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Updated 6 minutes ago
Pitt senior Sheldon Jeter remembers what it was like last year getting reacquainted with coach Kevin Stallings.
“There was an awkward phone call at first,” he said. “After that, we had an awkward first meeting. Then, we had the awkward first workout and then we had the awkward first talk.
“After we got through all that, it was easy.”
Maybe the early anxiety was to be expected. Jeter was recruited by Stallings from Beaver Falls to Vanderbilt, but he left after his freshman season of 2012-13 after playing in all 33 games.
Three years later, Jeter and Stallings are at Pitt, helping the Panthers (15-12, 4-10) get ready for the start of the critical stretch run Wednesday at Wake Forest.
Was Jeter surprised that they ended up together? Maybe just a little. He said if you had told him that was a possibility, “I would have laughed. I would have said, ‘Are you serious?' over and over and over again.”
It took Stallings to shatter a potentially tense situation.
“Luckily, he cracked a joke,” Jeter said.
“He called me and said, ‘What's up, Sheldon? I've noticed since you left me, your 3-point (shooting) percentage has gone down to 21 percent.' ”
At Vanderbilt, Jeter shot 39 percent from beyond the arc (64 attempts). But last season under former coach Jamie Dixon, he was only 5 of 23.
“So what's going on?” Stallings wanted to know. “Can you not shoot? Do they not like you up here?”
“I just started chuckling,” Jeter said. “Not an amazing joke, but it got the job done.”
A year later, Jeter is shooting 3-pointers at a nearly 40-percent rate (23 of 58) and 43.8 in ACC games (14 of 32).
Plus, he has joined Cam Johnson in taking some of the scoring burden off Michael Young and Jamel Artis. Johnson or Jeter has been Pitt's leading scorer in four of the past six games after Young and Artis held or shared that honor in the first 21.
“We have to continue to get scoring from places other than Mike and Jamel,” Stallings said. “Cam has been pretty consistent (scoring 22, 17 and 10 points over the past three games) and Sheldon (a career-high 29 against Florida State) was terrific on Saturday.”
Other than the early awkwardness and Pitt's recent eight-game losing streak, the Stallings/Jeter reunion has gone well.
Jeter said others might have expected to see “some type of grudge or tension” between the two. Jeter said that's not him.
“I'm not one for holding grudges,” he said. “Especially after I moved on and I was up here and I was trying to focus on my career up here, and he was focusing on his players (at Vanderbilt).
“I wasn't waking up every morning, ‘Ah, I hate Coach Stallings. I can't stand Coach Stallings.'
“No. I was thankful for him giving me a chance at the beginning of the year (at Vanderbilt). I wasn't playing. I had messed up academically. He still believed in me.”
Jeter said that first phone call reminded him of why he committed to Stallings when he was at Beaver Falls.
“I believed everything he said was genuine. When he came up here, I was excited. This is what I told (Pitt teammates): ‘This is a genuine person who really cares about you and your future.' ”
NOTES: Stallings said Ryan Luther's return Wednesday from his foot injury is “doubtful,” but he hasn't ruled it out. … ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi's projected NCAA Tournament bracket Monday included 10 ACC teams, with Clemson and Wake Forest among the first four out and Pitt among the next 4 out.
Jerry DiPaola is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at jdipaola@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JDiPaola_Trib.
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