I had a bad feeling heading into the game with FSU. It’s why I put off the open thread. Left the laptop at my desk so I wouldn’t even look at Twitter. I was already feeling negative about the game, I didn’t need it amplified and then magnified.
Not much to say on that. Demoralized after letting the two games get away from them late, Pitt just reverted to the team that struggled so badly in the first half of ACC play. Weak defense. An offense that struggled and led to more frustration and mistakes.
Is the team tired from all the minutes logged? Probably. But that fatigue only became noticeable as the morale slipped on the losses and knowledge of how they had worked so hard to get to the cusp of an NCAA Tournament bid, only to fritter it away.
The way things have quickly fallen apart after all the building is what makes it all the more confusing.
Dixon said he is puzzled by the play down the stretch because he believed they had turned the corner in February when they went through a stretch of winning seven of nine games.
“We’re a better team than what we’ve played in this last week,” Dixon said. “We’ve got to go do something about it come Wednesday to go prove that.
“I certainly think we’re a better team than what we’ve played here, but these are the results, you are who you are. We’ve got to do something about it. Coming off a loss, it is how you handle it. But half the teams are coming in with a loss, we’ve been there before and we have to come out and get good performances from a lot of guys.”
Perhaps the exhaustion — physical and mental — explains why they reverted to the earlier version of the Pitt team of this season. The defense has been bad all season, but the way they slipped back against a FSU team that, outside of Xavier Rathan-Mayes, has been as offensively challenged as any ACC team was glaringly bad. Yes, other teams have shot better, but they were also better offensive teams.
Still the defensive issues. Again and again. I can’t simply blame the frontcourt or the backcourt. Both parts have been bad much of the season. Failing to rotate on help defense. Not sealing off for rebounds. Not keeping the dribble penetration from getting around the corner or straight to the hoop. Bad reaction to passes on the perimeter or inside. It really has been a team effort to be this bad on defense.
A 3-game skid heading into a game with NC State on Wednesday evening is not ideal.
I’m still trying to understand who in the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association threw a vote to Mike Gottfried as ACC Coach of the Year. I may be a touch (let’s say 15%) bitter, because three of their players were key targets Pitt could not land. Gottfried’s recruiting acumen is not in doubt. The talent that is on the Wolfpack team versus their game-to-game performances that had them finish 10-8 kind of offends me.
In other tidbits from ACC voting honors, James Robinson and Cameron Wright each received votes in Defensive Player of the Year (Darion Atkins, UVa). Jamel Artis and Michael Young got votes for Most Improved Player (Rakeem Christmas, Syr.) and Chris Jones made the list for Sixth Man of the Year (BeeJay Anya, NCSt.).
Artis and Young were also put on the Honorable Mention portion of All-ACC Teams.
Agree with most of article, which blatantly points out the recruiting failures since 2010. Which he points out were even more compounded by desperation moves like Doorson, Uchebo, Randall & Haughton. And that half the roster this year couldn’t even contribute. (Durand Durand, Cam Johnson, Uchebo, Randall, Haughton, & Luther) Which you’d think could only happen to a 1st or 2nd yr coach.
So basically, it wasn’t the move to the ACC that caused the bball program to be hurting now. It was ALL these recruiting misses & blunders since 2010.
And if this current team played in the old BigEast this year, they would have been even worse. On the order of the CBi team.
When you tear down a football stadium and replace it with a basketball arena that you spend $200 mil on and not replace said football stadium. That is CLEARLY choosing one over the other.
I mean if being in the NYC metro is that important you find a way to be there, don’t you?
I agree with you. The move to the ACC was not so much a football move as it was a desperation move.
Furthermore, Pitt basketball already had a presence downtown at Mellon and sold it out for big games.
Other than a few games in the 70s Pitt didn’t play football downtown.
Doke homers out again for Dixon when he says the Civic Arena (now Console) was embarrassing for graduation.
I beg to differ. I earned two degrees and went to two graduation ceremonies at Mellon. Far, far from embarrassing.
The boneheads at Pitt had to have known, the Civic Arena would be eventually replaced. And as you noted, we were playing the bigger BigEast games at the Civic(Mellon) Arena since the 1980’s and selling it out. The Consol Center is a couple blocks down the street from campus, as it’s on Duquesne’s campus, more or less. That is as nice a venue as there is now in the country for hockey or basketball. Has more luxury boxes than The Pete, etc.
Nobody will ever convince me, that tearing down Pitt football with no plan to replace it on that very site, and possibly replace it with a dual sport arena,…..made any sense at all.
Since again football, not basketball, is the economic engine that drives all your non-revenue sports at all colleges in the Power 5.
That would mean Little Little Ricky or Little Ricky Junior.
Like it or not, JD is in charge of recruitin, JD is responsible for the teams performance, his ACC record this year was below .500 (if this record was for our football coach – most on this blog would be calling for him to be fired0, it’s all on JD…eat the money and find a new coach!
The struggling with recruiting has been going on since the 2010 class. As pretty well documented in the Dokish piece. Sans a decent 2013 class.
You don’t pay a guy here 2.4 million a year at a University which is not set up as a money making machine like the NFL, but rather as a school of learning, for .500 ball in your conference and abject failure almost every March. This is the present state of Pitt basketball in the ACC. The glory years as soooo over….
The problem going forward is, does Dixon have the foresight to see what changes are required to win in this new league he is in?
Can he effectivly recruite the players needed to win most games in the ACC? (especially since Pitt decided to spend on the Pete and not a FB field)
My answers are maybe and no way to those questions at the present time. Now, should Pitt continue to pay 2.4 million a year for a clean program and .500 ball? Many will say that it’ beats what we had in the past. (big deal) I say we give him another 2-3 years to see if he can/will turn things around. Maybe he’s earned this grace period, maybe not.
But the danger here as is in all college sports, once you dig a hole for yourself as a mediocre program it’s extremely difficult to dig your way out. Rememeber our football program in 1982? Especially for a coach who can’t recruit and has difficulty evaluating talent and has no assistant who can either. Should Pitt take the chance on Dixon? That is the question….not if they should take a chance on a new coach. I call it at least a coin flip right now…especially with Cyanide gone and a new AD coming under the excellent leadership of our new chancellor.
Joe Starky puts it well here:
At least some people are starting to see what many here at the Blather have been seeing for awhile now. I predict in 2 years that Dokish will be running a post with prospective new BB coaches. I hope I’m wrong though and Dixon can right the ship, but I just don’t see it right now.
Keep asking yourself: what Top 25 program would hire Dixon TODAY??? The answer to that question is all you really need to know….
I don’t compare where we are today to, going on over 15 years ago.
That was 15 years ago.
I compare today to where we’ve been with the Howland/Dixon era the past 14 years.
10 or so of them were fantastic. I give them credit and am thankful they came here.
However, we certainly seem to be trending down, and if next year isn’t a rescue year, i’d say trending down quickly.
To those that make the argument Tony suggested, I really don’t care about Ralph Willard or Buzz Ridl or Paul Evans.
I care about now and where we’re heading.