March 5, 2015
Column: For Pitt, even the grade lacks a D 36
Miami’s Sheldon McLellan hunts down Cam Wright on a fastbreak attempt Wednesday. — PITT
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
“We’re not going to hang our heads,” Cam Wright was saying at the long table in the Petersen Events Center’s press room.
Immediately to his right was Mike Young, hanging his head.
“We didn’t make it any easier on ourselves, but we’re not done,” Jamie Dixon would tell us reporters a few minutes later. “Our focus right now is on beating Florida State.”
Kept a straight face, too.
“I don’t know what all the talk is going to be, but to me Pitt is a …”
Oooh, he almost said it, too. Those were the words of Miami coach Jim Larranaga, minutes after his Hurricanes blew right by the Panthers, 67-63, to leave the home side with virtually zero chance at the NCAA Tournament. And you just know he was about to tell us they still belonged.
Instead, he wisely took this route: “… they’ve beaten some awfully good teams.”
Yeah, they sure have. And it now sounds like a fine epitaph.
For Pitt, this is it. The Panthers are done. They’re 19-12 overall, 8-9 in the ACC with only a Saturday visit to Florida State remaining before the conference tournament next week.
Say what you will about the ACC’s special place in our nation’s basketball, but not even this conference deserves a .500 participant in the field of 64.
Say what you will about Pitt beating Notre Dame, North Carolina and Syracuse twice, but there also were losses to Hawaii, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.
Say what you will about getting stronger as the season goes, but that 6-2 surge that included the bigger upsets, the one hope of catching the committee’s eye, just smashed into a cement wall with the loss at Wake and now this. The committee hates helping teams that won’t help themselves.
Say what you will, too, about going berserk next week in Greensboro.
“We know what kind of team we have, and we know we can do well in the tournament,” Wright said. “But our first focus is Florida State.”
Maybe, but soon it will be the NIT.
Which has to be, even when assessed in the most generous context, a serious disappointment for these players, for Jamie Dixon, for the university as a whole.
That’s not to suggest this was some championship contender. It wasn’t from the outset, and it was less so once Durand Johnson was suspended by the Pitt administration for disciplinary reasons. There wasn’t enough size, there wasn’t enough shooting, and there most certainly wasn’t enough experience on a sophomore-heavy roster.
But the Panthers were a preseason pick to finish middle of the pack and — yawn — that’s precisely where they are at 9th of the conference’s 15 teams. A notch below the middle, actually.
Remember when we could annually expect that Dixon’s teams would get picked low but improve and surprise everyone along the way?
Where was the improvement?
Offensively, absolutely, some got better. Young matured and gradually expanded his scoring range, as he demonstrated again Wednesday with an inside-and-out 22 points. Jamel Artis improved by leaps and bounds in that regard.
Take a look …
Sheldon Jeter and Chris Jones showed flashes, too. Even James Robinson, for whom shooting was such a struggle in his first two seasons, was smoother there.
But stop right there and try to name one player who became one iota better at defense and/or rebounding and/or any trait involved at preventing points.
Nope, me neither.
No number will sum up the season quite like this: Pitt’s defense ranks 142nd in the nation out of the 345 Division I programs, conceding an average of 65.3 points per game.
A year ago, Pitt finished 20th in that category.
I asked both Young and Dixon after this game to explain the defense …
Dixon was right to correct my use of the term ‘inconsistent.’ Because that would imply that the defense is sometimes good, sometimes bad. It’s been bad all winter.
There’s actually no better word than bad to describe the closing sequence of the first half Wednesday: Pitt had just taken a 33-27 lead on an Artis 3 that had the place hopping. The clock showed 5.6 seconds left. But Miami somehow swooped down the court and put itself in position to draw a foul from, of all people, Robinson.
Two converted free throws, and it was 33-29 with a sigh of relief for the visitors.
I’ll give the coach credit for expanding beyond his comfort zone and stocking the roster with skill. It’s clear that these sophs, in particular, are going to be quality scorers in the ACC the next two seasons. But it’s equally clear that, in a stark departure from the past, neither Dixon nor assistant Brandin Knight could teach these guys how to defend. Or, for that matter, how to rebound.
In this game, Miami had 13 offensive rebounds for 10 second-chance points and, in something once unthinkable at the Pete, an 18-8 edge in free-throw attempts.
“That one hurts,” Dixon said in a soft voice.
I don’t mean to go all downer here. My belief that this team could be an ACC contender next season is genuine. But it’s also based on Dixon’s ability to achieve the following in the interim:
• Get a big body underneath.
Yeah, I know every team at every level of basketball wants one, but Pitt will actually get one. Rozelle Nix, a 6-11, 345-pound behemoth at Pensacola State College, is signed up to spend his final two collegiate seasons in Oakland. His productivity is modest for the level — 11.2 points and 9.6 rebounds per game — but no one would turn away the raw material. If Nix or someone similar comes along, Dixon can move Young out from the paint, possibly for a better defender.
• Add a point guard.
Robinson will be a senior, and Josh Newkirk looks increasingly like he’d rather try his hand at some other extracurricular activity next semester. Help is needed.
• Teach better.
Sorry, but even with Dixon repeating again Wednesday night that he’s not coaching Pitt to defend the way Pitt is defending, I’m not inclined to let the coaches off the hook. I’ve seen players pass through this program with far lesser tools who eventually figured out that, if they didn’t guard anyone, they were going to sit. This group, for whatever reason, no matter the practices, no matter the preachings, never bought in.
Dixon needs to reestablish the bar and that starts in the mirror.
The upcoming ACC tournament could be fun, maybe even a stepping stone, for these players. But not if they just show up and watch.
