Assorted Pitt and Big East basketball stuff that has been accumulating over the last few days.

First, the Big East Media Day on Wednesday, October 26. A slight correction. The internet feed will only be on the Big East site, not on CSTV.com.

When Trevor Ferguson decided at the last minute not to enroll at Pitt over his personal issues, I wrote the following:

This is a little selfish but all I ask is that he doesn’t end up going to South Florida. If he blossoms as a player, I don’t want to see him in the Big East where he can hurt Pitt.

Well, it looks like USF was trying, but Big East is trying to block.

Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, who attended Saturday’s football game at Pittsburgh, wants to end transfers of football and basketball players from one Big East school to another. Such moves are only allowed in rare instances, but Tranghese will ask the conference’s presidents to stop all such transfers at their annual meeting next month. USF men’s basketball coach Robert McCullum said he has one reservation about such a move. He’d like an exception made for players who are willing to pay their way after transferring, pointing to Wisconsin’s Sharif Chambliss, who played at Wisconsin last season as a senior walk-on after transferring from Big Ten rival Penn State.

The Bulls could have pitched such a move to Oldsmar’s Trevor Ferguson, who signed with Pittsburgh this spring but left school after summer classes and could wind up at Florida.

Good.

Freshman Forward Sam Young gets a puff piece.

The Pitt coaching staff describes Young as “a gritty scorer and rebounder who competes hard, has a great understanding of the game and fits perfectly into the system.”

“It’s very clear and very evident being around him that he’s willing to pay the price,” Dixon said. “To me, that’s all you can really ask of a kid.”

Young, who chose Pitt over Miami, Virginia Tech, Georgetown and George Washington, has been working to improve his skills in recent years.

“His ball-handling, his passing,” Dixon said. “He’s a hard worker.”

As Pitt continues its daily practice routine, which began in earnest Friday at Petersen Events Center, Young can see a chemistry forming with the team.
…
He was voted one of the top 10 outstanding players at the Las Vegas Showcase during the summer of 2004 and was ranked as high as 39th by a national recruiting service coming out of high school.

“Sam is strong and, yet, explosive,” said Dixon, who is in his third season as head coach and seventh year overall at Pitt. “He’s going to be a very good player. When you count Mike (Cook), all five of our new guys are going to be very good players. They can be great players. This is the best group to come in since I’ve been here.”

As far as potential goes, this is probably the best recruiting class Pitt has had since the early tenure of Paul Evans.

As basketball season gets closer, ESPN.com has the team previews from Blue Ribbon Yearbook. From Pitt’s (Insider Subs.), they seem to like Coach Dixon and do make a decent point.

If there is one thing Pitt coach Jamie Dixon and his staff have proven to be over the last few years, it’s adaptable.

Two years ago, the Panthers had a balanced squad that won 31 games. Last year, the team was frontcourt-heavy. This time, the focus is on the backcourt. We know the school has had its Panther nickname for decades, but it may be time to think about calling the hoop club the Chameleons.

“We’ve changed every year,” Dixon said. “For the past couple years, we have been losing three [key] players a year. We’re talking about significant contributors. We’ve had to change according to our personnel’s talents and strengths.”

There can be no denying Pitt’s interior superiority in ’04-’05. Thanks to bruising forward Chevon Troutman and big Chris Taft, the Panthers shot 47.1 percent from the field and enjoyed a plus-8.5 margin on the backboards. Pitt made it to the free-throw line a whopping 175 times more than its opposition and generally locked down the paint. Sure, guard Carl Krauser was the leading scorer and offensive catalyst, but whenever anybody talked about Pitt, the conversation began with the big fellas.

That’s about to change. Troutman and Taft are gone. So is 6-10 Mark McCarroll. And though a promising crop of newcomers and some holdovers with plenty of potential will be around to populate the frontcourt, the Panthers will be known — at least at first — for their guards.

“It’s certainly different than last year,” Dixon said. “It shows how things change. We were so young on the perimeter, especially the wings, last year. This year, we have experience on the perimeter, and while we’re real excited about our inside guys, they haven’t played a lot of minutes.”

This is a big year for Dixon and the Panthers. The coach’s two-year record of 51-14 represents the fastest start in school history. But this season’s team will be heavily populated with players recruited by him, not former Pitt boss Ben Howland.

The challenge is to make sure Pittsburgh doesn’t lose the lofty spot it inhabited in the Big East from 2001-2005, when its lowest win total was 20 (last year), and it was always a contender for the league championship. Some may point to last year’s first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Pacific as evidence that things are falling off somewhat at Pittsburgh and that it’s vital for the Panthers to re-establish themselves quickly, or risk losing ground in the Big East and nationally. Dixon understands the frustration of fans and shares their concern about the way ’04-’05 finished.

“It was a good year overall, but any time you lose in the tournament, it is a disappointment,” he said. “We have lost in a lot of different rounds in the last few years, and any team that gets to that point always feels it can go farther.”
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BLUE RIBBON ANALYSIS

BACKCOURT: B+
BENCH/DEPTH: B+
FRONTCOURT: B-
INTANGIBLES: B+

Even though the Panthers’ focus will shift this season, they are still well suited for life in the first division of the Big East. Given the league’s tremendous reputation, that should be enough for a return trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Krauser is a superior catalyst who should average about 20 a game. If he can keep the turnovers in check, Pitt will prosper, and he’ll impress the professional community. He’s flanked by a pair of solid wings in Ramon and Graves, and the influx of new talent will guarantee the kind of depth that will allow Dixon to pressure however he wants. The frontcourt appears depleted, but the combination of Kendall and Hudson is a good start. If the others can play solid supporting roles, the Panthers will be fine, especially because the big people don’t have to carry the majority of the load.

This is truly Dixon’s team now, and he’ll be challenged to find a spot among the league’s better clubs. If he can do it this year, with a guard-oriented club, after last season’s frontcourt-dominated squad, he’ll have proved himself more than worthy of praise. He’ll be praised for his flexibility and engender confidence among the Pitt community that he can prevail, no matter what direction his program goes.

There are some interesting points about Dixon. I’ve not fairly considered how flexible he’s been with the emphasis of the team. I think they may have overstated things a little. In Dixon’s first year, despite the balance, by the end of that season with Troutman and Taft’s emergence, the emphasis shifted inside more. Still, it’s an interesting consideration.

I still believe that for Dixon’s tenure at Pitt, this is a big year. Developing the talent and showing progress during the season are areas that he has not really shown anything yet.

These articles came via the now invaluable Big East Basketball Blog.
An interesting piece about how the Big East and ACC are dominating the recruiting wars at the moment. The biggest loser from a basketball sense of the realignments, may actually be the SEC.

It will take years to judge the winners and losers of the expansion, but if the current trend holds, the ACC and Big East are set to engage in a heated scrap for the college basketball throne.

Just three weeks before the November signing period, Big East and ACC schools have combined for 39 commitments from players ranked in the national top 100. That’s a staggering amount of talent to be split between just two conferences.

Big East programs claim 20 of those commitments, including 12 from the top 50. Recruiting juggernauts Louisville and Connecticut have garnered their typical hefty share of elite players, but Georgetown, St. John’s and Syracuse also hold at least one pledge from a top-50 prospect. Within the top 100, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Villanova, Marquette and DePaul all have landed at least one player.

Of its 19 commitments from the top 100, ACC schools lay claim to 10 of the country’s top 50 seniors. North Carolina has secured half that number itself, but Duke, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Florida State also have made their mark in the top 50. Not to be excluded, Maryland, Miami and Virginia hold top-100 pledges as well.

Those are impressive numbers, but they tell only one part of the story. The Big East now has 16 basketball members while the ACC has 12, so a per-school average might reveal that the ACC has enjoyed a better overall year.

Regardless, it’s clear that Big East and ACC programs have bolstered themselves at the expense of the competition.

The entire Eastern Seaboard is a rough place these days.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal is preparing for Marquette’s first season in the Big East. They have brief previews of all the teams:

Outlook: The Panthers have registered four consecutive 20-victory seasons and four consecutive NCAA tournament bids. That streak could prove challenging to continue this season despite the return of Krauser, the senior leader at the point. Post play, a strong suit last year, will be a weakness, at least early on.

They also consider the potential of new rivalries.

MU’s final repeat opponent is Pittsburgh. And considering some of the ties the two teams have, it is a series that appears to hold potential.

First and most obvious are the similarities between the teams. Both teams are led by young, energetic coaches (Pittsburgh’s Jamie Dixon is in his third season) who stress ball control and hard-nosed defense. Point guards are central to their success, and each team has a player to watch at that spot this season: MU freshman Dominic James and Pittsburgh senior Carl Krauser.

There is also some recent history between the programs. The Golden Eagles knocked off the Panthers, 77-74, in an NCAA regional semifinal game on March 27, 2003, at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. That victory left MU just a victory away from returning to the Final Four for the first time since 1977.

“I think rivalries don’t just happen anymore. They’ve got to be created on the floor,” said Crean, who spent the 1995 season as an assistant at Pittsburgh, where he also met his wife, Joani. “I think a couple coaches could get together and manipulate the situation but that would be short-lived. I think what happens on the floor creates the rivalry: a buzzer-beater, a double-overtime game, a couple games down to the wire.”

No offense to the fine guys over at Cracked Sidewalks, but I don’t see much of a future rivalry with Marquette. The home-and-home this season is based more on expected parity between the two teams this year. (Next year, there is a good chance that Pitt and Marquette won’t play twice.) Not to create a rivalry. There is no natural basis between the two. Pitt and Marquette have a total of 4 games played against each other (2-2). Not withstanding that painful loss in the 2003 NCAA Tournament, there isn’t exactly a history.