner coach Jamie Dixon, essentially pushing him to leave for TCU, and replaced him with Kevin Stallings.

Stallings was an utter disaster, bottoming out in 2017–18 with an 8–24 season that included an 0–18 ACC mark. Having completely nuked the program and turned the rowdy Petersen atmosphere into a funeral parlor, Lyke fired Stallings and replaced him with Jeff Capel.

In Year 5 under Capel, the Panthers have a chance to win the ACC :: Michael Longo/USA TODAY Network

Capel’s career was on the rebound. The former Duke standout and son of a college coach got off to a promising start, racking up four straight winning seasons at VCU and translating that into the job at Oklahoma. In Year 2, Capel took the Sooners to the NCAA tournament second round. In Year 3, Oklahoma went 30–6, earned a No. 2 seed and made the regional final.

But Blake Griffin turned pro after that season, and Capel’s tenure went south thereafter. He was fired after consecutive losing seasons and went back to Duke as Mike Krzyzewski’s top assistant for a career reboot.

When Lyke called, Capel answered. He took a bad job, and the struggle was real. And long. For four seasons in the post-Stallings nuclear winter, Pitt remained a losing team—Capel’s record was 51–69. But with plenty of outside voices saying it was time for a change, Lyke stuck with her guy.

“He took over a program that was rough,” Lyke says. “Which should not be the case here—there’s nothing you don’t have in basketball. It is set up. But in a situation like that, you have to have a little patience. Coach Capel is a really, really bright guy, and the early struggles were hard on him. He was frustrated.

“I told him, ‘We’re in this together. You can do this.’ Jeff and I’s relationship has grown a lot stronger the last two years.”

The payoff has been this breakthrough season, in which Pittsburgh has progressively improved its standing from afterthought to bubble team to, at present, a likely NCAA qualifier. And they have the components of a potentially dangerous March team, with quality guards (fifth-year seniors Jamarius Burton and Nelly Cummings have played 142 and 129 college games, respectively) and some impactful size (three athletic players 6'11" or taller, plus widebody Blake Hinson).

But a lot of people have pieces. Putting them together cohesively is the trick. Pitt has shown improved chemistry and resilience as the wins have piled up.

“You’ve got to play for each other, and they really care about each other,” Capel says. “All I talked about with my team this year was to be a really good teammate and play hard. This group has done that. They’re generally happy for each other. Anyone who has seen us in the past and sees us this year, it’s a big difference. For me, it’s fun to be around.”

The biggest measurable improvement: the Panthers are 6–2 in true road games, after going 8–34 on the road in Capel’s first four seasons. None of those six was bigger than the one-point victory at North Carolina on Feb. 1, the highlight of a current four-game winning streak.

In that game, which went back and forth and down to the wire, Capel drew up a great play that would produce the winning points in the final seconds. He put the ball in the hands of the 6'4" Burton at the top of the key, and North Carolina predictably countered with 6'7" defensive specialist Leaky Black guarding him. So Capel set up two stagger screens to Burton’s right, allowing him to shed Black and wind up with the smaller RJ Davis on him. The muscular Burton took Davis into the paint, drew a foul and made two free throws for a one-point win.

What happened afterward overshadowed the win, when Capel’s brother, Jason—a former standout Tar Heel—got embroiled in a shouting match with fans in the Smith Center. (The backstory is long and complicated.) Jason’s postgame rant spilled over from courtside to the area outside the Pitt locker room, where he bellowed at top volume about being disrespected by his alma mater.

Lyke, who was in the area congratulating the players and coaching staff, gently waved Jason toward the locker room door—aware of the scene that he was making. This was a bit over the top, but Heather Lyke will take that emotion over the apathy she inherited every day of the week.

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