A Q&A with Pitt Associate Head Coach, Barry Rohrssen. It’s mostly fluff, but there are some nuggets.

You coach Pitt’s forwards and center and work with Aaron Gray every day in practice. Why has he been able to improve so much this season from last?

Rohrssen: The jump in his numbers are reflective with the minutes he’s playing. I’ve always been impressed with Aaron ever since his freshman year. I have buddies who work in the NBA who are scouts and personnel guys. I was telling them about Aaron ever since he was a freshman, and they were like, ‘Well, he’s not playing. He’s overweight.’ I said, listen, ‘I want to make you look good with your boss. Take down his name because one day he’s going to make you look good.’ One of the things that separates Aaron is his work ethic and desire to improve. He wants to be a better player. One thing about Aaron is impressive to me is his unselfishness, his sharing of the basketball. It’s not a black hole when it goes in there. If you give the ball to Aaron and you cut or you space out, you’re going to get it back. He is a very unselfish player.

Isn’t neat how idle speculation becomes a rumor? Take the speculation that Arizona State might consider Jamie Dixon as its next coach. Today it starts making the leap.

Rumor of the Week: Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon to Arizona State for mega-bucks. As it did with Dixon before, Pitt may move an assistant up to the first chair to help keep Pitt’s New York city recruiting pipeline alive. Unless, Xavier head coach, Pittsburg area native and former Pitt player Sean Miller can get out of his long-term pact with the Musketeers.

I have to laugh. A speculation that ASU might consider Dixon noted that if money is the issue it wouldn’t be the problem consider Dixon’s present pay. Now it’s that he will get a mega-sized deal from ASU. It really is kind of funny.

The Pitt program gets some respect and love in the Providence Journal.

They’ve lost Ricardo Greer and Donatas Zavackas, Jaron Brown and Julius Page. They’ve also lost Brandin Knight and Ontario Lett, Chris Taft and Chevy Troutman. They even lost the architect, coach Ben Howland.

Yet through all the personnel alterations, the Pittsburgh Panthers are still looking good these days. Make that looking real good.

Pitt is ranked ninth in the country and coming off a knock-down, drag-out loss at Connecticut on Tuesday that reminded any doubters that the Panthers (17-2) can be every bit as good as anyone in the country. The players may change, but the five-year run of success at Pitt is still clearly rolling along.
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How did Pittsburgh fight its way into the nation’s elite? Though everyone in the Big East was a bit leery of the school’s boosters (The Golden Panthers) in the 1980s, the recipe for success now is good coaching and excellent recruiting. First, the coaching. Howland came to Pitt an unknown but left with enough credentials to secure his dream job at UCLA. He was the 2002 National Coach of the Year, led the Panthers to the Sweet 16 and then punched his ticket West with a 28-5 season in 2003.

After some hemming and hawing from Wake Forest’s Skip Prosser, Pitt gave the head job to Howland’s loyal assistant, Jamie Dixon. He promptly went 31-5, good for the winningest season in Pitt’s history. Last year the Panthers “slipped” to 20-9, and with a load of younger players a mild step backward was certainly possible.

But that’s not all that’s in Pitt’s repertoire. Thanks to the shocking emergence of 7-foot center Aaron Gray and strong play from three freshmen, Pitt won its first 15 games and zoomed from unranked to the top 10.

McNamara has been covering the Big East and Providence for a long time. Outside of Dick Weiss at the NY Daily News, he’s probably the only one who could throw out the Golden Panthers reference and not think he needs to explain it.