Pitt basketball coach Kevin Stallings optimistic as practices begin

Pitt's basketball team isn't expected to do much this season. After a down year last season, the Panthers' roster was almost entirely gutted and wins are expected to be difficult to come by in 2017-18.

But the team began practices this week and the team's head coach Kevin Stallings is optimistic for the season ahead.

"I thought that they played with great energy and great enthusiasm," Stallings said after the team's initial practice. He cautioned, though, that every team has those things at this point of the year. "But it's like I told them, every team in college basketball played hard today," he continued.

"We haven't had any adversity yet."

Stallings, though, is at least happy about the attitude and effort so far.

"They give tremendous effort and play with great attitude, so they're really a fun bunch to coach," Stallings said. "Very excited about this team and very excited about the way they go about their business, and how they play together."

We'll see if that continues. The big theme for last year from Stallings seemed to be that the team didn't give enough effort. He's now got a clean slate and hopefully can get that cleaned up. I don't expect that they'll win a ton of games this season but if he can at least get the effort up, that would be a start.

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