The college sports offseason is finally coming to a close.
While the Pitt Athletics games this summer did not affect their record for the upcoming regular season, these past few months featured plenty of news in the world of Pitt sports and the college landscape.
Scholarship limits abolished
Due to the House v. NCAA court case, scholarship limits have been abolished across Division I teams that opted into the settlement. Pitt was one of the schools to do so and will now operate without scholarship limits for all sports. Pitt football head coach Pat Narduzzi has stated that the team will still operate with just 85 scholarship players for this season, the previous scholarship player limit for football.
Pitt volleyball reloads roster
Pitt volleyball lost a significant amount of talent following its fourth straight loss in the Final Four. Cat Flood, Valeria Vazquez Gomez, Emmy Klika and Rachel Fairbanks all graduated. Torrey Stafford entered the transfer portal and ended up at No. 5 Texas.
Head coach Dan Fisher and the rest of the recruiting staff were active in the transfer portal, landing redshirt senior setter Brooke Mosher from Illinois, redshirt sophomore outside hitter Sophia Gregoire from Oregon and redshirt senior libero Emery Dupes from Florida State, bringing veteran presence to a much younger team than the previous year. Pitt also brings in a strong first-year class, headed by French outside hitter Marina Pezelj.
Pitt women’s basketball lands top recruits
Despite lackluster performances in recent seasons, Pitt women’s basketball landed a strong class of 2025 first-year players for the coming season. With seven recruits playing their first collegiate season, head coach Tory Verdi will have a lot of work to do in order to get the team on the same page by the time November comes around.
The class is headlined by two players in the 2025 SportsCenter NEXT 100, ESPN’s women’s basketball recruit rankings. Combo guard Nylah Wilson comes in at the No. 31 spot on the list, while point guard Theresa Hagans comes in at No. 99 on the list. The class also includes guard Macie Arzner of Oregon, guard Megan Hollinsworth of Canada, forward Divine Tumba Tshibuabua of Canada and forward Angela Le Faou of France.
Pitt loses top athletes to transfer portal
Pitt has certainly benefited from the transfer portal since it began to dominate collegiate sports in recent years. The 2022 men’s basketball team — which won March Madness games for the first time in seven years — was almost entirely made up of transfers. That said, this offseason seems to have taken more from Pitt than Pitt got in return from the portal.
Other than Pitt volleyball losing Stafford to Texas, men’s basketball and football suffered significant losses.
Starting point guard Jaland Lowe departed the basketball team, along with forwards Guillermo and Jorge Diaz Graham. They landed at Kentucky, San Francisco and Oregon State, respectively.
Football saw wide receiver Daejon Reynolds exit, as well as defensive end Sincere Edwards. With few interesting moves aside from volleyball, Pitt may end up on the losing end of this year’s portal.