Anything else will probably be a trickle that will end up in a general clearance post down the road. There are a few stories to get out there.
Good god, but the Kiwi sportswriters have some major man-crushes going on Coach Jamie Dixon. There was the piece earlier, now for the departure.
He’d masterminded a long-overdue gold medal for the USA at the Fiba world under-19 men’s basketball championships in Auckland – and he’d done it in the country that had set him down the pathway to his position now as one of the preeminent coaches in American hoops.
It was little wonder you could not wipe the smile off the likeable American’s face at the North Shore Events Centre on Sunday night.
Dixon, after all, had first realised his ambition and aptitude for coaching during his two years as a star import for Hawke’s Bay in the New Zealand NBL back in 1989-90.
To return 20 years later, having grown into one of the highest-rated coaches in American college basketball, and claim a world title his country hadn’t taken home in nearly two decades was almost a dream come true for this Pat Riley-in-his-heyday lookalike.
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Now ensconced as the head coach of the powerhouse University of Pittsburgh programme, his success in bringing the sought-after world under-19 title back to the home of hoops would have further enhanced his status in the American game.
It probably helped that Dixon had no shortage of praise for New Zealand as a place and the people. Always the gracious guest.
Not that Andy Katz was too far behind in the praise-heaping. It just got spread more among the players and coaches.
The Americans won all nine games in New Zealand. They outscored their opponents by an average of 22.2 points, holding teams to 66 points a game, 38.2 percent on shooting overall, 30.7 percent on 3-pointers. They also outrebounded their opponents by eight a game.
If this sounds familiar then it should. This is exactly how Dixon’s, Painter’s and Lowery’s teams win at Pitt, Purdue and Southern Illinois, respectively.
“They’ve had two years together and we had one month,” Painter said by phone about the difference in preparation. “They all accepted their roles.”
This squad won it without the best available players committing, and a head coach who was put on the spot late.
Pitt’s Dixon, who replaced Davidson’s Bob McKillop to make his coaching debut for USA Basketball, confirmed that 22 players from around the country had declined invitations to play in New Zealand. That number included Connecticut’s Kemba Walker, who was the MVP of the McKillop-led American team that won the silver medal at the qualifying event last summer in Argentina. In fact, not a single player from last summer’s qualifying team in Argentina was in New Zealand this summer. Walker declined to play for the team again this year to attend summer school.
Wake Forest’s Al-Farouq Aminu, a projected lottery pick in 2010, was invited but declined to play for personal reasons.
If you review the USA team’s roster, the only player on that list that was a highly sought recruits were Howard Thompkins, Georgia, Darius Miller from Kentucky and Tyshawn Taylor from Kansas. None of these guys were even considering going pro after one year — and probably not after two.
But no one may have gained more out of this trip than Pitt’s Ashton Gibbs. He has to replace Levance Fields at the point for Dixon. In nine games, he had 20 assists and just six turnovers to go along with seven steals.
“It’s a credit to Jamie that there was no ego with this team,” said Lowery, who along with Painter (whom Lowery was an assistant under at SIU) handled the substitutions. “He kept telling them how good we could be.”
Dixon said he stressed to the players how the Americans hadn’t won this event since 1991. The pride in the achievement of claiming gold didn’t take long for them to appreciate.
Whether Gibbs is the starter to replace Fields or is just filling all roles in the guard spot, he has more confidence and experience.
This team, by the way, won without a true PG on the team. Some of that may be the international game, but it is also a pretty good testement to the coaching job that the team was able to win the whole thing despite that.
Brief aside since inevitably the comments will once more turn to Pitt’s PG situation for 2009. We are a little spoiled. It has been a long time — Brandin Knight’s freshman year (1999-00) — since Pitt has been without an experienced, true PG. It really has been a remarkable run at that position. Knight, Krauser, Fields. All stayed four years. All unquestioned team leaders. Each transitioned to the next. There are few squads — regardless of their pedigree — these days that can point to that kind of run at the point guard position.
Back to the story, I do love that Coach Dixon had no problem emphasizing to the team that no USA U-19 had won it in 19 years. He didn’t try to hide the pressure from them. He didn’t try to downplay the expectations. He got them to use it as further motivation. Nothing upsets me more than a coach that tries too hard to downplay the big games or the goals. It just never works well with that approach.
Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News also praises Dixon.
His heart was broken in March by a coast-to-coast Scottie Reynolds drive that allowed Villanova to walk over Dixon’s Panthers and into the Final Four.
But Dixon was smiling at the end of this one. Unlike the Olympics, they give the head coach a gold medal, and he certainly earned it (with considerable help from assistants Chris Lowery of Southern Illinois and Matt Painter of Purdue).
With no international experience and late notification he’d be needed, Dixon took a near-starless team to New Zealand.
Which is part of why the performance by Dixon and the assistant coaches is considered so outstanding. Not only did they snap a long drought in the U-19, but they did it with a very unheralded group.
It’s no wonder Duke Coach Mike Kryzewski chose to show up at the Peach Jam in Georgia wearing his Team USA shirt rather than a Duke shirt. Makesure to remind the recruits about the bigger goals.
