The season just ended and I’m already looking forward to next year. Here’s some things that we might want to think and worry about during the next few months and into the 2008-09 season.
1. Will Gilbert Brown continue to show the improvement he demonstrated this year? When he started to see meaningful playing time after Cook and Fields went down, it’s safe to say we all agree that he struggled. He just couldn’t get it going on both ends of the floor. As the season went on though, he showed a great deal of maturation and improvement. Chances are he’ll be in the starting lineup next year – is he going to keep improving enough to show he belongs and deserves to be in the starting five?
2. Will Sam Young go pro? A topic that really didn’t gain legs until his great week during the Big East Tournament, but his decision could change the shape of this entire team for next year. As quickly as he rose to prominence in NYC, he blew it (like everyone else did) in the tourney loss to Michigan State. Had he led the team to an Elite Eight/Final Four and played amazingly on said mythical run, he might have been more inclined to leave early. For his own good and the good of the team, it’s best that he stay at Pitt.
3. Which freshmen will see a lot of playing time next year? The newcomers next year are Ashton Gibbs, Nasir Robinson, Travon Woodall, and Dwight Miller. The guy most likely to see the most action is Robinson, rated as one of the Rivals 150, who could challenge Brad Wanamaker for a bulk of the minutes. An excerpt from what Chas said a few months ago:
Nasir Robinson fits Pitt. A lot of reports have been saying that for a while, that the Pitt commit plays tough gritty defense. That he scraps for balls and will be a perfect fit in the way Pitt plays the game, and the Big East play. What also has become clear is that Pitt found a player who was under the radar a bit and got him before he was fully appreciated by other coaches.
4. Will Jamie Dixon get an extension? Dixon is not going to Indiana, TCU, Cal, or anywhere in the next year or two. That said, young coaches that have success get plenty of offers with plenty of cash. It might be time for Steve Pedersen to look into extending Dixon and keeping him here for hopefully the rest of his career. Pitt doesn’t need to be a stepping stone for coaches (Howland), but instead could be a place where a coach wants to spend his entire career.
5. Will there be anyone to shoot the three? No one could shoot the three pointers this year. During Ronald Ramon’s time here he was generally considered our “sharpshooter†who could make the three pointer consistently. That’s largely debatable, especially with declining numbers in his senior season. He was the guy though, because who else was there? And now that he’s graduated, who’s going to shoot all those treys? Fields’ biggest flaw has been that he isn’t a consistent jump shooter. Sam Young, if he’s around, took more threes in ‘07-‘08 but isn’t a pure shooter. After those two it’s hard to see anyone else taking a bulk of the threes.
6. Will Mike Cook get a 6th year of eligibility? Wishful thinking…
Part of having a a good outside shooting game is having a quality interior threat. Blair could be that due to his agility, but I would surmise that most of his scoring this year came off put-backs.
Brown also had a torn labrum this year. Do you think that may have a little to do with his shot and play this year?
Ashton is being brought in to be the deep threat, and Brown is a solid perimeter shooter.
Do some research.
(If W Ky actually wins, I might just believe this!)
The Indiana position is open (one of the premier coaching jobs in all of college bball) and it is still, er, open.
Let’s appreciate what we have in Dixon. Give him his props.
I love our intelligent fan base. It is a great asset to our university. I’m beginning to think our fan base is getting what it deserves year in and year out…
I agree with Stuart that Pitt’s fan base is pathetic. We need to appreciate Dixon for what he’s done and will continue to do. I can’t wait until the year we don’t make the BE championship game and everyone will be calling for Dixon’s head because the program is slipping!!
Still, the point is moot since Dixon is a good game coach who is improving every year. He will eventually take Pitt to Final Fours or whatever promised land those of you who aren’t satisfied are looking for.
As Bradin, Antigua, and the other assistants get more experienced and make more contacts, they will likely bring in bigger name recruits. Once again, I think that this point is also moot, since we have rehashed countless times that our team lacking McDonald’s All-Americans still won the BET. For further evidence, see WVU v. Duke.
In conclusion, Dixon should have his contract extended, and he should have the faith of the AD and Chancellor Nordenberg.
we somehow get to the big east final every year, but then we lay an egg in the tournament…you can blame the coach, but you also need to put some blame on the kids for having bad games as well……
everyone sings dixons praises every year during BET time, and then want his head in the big dance…..calm the f down people……
Dixon and staff need to recruit better shooters in general. Cook and Brown are great examples of wing players that are often useless against zone defenses because their penetration abilities don’t matter as much against a packed-in zone and neither one of them can hit anything from beyond 12-14 feet. Dixon needs to start bringing in guards and wings that can penetrate, defend AND shoot. The college 3-pointer (even when they move it back) is still a very easily make-able distance.
But we’re all forgetting a more important issue they’ve got. They have NO size and I don’t see any more talented big men coming in and McGhee and Diggs don’t look like they’ll ever help Blair much. Michigan State looked HUGE against Pitt………their front line overwhelmed the Panthers, but tonight the Memphis front-line had no problem with Mich State because they were just as big and strong.
Besides Blair, Pitt just doesn’t have the size and muscle anymore to play the style Dixon is used to. There’s no Gray, no Kendall, no Troutman etc. etc. It was having players like those guys that enabled Pitt to hold its own with the UConns of the Big East.
You were making sense until you got to this…
Wow, wait to bury a kid after his TRUE FRESHMAN YEAR. Gray didn’t even look that good after his SOPHOMORE YEAR. Get a grip…
Yeah, and MSU really killed us with their front court. Cause between the 4 guys they had in the front court, they scored a total of 20 points, compared to the 27 our front court scored. If you had watched the game, you’d realize we got out rebounded because we missed 15 treys to their 4 misses. Not hard to out rebound a team when you’ve got 4 guys standing in the paint waiting to grab them up cause you don’t have to guard a backcourt…
Whats funny is our moronic fan base was screaming for “more skilled, less brutish players” when we had the tough guys, now that we’re getting more skilled, its “where’s the beef?”
Did you see Pitt’s 6’6″ center struggle to finish against the Spartan front line? Do you realize Pitt was going to battle with a 6’1″ kid starting on the front line and his backup was a 6’4″ kid whose jumping ability doesn’t save him from getting pushed around by stronger players. When you combine that with Sam Young, who’s only occasionally interested in defense and rebounding and you have a tiny team who’s going to get pushed around in March.
Had MSU missed more shots, their front line would have cleaned up the boards.
Don’t you think Dixon wanted to play McGhee more minutes this year? It looked like he couldn’t because McGhee was a couple steps slow to contribute at the BE level.
I’m hopeful that Robinson will be the strong swingman that he’s been advertised as. That will help, because it will give them one more rebounder and strong defender. But Blair needs more help than that inside and I haven’t seen any progress by Dixon in solving that problem.
