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Seton Hall transfer guard Sterling Gibbs remains the biggest name available in college basketball 'free agency', if you will. While numerous schools have pursued Gibbs to this point, he recently trimmed his list of potential schools. The good news is that the Panthers have made the cut, per ESPN's Jeff Borzello:
Seton Hall transfer Sterling Gibbs tells ESPN his final list is Pittsburgh, Ohio State, Connecticut, Baylor, North Carolina State and VCU.
— Jeff Borzello (@jeffborzello) May 5, 2015
Per Borzello's tweet, it sounds as if there won't be another round of cuts and that a decision will be made from this list.
Gibbs was to have visited Pitt yesterday and Adam Zagoria said that his brother and former Panther Ashton was along for the visit as well.
While I don't doubt that the Ashton factor could help Pitt, that impact is pretty minimal in my eyes. As I wrote before, Sterling didn't initially pick Pitt when he went to Maryland. He also didn't become a Panther when he instead went to Texas, and then Seton Hall. So if it hasn't played a part yet, I'm not sure how much it would now.
On the court, Gibbs would fill the role left by Cameron Wright at shooting guard, likely starting. The ironic thing is that he'd be competing for minutes with another transfer named Sterling - Sterling Smith from Coppin State, who joined the Panthers recently. Should Gibbs start, it would be an interesting dynamic. Smith probably came to Pitt for the opportunity to play a big role and Gibbs would certainly eat up a fair share of minutes. Pitt could go with a smaller lineup at times and even allow both to play alongside each other in a three-guard set. Still, I'm not sure how often we'd see that since Jamie Dixon hasn't typically gone in that direction.
But if Pitt manages to land both, that position all of a sudden has gone from a weakness to a major strength. Each player is capable of scoring (a lot - the duo combined for more than 30 points per game last year) - something lacking last year in the backcourt.
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