Especially with a 68 team field now. Even a 9-9 Big East record gives you a great chance to get in.

I think it would depend on who those 10 wins were against. If they don’t start 4-0, they we can all start to worry in earnest. They have an “easy” schedule to start and must take advantage of it.

Seems weird to think that we would be on “bubble watch” come March but that might be the case this year. This loss hurts big-time because of who it is against.

This program is going in the wrong direction ):

Where was Gilbert tonight? They were driving to the hoop and we had no one there to stop them! Again why didn’t Gilbert play?

Why wasn’t Robinson taken out of the game when he was clearly out of control and not playing within the system?

How come there weren’t any screens set to get Gibbs some open looks?

Pick and rolls Jamie, perhaps you’ve heard of them!!??!!

Isaiah Eppps looks lost and confused. Another bust?

Taylor is not a Center. Why does Dixon continue to play him in a position that he can’t play?

Especially when he has Gilbert, who clearly is.

Easily one of the worst jobs of coaching that I’ve ever seen from Dixon. Not sure what the deal is with that, but it’s not real encouraging. If he can’t get through to these kids, then we’re in for a long season.

Thanks for the lump of coal guys! No cookies and milk for you!!

Definitely have to win our next game. Hopefully Wagner will do well in their conference. They are 8-3 with all close losses. Long Beach helped our RPI bigtime by winning neutral site vs Xavier. When is Woodall back?

Of course WVU is gonna beat Baylor..

We should be in the 80’s or so RPI wise after this loss

If it’s any consolation to those who watched the game on TV, they looked just as bad in person. I was listening to Jamie Dixon in the post game interview and was really upset about how badley they played. He said he can’t remember ever playing a worse game offensively. He said that they needed to get into the gym to work on some tings for long time and they will be in the gym tomorrow.

West Virginia would slaughter us. They hustle so much more than us

Congradulations to the Seahawks. Made us shoot 2-15 from 3. Game, set, match.

Q: Is Taylor the weakest Mickey-Deez All-American ever?

A: No, That honor belongs to the Canadian Softie KB.

This team has no strength….what is the identity..no inside game and not consistant(against talented teams)outside game…not good defensively on the perimeter or underneath….the Birch loss hurts this team…toughness has taken Pitt as far as it will go…need to run with some athletes

It is hard for me to understand how after almost two years in the program that Epps still has no idea how to run the offense. It’s not like he would practice at two positions, he only plays the point. I’ve been watching the Dixon/Howland offense for ten years now and it’s not that complicated. I’m going to have to look at some old high school video of Epps to see why he’s on the team. That said, without Woodall, they have not one reasoanbly talented ball handler. With four other guys who should be able to run the point a little, you’d think someone could break the d down occasionally.

Wow, JD’s got his work cut out for him.

Wow, DVR’d the game. Thank god for fast forward. Nasir regressed to his sophomore year, completely out of control total stench.

Gibbs is no point guard. Travon better get healthy soon. How about going over the top of a press.

No fight for rebounds tonight.

No physical toughness in this team. They got out muscled and out hustled tonight.

Keith, If we need strength, the loss of the soft Canadian helps. Pitt should give the AAU scholarship to a kid that is hungry.

How were we a top 20? Past performance, reputation, Gibbs returning and Birch coming in. Birch was right, he deserved much more playing time. Taylor is most overrated McD all American ever, 5 star recruit my ass. He’s a 5 star 4 minute per game sub. Birch and Gilbert should have been our centers.

I sure hope the team reacts better to adversity than some of the posters her tonight.

Cut Nas? Really?

Jamie should resign? Really?

Get a grip, guys. A bad loss? Sure. Total team collapse? I think so. End of the season? I doubt it.

Happy Holidays to all (in spite of tonight’s debacle)!

Cut Nas? That is one of two players on the team that plays hard every minute he is on the floor (the other being Woodall). This loss really, really sucked, but I don’t think all is lost. TW is out. The center of our offense is in a slump. Three new players are starting. The team will play better as the year goes on, they just are not the elite team we have become accustomed to. They can’t all be Sweet Sixteen years.

Dear Lord. Didn’t go, watch, or listen to the game.

Got home, pulled up Pitt Blather, didn’t even have to open the blog.

Looked down, saw 93 comments, for a game against Wagner. Had a bad feeling, and I now see that feeling was correct.

Yikes.

All is not lost, boys. Don’t forget, UNC has lost twice already as well.

some of these comments are senseless. Talk about overreacting, all of the Jamie Dixon is a terrible coach or program in the wrong direction talk is ludicrous.

Where is our senior leadership on this team? If Gibbs had the leadership skills and toughness of LeVance Fields, Carl Krauser, or Brandin Knight this effort would not be tolerated on this team. Nas looks like a freshman out there

Nas and Gibbs combined for 10 turnovers. Unacceptable from our seniors

Let’s forget about this game and move on. This is a good Pitt team. We all have bad days.

Given the distractions of the last two days, this team just wasn’t ready to play.

Let’s give Wagner credit, they are a decent team with a lot of hustle and simply wanted this win more than Pitt.

This is only one game that means nothing in the Big East conference standings. I’d rather Pitt lose to Wagner than to WVU. HTP!

This is not a good Pitt team. More issues than any in the past 10 years. Shots at Nas are ridiculous, though — he’s been the MVP so far, and we’d be 7-6 without him right now at best. Sloppy game tonight, though.
Wow, did Wagner draw up — and execute — a game plan against us to perfection, defensively and offensively.

How many post passes did PITT have? I can’t recall one. If you have no inside presence it isn’t that hard to guard.

And when the offense struggled to even get open how many on the ball screens were set? I can think of one.

Fact of the matter is we have the same team we always do, lots of role players, but this time we have no leadership. We have no one who wants to take over. Not picking on Nas here but how many times did he travel? 5?

We have lots of trouble. Gilbert won’t be of any help to the front court this year. We have 2 ball handlers on the entire team and one is hurt. Yes two years ago we looked as bad at this point but I just don’t see the heart that team had

Sat through this debacle with head in hands from start to finish. The worst Pitt game I have ever witnessed at the Pete, and I have been a season ticket holder from Day One.

Jamie is a great coach, but I would have told this team to keep their uniforms on and go out and practice right after the buzzer. Horrible effort. The press from start to finish was effective: knocked time off the shot clock as we struggled to get in any kind of offensive set.

Gibbs better hope no NBA scouts are watching his play at PG. He lost the ball way too much, didn’t pass inside, and continued his bad shooting percentage. Taylor is Sleepy again and is tough to watch. Why your only true center at 6’11” is on the bench the entire second half is puzzling, given the performances of Sleepy and our forwards.

Lamar, JJ and Nas all had off nights.J Johnson hasn’t hit a 3 for a while. Bad, bad night at the Pete. Embarrassing loss. Wagner? wow. Tra’s return will be a huge lift, but this is the worst defensive team I have seen for a while at Pitt, and we need improvement at the 4/5, and the 2, and the 3, and…

If you DVR’d this one delete it. Happy Holidays. HTP

Jamie Dixon is crazy for starting cam wright and keeping jj Moore on the bench. Baffling. This team is much better with him on the floor. Aston Gibbs it’s playing terrible basketball on both ends.

I love coach Dixon. I love his attitude. I love his toughness. And most importantly, I love how you can see his players get better.

But.

I hate his refusal to press or trap against teams like Wagner (I’m pretty sure the Hurley boys watched a lot of tape from last year’s Notre Dame debacle.) Everything Wagner did last night — including their full court man — was to slow the game down. It wasn’t until desperation time that Jamie finally tried to speed them up.

You can’t let an inferior team dictate pace. Let your athletes win the game.

I was at the game last night. My perception is that Pitt has a lot of problems when teams pressure them in general, but it is especially disruptive on the perimeter in the half court. I thought LB, Duquesne and now Wagner hurt them with this tactic. The wings don’t often look to the post and seem inclined to pass around the perimeter and look for somebody to break the defense down. I can’t tell whether they don’t believe in the post players since they so rarely pass it into the post. We fans shouldn’t be entirely shocked by the team’s problems in the half court. Brad Wanamaker was a playmaker the last two years who masked this problem. I don’t know whether Tray Woodall or Lamar Patterson can perform the same function as Brad, but I hope that they can. After all it’s BE regular season time now.

I see a lot of complaints about Gilbert not seeing the floor. He did play in late in the first half and he played okay, but I don’t believe he saw the floor in the second half. I didn’t sense that his shot blocking ability was exactly what they needed. They were struggling mightily on offense and seemed to be having problems on the perimeter on defense.

What I perceived as the core problem last night was a lack of effort and focus. The poor shooting from the field and FT line are probably also related to the latter. Quite a few balls dribbled off of a leg or foot.

With this in mind Jamie pulled all the starters except Nas inside the ten minute mark of the second half. The energy appeared to rise instantly on both ends of the floor. Inexplicably the starters drifted back in within the next two minutes. The starters then played harder but never could string together plays on either end to get over the hump.

I thought Zanna and Moore looked good during their minutes although Zanna, after playing what I thought was consistently good defense all game, was beaten badly on a baseline drive late in the second half for a three point play. Pitt was closing the gap at the time. I believe this was during several failed trips on the offensive end so they really needed to lock down at the time.

Pitt really failed to take advantage of Wagner’s foul issues in either half. They didn’t pound the ball inside and they didn’t make free throws. Quite a few of Wagner’s fouls were on the perimeter for reaches and pushes, not inside. I believe Pitt was in the bonus with something like eight minutes left in each half. Dante Taylor needs to work on his shot. His free throws had a side spin on them. Cam Wright’s shot does this too. However Cam is a freshman.

Ashton Gibbs has been forcing shots all season and his shooting percentage bears this out. I love Ashton, but somebody needs to talk to him. There were only a couple of excusable late shot clock hoists last night.

Okay, you people are insane. Calling for Dixon’s head after two losses? This team is not very good, obviously, but it’s because of a lack of talent. That is it. Nothing else.

You guys are blaming the loss on lack of talent and saying that has nothing to do with the coach are crazy. Who do you think is recruiting these bums??? If we polled 100 Pitt Fans 85 don’t even know where the hell Wagner is from. I don’t and they kicked our ass. The state of athletics at Pitt is embarrassing and everyone crowing Dixon is crazy. Even his best years we barely made the great 8. The standards are so low at Pitt it is crazy. 8 football coached in 2 years and Dixon constantly underachieving and Smug Steve Peterson still has a job?????

We need Woodall back in the line up, a better point off the bench, and Zanna & Taylor need to play bigger. I’m still not worried about the team. I think they will continue to improve and will turn out to be a pretty good squad come March. Will we make it to the final four? That’s a real long-shot but only one or two teams have a great shot at it any year.

Ball handling, passing, shot selection, free throws, hustle, etc, etc all took a vacation last night at the Pete for Pitt.
I have total faith in Jamie, however, it almost seems as if this team has tuned him out. Obviously, he has been preaching about the need to reduce turnovers….why is this team so sloppy?
I firmly believe that WE DO NOT HAVE ON COURT LEADERSHIP. Step up somebody because believe me Wagner is only the tip of the iceburg. St. Bonaventure totally crushed St. Francis last night…yes we won, however, we were lethargic in our victory. Wait until we have to play Seton Hall, Providence South Florida, St. Johns and even DePaul….all teams that are definitely as good if not better than teeny weeny Wagner (I’m a Noo Yawka and believe me Wagner is a very small school).
NO MORE EXCUSES!!!

I hate his refusal to press or trap against teams like Wagner (I’m pretty sure the Hurley boys watched a lot of tape from last year’s Notre Dame debacle.) Everything Wagner did last night — including their full court man — was to slow the game down. It wasn’t until desperation time that Jamie finally tried to speed them up.

You can’t let an inferior team dictate pace. Let your athletes win the game.
Comment by Denny 12.24.11 @ 11:09 am

Excellent points Denny. Coach Dixon was flat out, out coached by Hurley who knows Pitt’s style very well. Wagner wasn’t exactly shooting lights out either, which is how a mid-major usually beats a Top 20 team. Wagner only shot 41% from the field, Pitt was even worse at 39%, but held a large advantage in rebounding, but that was negated by almost 20 turnovers(beginning to become a constant theme) against a NorthEast Conference school that plays in the same league as Robert Morris and hadn’t beat a ranked team in like 35 years! (why us?)

I posted this after Woodall got hurt, that it would be a mistake to move Gibbs over to PG, because you move your best player to a position that he’s not comfortable with(and he’s logging large minutes). And his shooting percentage has plummeted into the mid 30 % range.

Only a weak schedule has us at 10-2 or whatever it is. I don’t know how many teams in the BigEast play pressure defense, but even when Woodall comes back this team is extremely loose with the basketball. And again both Gibbs & Woodall are small, don’t defend well and neither one can beat real good guards off the dribble.

Taylor is a bust at center and this is against this weak schedule, what he going to do when the competition exponentially picks up? (and Gilbert now hasn’t played any minutes, so he’s not ready for the BigEast at all, Birch better come back)

For those criticizing Nas, get real. He’s our only legit threat on the blocks, if it weren’t for him, we’d have no inside presence AT ALL.
He’s playing on real bad knees and I’ve been preaching for him to be rested in these meaningless non-con games. What that tells me is; Dixon knows we have nobody to replace Nas at this point, so he’s playing him, even though he has to know he should be resting him. If he goes down at some point, we are in REAL trouble.

Pitt’s outside shooting is falling fast, which is what won at lot of these earlier games against weak foes. With bad outside shooting and only one guy who score inside playing with bad knees, we could see our NCAA streak come to end, as the weak non-con schedule, while producing wins, didn’t do anything for our RPI. So therefore we need to finish above .500 in the BigEast.

At this point, that does not seem likely, but who knows.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays to all of my fellow Panthers ! Enjoy blogging with all of you.

The formula to beat Pitt is all out pressure and lights out shooting. We need to go over the press and match the intensity.

Emel is right, using Gibbs to dribble the ball up just tires him out. We have to suck it up and let him play the 2. We may have a weak link at 1, but not both. We cannot afford to lose Gibbs shooting.

Emel is again right that Nas is our best big man, but it is fair to criticise his last performance, it was just bad.

I think we get better if Moore, Gilbert, even Epps play more minutes. They need to learn under fire.

I don’t know how you make Taylor and Zanna tougher, but they need to learn how to play mad. You need to be angry to rip down rebounds and take the ball to the hoop.

Maybe make them watch film of Blair flipping Thabeets. Maybe ask Charles Barkley to drop by and beat them up for a few hours.

Thanks gc. You hit the nail on the head, and this has always been a problem with Pitt, we need to go over the press and make them pay for pressing.

When you have to beat a defense twice, that is once, to get the ball over half court, then have to beat it again in the half court, that’s going to eventually wear you down. Like you said you have to throw over it, but of course, can they do it.
Throw a long accurate pass and then catch it.

Coach should have them practicing how to pass over a press like at least 20% of the time in practice, cause we’re going to see it a lot now.
Not only how to pass over it, but then taking advantage of the numbers and scoring. That should have been easy against someone like Wagner.

You would think they would practice this, but every time a team does this, Pitt goes into slow motion trying to get the ball over half court.
They play very tentatively instead of attacking.

Any team that is relatively small and has good guards will give Pitt trouble, unless you play an up tempo game with them and substitute freely. JJ also has to play more, for more quickness and athletic ability on the floor. Our guards are too short and not savy enough to play a half court game, especially against a quick team! Merry Christmas everybody !

Gibbs is having too much trouble at point.
I would even prefer to see Patterson handle the ball more often.

excellent post, very informative. I’m wondering why the other experts of this sector do not understand this. You should proceed your writing. I am sure, you’ve a huge readers’ base already!