So, Steven Adams had a good first day at the NBA Combine in Chicago. There’s speculation — early and idle though it may be — that Adams might be working his way into the 1st Round. Perhaps even the lottery portion.
This is good. Pitt hasn’t had a player go in the first round since Vonteego Cummngs. There hasn’t been a high first round Pitt player selected since Charles Smith.
You would think this would be a good thing. That Pitt is not just turning out good college players, but NBA talent.
Over at EDSBS.com, some wonderful photoshopped hairswaps. All rivalry based. Paul Chryst with Holgorsen hair is just amazing. Peruse the rest, but special attention should be paid to the Arizona-Arizona State rivalry.
Coach Jamie Dixon did not seem optimistic that the ACC would ever pull the trigger on moving the ACC Tournament to NYC. Even though, he made it clear that it absolutely should happen.
“Obviously, coach Boeheim and I are excited about New York, but I also know that Greensboro has a strong, strong presence here at these meetings,” Dixon said. “I think [Madison Square Garden] would be the best thing for the conference. I hope that’s the way they’re headed, but I don’t know that it is.”
One item that apparently has been ruled out is having New York City as part of a rotation with other cities, including Greensboro. Dixon said both major New York venues, Madison Square Garden and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, would require long-term commitments.
“They’ve got to lock in an event on an annual basis,” Dixon said. “They can’t open it up for five days once every five years or something.”
Dixon also said that his bid to have Pittsburgh as host of the tournament, at least occasionally, was shot down.
“I think Greensboro has the home-field advantage,” Dixon said. “They’ve got a lot of things tied in there. There’s a lot of tradition. …
“I think in the best interest of all the universities involved, for the conference, I think being in Madison Square Garden would be best. But I think it’s going to be very difficult to pull away.”
But then, Jamie Dixon has not had dealings with Ninja Swofford.
For all the chaos and angst regarding the football and basketball teams with players coming and going, it somehow makes sense that for the first time in more than ten years there is a calm — nay, giddiness — over how positive things are for Pitt athletics as a whole now that the membership in the ACC is weeks away. There’s no worrying over rumors of new expansiopocolypse. There’s no concerns about being insanely behind every other conference in terms of money and media exposure. There’s actual confidence in the conference structure and the commissioner actually knowing what he is doing and not trying to serve two masters.
The ACC meetings are taking place, and the buzzword is stability.
With the recent departures of Rippy and the Davis twins, the football team was under 85 scholarships. They wasted no time when they rewarded 5th year senior Desmond Brown with one. Needless to say, Brown was a happy camper and his teammates didn’t hesitate to congratulate him.
S/0 everybody showing me love right now!Y’all my motivation esp my teammates.,I do this for us!Now Lets go win this Acc championship! #H2P
— Desmond Brown (@Des_brown30) May 14, 2013
This is great news for Desmond, the younger brother of Pittsburgh Steelers WR Antonio Brown. Desmond took advantage of Rushel Shell’s departure and was easily the second best back in the Spring Game. There’s no sense in wasting an open scholarship and Desmond is certainly a player who deserves it. It’s also advantageous that he’s a senior so there’s no pressure to keep him on scholarship next season. Still, it’s a great honor to be 1 of 85 players on a team to earn a scholarship. Send some praise to Desmond on twitter for his accomplishment!
If there was any doubt that J.J. Moore was leaving Pitt, Coach Jamie Dixon took care of that today.
Pitt men’s basketball coach Jamie Dixon said Tuesday that he is trying to help forward J.J. Moore find a new school for his final season of eligibility.
Dixon said he doesn’t know if Moore, who turns 22 next week, has filed transfer papers with Pitt.
“We are trying to help him find a school,” Dixon said. “We are trying to help him find the right place.”
Unanswered is not simply where he is heading, but why. The obvious issue would be playing time, but it still doesn’t make sense for a senior to transfer when he has to sit another year. The fact that Moore may or may not have even filed transfer papers adds to the confusion. I have trouble believing Dixon is pushing him out of the program, yet there are so many missing pieces of information to this story that it can’t be considered a possibility.
Dixon also said Cam Wright is taking summer courses — but if you want to read into things, it isn’t exactly saying that Wright isn’t or didn’t think about a transfer. Of course, Wright lost his father this past season. It wouldn’t be outrageous for him to be thinking about transferring to a school like Akron, Kent St. or Cleveland St. if he wanted to be closer to the rest of his family in Cleveland.
Hope everyone had a good weekend and did something nice for their mom, grandma and/or mother of your child (children). We were down at the in-laws. Where there is no wi-fi and a poor internet connection.
On Sunday it finally became official that Deaysean Rippy was transferring from Pitt.
Rippy said he wasn’t totally sure about Pitt when he signed his letter of intent in February 2012.
“I was on the verge of being sure,” he said. “I was kind of overwhelmed. I was an 18-year-old kid at the time. That’s a lot of pressure.”
Rippy said he’s unsure where he will enroll this year, but he said he has been in contact with some Pac-12 schools, including Colorado.
And now he’s past the verge of being sure he wants to be somewhere else.
This might be the last year for the graduate transfer rule. Or any transfer that would allow players to be immediately eligible to play right away. At least if the college basketball coaches have their way.
But if the members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches board of directors get their way, all transfers will have to sit out a year, regardless of their issue. There was apparently only one dissenting vote when the group met last week to discuss the issue and suggest to the NCAA a change.
The “transfer free agency” that has overrun college basketball is a direct result of waivers and loopholes that were added to the books a few years ago with good intentions but have netted mixed results.
Of the two most controversial waivers, one allows players to play immediately if they have an ill relative within 100 miles of their home. The other — the one being taken advantage of more and more this spring — allows players to graduate early and seek a master’s degree not offered at their present institution.
Working against the college basketball coaches is that the rules they oppose also apply to all other NCAA sports, so it may not be the easiest thing for them to get changed.
But it is nothing new for the NABC to seek to protect their own interests first.
I’ve mentioned here before that I firmly believe Paul Chryst wants to turn our football team into Wisconsin East and I think we’ve seen that so far in his recruiting methods. But, I’m not one to casually look at something. I’m a numbers guy; I like cold hard stats. What would recruiting classes look like if Chryst successfully builds Wisconsin East? (more…)
It’s not that I hate that DeAndre Kane is transferring to Pitt. Afterall, he is intending to be a graduate transfer so it is a one-year deal. Meaning he isn’t tying up the scholarship beyond 2013-14. That is assuming he passes the two courses he has to take, but why worry about academics with Kane. I mean he only needed an extra year of prep school and still wasn’t able to be academically eligible at Marshall (!?) as a freshman. How could anyone be worried?
Well, there are chemistry/personality issues.
It’s just a hunch, but I reckon Kane didn’t receive a letter of recommendation from Herrion after last month’s falling out.
Just in case you felt the statement from Tom Herrion on Kane leaving was nebulous.
Marshall coach Tom Herrion cut loose DeAndre Kane because he was tired of his act.
Now, just because he and Herrion clashed is not enough to say he’s a big risk. Herrion, himself, can be quite prickly. Especially when the team struggles. And Marshall was a big disappointment last year.
Okay, so as the match-ups for the ACC-Big Ten Challenge were being leaked this morning, it became clear that Pitt wasn’t going to land one of the heavyweights from the B1G. That’s not surprising. Pitt will not be considered in the preseason as one of the top 5 or 6 teams in the ACC. So, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan St., Ohio St. and Indiana weren’t going to be likely opponents. Among the best of the rest there would have been Iowa, Illinois and Purdue. But Iowa and Purdue got leaked and their opponents were not Pitt.
So, more and more likely it was going to be a Pennsylvania battle.
And indeed it will be. Penn State comes to the Pete on Tuesday, December 3.
Now the Nits will be better than they were this past year. They have a bunch of decent players coming back from injury, including Tim Frazier.
But, from helping the overall strength of Pitt’s non-con schedule it won’t do much. So that’s the bad news. Also John Johnson won’t be eligible to play for Penn State for that game.
I’m still relatively happy with the game. There really was no reason for Pitt and Penn State to stop playing basketball. Other than the fact that Penn State was really tired of being embarrassed. Hopefully this will be the spark to renew this as an annual game.
Remember DeAndre Kane? A one-time teammate of DeJuan Blair and D.J. Kennedy at Schenley? Jamie Dixon always liked Kane. He recruited him despite his academic struggles. Originally Kane was supposed to be part of (someone’s) 2009 class. But he needed prep school so it became 2010 when he actually was a freshman at Marshall.
He’s a graduate transfer. He has one more year of eligibility left, and it came down to USC and Pitt. The 6-4 guard has decided that his years of knowing Dixon and coming home was the pick.
The Marshall transfer, who hails from Pittsburgh, told CBSSports.com that he will commit to Jamie Dixon and the Panthers this weekend on a visit. Kane returned from a trip to USC this past weekend, and also considered Saint Mary’s, but said the chance to play at home and in the ACC was too much to pass up.
“It’s a perfect situation for me,” Kane told CBSSports.com.
Kane averaged 15.1 points and seven assists last season for the Thundering Herd…
He provides offense, but this is still a gamble in my view.
Pitt had Joseph Uchebo as one of its top targets this off season. Even before Steve Adams decided to go pro, he was someone they were pursuing. They needed to find help in the front court.
I know it has been a rough end of the season and off-season so far for Pitt. It has frazzled and worn many of you down to the point where you can’t recognize an obvious, slightly sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek comment. So, just to clarify: the rehiring of Barry Rohrssen had nothing to do with finally getting a commitment from Uchebo. None. He is a good recruiter, but the idea that within a few days of hiring he could cold-call a kid he never met or recruited and been the one to sway him. I don’t even… You would have to ask how Pitt “only” got the players they did get when Rohrssen was working for Pitt before.
Several teams were after Uchebo. He had gotten it down to Pitt, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oklahoma State. Even NC State seemed to be making a push to once more get him (perhaps because another former NC State recruit and JUCO teammate, Torian Graham is someone they might still be pursuing).
Clearly this was the immediate impact of rehiring Barry Rohrssen as an assistant. It certainly couldn’t have been anything else involved in recruiting a kid for the last few weeks. Uchebo is going to be coming to Pitt.
So, there is some help on the big man front.
The rumors of Barry Rohrssen’s return have been swirling for a couple of weeks. To be honest, it has been hard to separate fact from wishful thinking that has been put out there. But it seems that Jamie Dixon is indeed bringing back Slice.
Sources confirmed Thursday night that Barry “Slice” Rohrssen will rejoin Dixon’s staff as an assistant coach, replacing Pat Sandle, an original member of Dixon’s staff who spent the past decade with the program.
That detail is surprising. Sandle first started with Pitt in 1999 under Ben Howland. The LA native left for a couple years to be an assistant at UCLA under Lavin. Of course, Lavin was fired by UCLA who hired Howland and Sandle was not retained. And when Dixon became the Pitt head coach, he hired Sandle.
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