Because of course someone would ask.
Talib Zanna of Pitt on whether Pitt, Cuse, LVille can hang with big boys of ACC (Carolina and Duke): "We're big boys, too." #ACCMediaDay
— Brian Neal (@BrianNealNews) October 16, 2013
Pure shades of SEC media asking Kevin Sumlin about his concerns about playing football in the SEC in 2012. Only, this is perhaps more absurd.
Pitt had been hanging with the “big boys” of the old (that doesn’t seem right for a conference that only existed that way for less than a decade) prior incarnation of the Big East for almost the entire run. Only one year not finishing in the top-5 of a 16 team conference. Of a conference that was the best basketball conference for much of the time.
Some one also asked Lamar Patterson to name all 15 other members of the ACC. That’s either a set up for a stupid compilation video of various players around the ACC trying to name all the teams or just weak trolling. (For the record, I usually end up forgetting either Wake Forest or Georgia Tech when I try to rattle them off quickly.)
Patterson/Zana/Robinson don’t give me a good feeling that they can be relied upon to score consistently.
Scoring might be a problem at times but when you have a solid point guard like Robinson it makes everything much smoother.
Zanna might benefit the most with a switch to the less physical ACC. I could see him scoring a lot.
I don’t see Uchebo making a big splash this year, so it’s likely that Zanna will have t be a major player
Mike Young though, is gonna be playing PF and that is his natural position and he may indeed have a major impact there as a freshman.
I also expect Jamel Artis to be a factor playing PF off the bench. Randall, will spell Zanna at C and won’t score much but otherwise will hold his own.
Cam Wright, at the B/G game looks like a player that is making the ‘great leap forward’, so we will have to see if this continues into the season.
There are big questions about Josh Newkirk’s ability to play defense. Could turn out to be the next coming of John Johnson. We will have to see if Dixon plays Wright some at PG in the event JN starts getting eaten alive out there.
We are gonna need more 3 ball shooting with a trio of pass first players (Robinson, Patterson and Wright) starting on the perimeter. The hope is that James is able to answer the bell on this one.
I was hoping we would see DJ starting at SG this year because he is the 3 ball shooter that would complement Robinson and Patterson. But, with Wright having the big game in the B/G game, that seems unlikely now though still possible.
The guess is that Dixon will have DJ spell Patterson and maybe spend some time at SG as well, though we not only have Wright there but Chris Jones, who has shown some stuff lately, there as well.
So, if Patterson is playing sluggish like he did at the start of last season, he may see his PT reduced with DJ playing more minutes, all at SF.
You play like that and you’ll attract some better recruits.
Look at UNLV, they’ve got several top recruits from the east coast going way out to Nevada to play hoops in a crap conference.
Anyway our personnel suggests if we’re going to EVER run, this is the year.
Newkirk can push it (apparently)
Zanna can run better than 99% of other Centers.
Hopefully we can find some finishers since Moore and Zeigler weren’t somehow aware of the apparent change(?) in JD’s philosophy.
You want to recruit elite NBA type talent, you need to be uptempo.
Dixon is soley responsible for the scheduling and in the past he was forced to play certain games in order to make money. With the ACC increase he’s supposed to have more freedom. Who knows though. I’ll let him slide a little on this year though because there is no way he could have known the preseason tournament would be bad and the team is going to be really young.
Based on his offers, Newkirk is a different level of talent when compared to John Johnson.
EMel, you are right the personnel screams time to run. I always thought that the team played best last year when they were running up and down the court and scoring in transition.
Chas, this may be a good topic for a future blog since it speaks to the challenges Pitt may face in transitioning to the ACC. I’m not sure of exactly what the rule changes are, but it definitely sounds like the NCAA wants scores in the 70’s and 80’s and not in the 50’s and 60’s anymore.
I have total respect for how JD comes up with wins in conference (despite pathetic non-con games) but Pitt’s physical, defensive first and half-court style my soon go the way of the dinosaur.
great answer, Talib!