Let’s get the human interest stuff out of the way.
An AP story on Carl Krauser. standard points hit: boxed briefly, he’s old, from the Bronx. Krauser does make every Pitt fan cringe by talking about a possible game in the Elite Eight.
“The game I’m looking forward to is UCLA,” he said.
To have a chance to face the Bruins and former Pittsburgh coach Ben Howland, the Panthers would have to get to the Oakland Regional final. That’s one step beyond the round of 16 the Big East power has advanced to in three of the past four years.
“I want to play against coach Howland, and say a little something, talk a little trash to him,” Krauser said. “That would be so fun, and kind of weird to play your old coach.”
It’s not that we disagree, it’s just that you are not supposed to do or say that. It’s one game at a time. You’re only supposed to be talking about the game right in front of you.
The day after Joe Starkey said that Aaron Gray needs to have a great Tournament for Pitt to do anything, Smizik agrees but with his usual strawmen.
Still, it’s those nagging layups and short jumpers that fell short, clanged off or rolled around and came out night after night after night in the Big East tournament last week that people most remember.
Try to tell people that Gray is a fine shooter with a deft touch from 10 feet and in, and they’ll laugh.
Memories in sports are short. What people most remember about Gray is that he converted 18 of 51 field-goal attempts last week, which isn’t bad if the shots were coming from beyond 3-point range. But they mostly were coming from the 3-foot range. It was stupefying. Gray made four of 13 against Louisville, seven of 17 against West Virginia, two of nine against Villanova and five of 12 against Syracuse as Pitt lost in the title game.
That wasn’t the Gray who was a dominant player during the regular season, when he made 55 percent of his shots. He looked tired, which he was, and he looked bereft of confidence, which he insists he wasn’t.
Does Smizik’s circle of friends include head trauma victims with only short-term memory? Everyone knows he has been shooting well most of the season. It’s now, that he’s struggling that the screams are loudest for him to just throw it down, to deal with the misses. There was some amusement in the way he described how Coach Dixon addressed Gray’s play at the BET.
Coach Jamie Dixon was at his contrarian best, almost refusing to acknowledge that Gray wasn’t up to standard in the Big East tournament.
“He had a great tournament,” Dixon said with a straight face. “He played very well. You know, we really don’t look at shooting as it is the last thing we look at.”
Continuing with the premise that all was well in New York, Dixon said, “He’s been very good for us all year and he’s going to be good for us tomorrow. I’m sure.”
Smizik, of course, knows contrarian — ususally. But if it hasn’t been made abundantly clear by now, Coach Dixon simply will not criticize his individual players to the media. He will always be positive and act as if all is well. It’s frustrating, annoying and makes you want to scream; but it is the philosophy of Dixon not to tear down players in the press.
Finally a nice article about Coach Dixon’s father travelling back and forth to see Pitt and the Army women play basketball for the last few weeks.
