Oh, good. Snow in the Cleveland area. The kid has an extra day of vacation and I get little productivity and extra shoveling. Yay?

Pitt-Cinci stuff later. Safe to say, though, that if the Bearcats even considered looking past Pitt (which I really, really doubt) they are not after Saturday.

Pitt upsetting Syracuse was probably bigger for Pitt than devastating for Syracuse. It was a much-needed confidence win and drove home to the players how important the defense has to be.

“We’ve been improving,” said coach Jamie Dixon, who improved to 8-2 against teams ranked in the top five of The Associated Press poll. “We’re not the team we were early in the year. We’re a different team. We’ve improved every game out. We had a lot of great performances, but I really loved how hard we played. I can’t say enough about our effort. We have to continue to do that every single game.”

…

“We’re a team that has gotten much better as the year has gone on defensively,” Jamie Dixon said. “You can’t give them transition baskets. We didn’t do that, especially in the second half. We guarded on the perimeter well. We didn’t want to give them opens 3s. And maybe we just caught them on the right day. Maybe it was just our day.”

Coach Dixon has been on the team about the defense, and this game really saw it come together.

Brad Wanamaker attributes his team’s tenacity to its head coach. Or more precisely, Wanamaker believes Pittsburgh plays with such heart and such determination because Jamie Dixon refuses to accept anything else.

“He’s constantly on us. He’s in our ear all the time – how we’re not working hard enough and things like that,” Wanamaker said. “After awhile you get tired of hearing that, so we go out there and do that.”

“That” is what unhinged Syracuse Saturday afternoon in the Carrier Dome. “That” is what disrupted the Orange men’s perfect string of games.

That game was also where Pitt finally showed they could handle the 2-3 zone. Against the team that probably does it more and better than any other team.

That’s the best anyone has shot the ball against the Orange this season and the most points any team has put up against SU in one half.

“You know, we practice it and work on it every day against the 2-3,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said, “but you still didn’t simulate it because of their size. I think our attack wasn’t as good early on, but as we got going, we got better as the game went on, which is what you want. We got better penetration, we got better shots. We got some drives, we got some kick-outs. And we passed the ball better.”

“We just got more comfortable,” said Pitt forward Brad Wanamaker. “Early on, we were out there getting a feel for how they were playing their zone. Second half, we knew what was going on. We knew the open spots and we got there and finished and made plays.”

Sometimes it is weird how things can work out. Davidson’s Bob McKillop pulls out from coaching the U-19 kids. Coach Dixon gets elevated from assistant on the squad to the top spot. There are a slew of top college kids who do not even accept offers to play on the squad. That leads to Ashton Gibbs getting a tryout mainly because, he was the coach’s player and knew the system.

“He became the point guard because we had so many people pull out,” Dixon said. “He became a leader on that team because obviously he knew our system better than the other guys and he knew what I was looking for.”

The unexpected summer experience prepared Gibbs for the bigger role that awaited him this season at Pittsburgh.

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“Last summer really helped boost my confidence coming into this season,” Gibbs said Wednesday. “I knew if I could play with best payers in the world, I could play with the best players in the Big East.”

And…

“I think we got closer,” Gibbs said of playing for Dixon last summer. “It just helped me understand his system even better. I knew what he wanted out of players even more because I got to see it as someone who had played for him. He’s a great coach.”

Now, imagine if Gibbs didn’t get that time and experience. He wouldn’t have learned as much and spent any time with Coach Dixon. Yes, he would have spent more time with his Pitt teammates but that would not have prepared him for the role as a team leader that he had to assume. Gibbs found out he could be more than a cog or a role player on a team.  That confidence has continued all over his game and practice including at the free throw line where he continues to hit his free throws and get his name in the Pitt record books with 37 straight made free throws and counting.

Gibbs had no choice but to assume more of a leadership role with Jermaine Dixon out for most of the non-con. Now that Dixon is back, his defense has been intense as Syracuse — and specifically Wesley Johnson —  found out.

“I tried to stay in front of him,” Dixon said. “He’s the best player I’ve played against in my two years here. He goes to the offensive rebound hard. I gave up a few inches. He could shoot over the top of me. I tried to play him as tough as I could.”

Johnson tried to take Dixon down low, a move that resulted in some success. But Dixon never stopped pushing, holding and harassing Johnson.

“He wouldn’t let me breathe at all today,” Johnson said. “He was right in my jersey. He played tough defense today.”

Johnson still scored 19 points, but they were not easy baskets and his teammates struggled to find him in the game. Yeah, I remember when Johnson transferred from Iowa State. Pitt was on his list, but he never got past Syracuse. Damn shame.

But having Dixon lead on defense has been big. And along with Gilbert Brown back, allows Coach Dixon to drive home the point that defense first gets playing time.

“He (Dixon) emphasizes it each and every day in practice,” said Gibbs, a sophomore from Scotch Plains, N.J. “Defense and rebounding and not backing down from anyone.”

And the players take it to heart.

“You’ve got to buy into it if you want to play,” Gibbs said. “If you don’t rebound and play defense, he’s going to say something, and it’s not going to be good.”

You have to imagine that Pitt is somewhat in the heads of Syracuse players. They had the big edge on experience, but it has been uniformly bad. No player on the ‘Cuse roster had beaten Pitt in the Carrier Dome. Pitt is on a 12-3 run against the Orange dating back to the Big East Tournament in 2001 — though to keep things in a larger perspective Pitt is still only 37-61 all-time vs. Syracuse.

The Syracuse perspective/spin is that this was the “wake-up call” or simply, it’s the Big East, baby.

“We’re going to see a lot more of these teams,” said coach Jim Boeheim, whose team will try to rebound at home Wednesday in a non-league matchup with Memphis (9-3). “We’re going to have to get tougher and more physical if we’re going to be successful.”

“Learning experience” seems to be the theme that Syracuse went with.

As for Pitt and Coach Dixon, he is now second on the all-time coaching wins list at Pitt in just 6 1/2 years. Nothing would be better than to have him move to #1 sometime in year 13+.