The Pittsburgh basketball team gathers in a hotel conference room for their pregame breakfast just after 10:30 a.m. on a recent weekday morning in South Florida, helping themselves to pancakes, bacon, eggs, toast, cereal, yogurt, juice and hash browns.
Players eat quietly before leaving to get ready for shootaround. Assistant coaches and support staff linger a little longer, and the conversation turns to 1980s television and movies, and a rather heated debate over whether "Top Gun" is, in fact, a good movie. They fail to reach a consensus.
Eventually, the topic turns to this season. Pitt, once an NCAA tournament mainstay, is on pace to finish winless in conference play for the first time ever, and critics across Pittsburgh have loudly voiced their displeasure over where the program is headed.