PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Last year wasn’t acceptable for Pitt basketball, head coach Jeff Capel said it, athletic director Allen Greene said it. To get back to where they want to be they hired a general manager, who worked at West Virginia, to turn this around.
Jay Kuntz spent 15 years with Bob Huggins in various roles including player development and recruiting. In just minutes around him you feel his unrelenting energy. He has a passion for basketball and now his former rival. As he put it, Pitt needs to be better and it will be.
“We are going to completely change the look of this program moving forward,” Kuntz said on 93.7 The Fan. “We did that with our freshman class and trust me, that was just the start.”
“I am very excited about the prospect of what Pitt basketball will look like in the future.”
Pitt invested in three, four-star players that make up a consensus Top 20 freshman class and by most in the Top 10. Now it’s a matter of finding impact players in the what is essentially college basketball free agency starting April 7.
“We feel very strongly where we are going to be going into this portal period,” Kuntz said on 93.7 The Fan. “Not to play our hand, but I think you can hear the confidence with how I portray this message.”
“We are going to be a force.”
How? And why will it be different now than the last couple of years when Pitt was outspent by nearly every school in the ACC?
“It’s just making sure we have the right assets to make sure we are competitive,” Kuntz said on 93.7 The Fan. “The partnership with (Athletic) Director (Allen) Greene and his team has been incredible. They have been wonderful to work with. The stuff they’ve done behind the scenes, that entire group has been working. It’s a collective effort.”
Collective is a good word. That has been used to describe the group that raises money to pay college athletes. Money is what kids want right now. I talked to a college athletic director who said they could play in a gym with no frills and hang their clothes on a nail, and as long as players are being paid, they will be happy.
Kuntz said they have the resources to be able to compete. Now it’s about doing the work.
The first step is complete, that was getting the highly-rated freshman class. Then Jeff Capel and the coaching staff has been evaluating their own talent, everyone on the roster and decide who they want to go forward with and then which of those are committed to Pitt.
The process of evaluating the potential players available doesn’t start when they enter the portal, which has begun. Kuntz says they will evaluate every other team in the country as to who might be available, especially teams with coaching changes where players might be looking to leave.
Over the years at West Virginia, Kuntz said he has developed his own data base. How he grades and evaluates potential players. He was careful not to give away any secrets, but said it starts with looking at thousands of players throughout the year. Along with those in Division 1, they will assess JUCO, European Leagues and foreign players in the NBA ‘G-League’.
It’s an era where most players now have agents. Those agents or agencies could represent tens to hundreds of other players. Kuntz said point guards and big-men cost the most, they are the toughest to find and the most valuable. They are evaluated by their body of work and what they can project for a player who might be sitting on his current team or playing at a lower level.
Kuntz said these salary numbers, which can be multiple millions for a star, are real and are only going to escalate. It’s something he said Jeff Capel and the coaching staff have bought into and accepted. He advised fans, who may hate the current system, to accept it as well. It’s not going anywhere.
The portal window runs from April 7 to 21, but that doesn’t mean on the 21st that you can’t sign a player. The 21st is just the deadline for players to declare, they could sign all through the summer.
“We will be very, very active in the portal,” Kuntz said on 93.7 The Fan. “We will be very, very aggressive with how we pursue guys and the manner we pursue them.”
The sales pitch is an opportunity with a program that at a point last season was ranked in the Top 25 and Kuntz said has a strong history with a passionate fan base. It also has no professional basketball team to compete against.
“You can come here and be part of the rebirth of the biggest turnaround in college basketball history,” Kuntz said. “Or you could go be another guy somewhere else.”
Kuntz said they are setting up a program that will have success not only this coming year, but they will build a sustainable winner.
It starts right now, not in the traditional way, but what about college athletics in 2026 is traditional.
GM Jay Kuntz says they will completely change the program & be a force in the portal
