College Basketball Preview
Tell-Tale Season Looms For Jamie Dixon
By Chris Dokish

After averaging 30 wins and five losses over a three year period, the Pitt basketball team fell to 20-9 last year in a frustrating up and down season. Wins over Syracuse (twice) and on the road at Connecticut were off-set by bad losses to Bucknell and St. Johns, before ending the season losing five of their last seven. Included in that was an uninspiring eight-point loss to Pacific in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

It was the second season as head coach for Jamie Dixon after spending four seasons as the top assistant for Ben Howland. After a stellar 31 win season in his first year, Dixon was not nearly as successful in his second, which makes some wonder if he can continue to keep the Pitt program among the elite.

When program-architect Ben Howland left for sunnier skies at UCLA, the university tried and failed to lure Skip Prosser from Wake Forest. So the administration turned to Dixon in hopes that he could keep the program in the rarefied air that Howland placed it in. The Panther program was reaching new heights, and handing the reins over to a first-time head coach seemed bold to some, questionable to others, and risky to most.

That nervousness was quickly forgotten. Dixon didn’t miss a beat, tying Howland’s single season win record and taking Pitt to a third straight Sweet 16 appearance. But the results weren’t so good last year.

“I hate to put it on just one guy,” says Mike DeCourcy of THE SPORTING NEWS. “But it all began with Chris Taft.”

Taft, the top recruit of the Howland-era, starred as a freshman but struggled mightily as a sophomore.

“He came into the season in terrible shape,” continues DeCourcy. “It’s a shame because it hurt Pitt’s season and when you think of what he could have been…”

Could a more experienced coach have saved the season by saving Taft?

“You maybe can say that Jamie could have put the fear of God into Taft,” he says, “but I’m not sure anybody could have got through to him.”

With Pitt’s most talented player stuck in a season long malaise, the strain was felt by the rest of the roster. It’s something the younger guys weren’t completely prepared for.

“We had a lot of young guys,” says Pitt Director of Basketball Operations Orlando Antigua. “When you have young guys that are forced to play more than they should, you have what we had: inconsistency.”

Last year was the first season since the Panthers’ recent successful run that they had to play without Jaron Brown and Julius Page, two hardnosed, passionate, coach-on-the-floor types who realized every ounce of their basketball potential. What does it say, then, that in the first season without them, the team struggled?

Was Dixon, as many initially feared when he was hired, TOO friendly with his players? Assistants are often the “good cop” – responsible for bridging the gap between player and head coach. But now Dixon was forced to be the “bad cop” – less of a friend and more of a boss. Was Dixon unable to discipline veterans that perhaps still thought of him as an assistant?

DeCourcy scoffs at the idea.

“It’s just happened too many times,” he says of an assistant moving into a head coaching role and having success.

While Ben Howland acknowledges the good cop/bad cop issue is a challenge for many coaches in Dixon’s position, he says other changes are more challenging to young head coaches.

“It IS different when you’re making all the decisions and calling the time-outs and you have the final say in everything. That’s the biggest thing,” says Howland. “At first, it’s a change. But going into his third year I think he’s very comfortable with everything in the role.”

DeCourcy agrees, citing inexperience rather than lack of respect from his players. “It’s just that he has never done it before. Like anything, a coach has to master the skills. And Dixon is mastering the skills. He is getting better as a coach.”

One of those skills is communication. Dixon often gets criticized for not being aggressive enough, again raising the question of whether he is truly seen as the man in charge. But Pitt forward Levon Kendall, who along with Carl Krauser is one of two players left from Howland’s regime, sees a difference in Dixon.

“You can really see the changes in coach Dixon,” says Kendall. “He was very laid back as an assistant and now he’s stepped into the lead role and has been more assertive every year.”

“He is clear, concise, and demanding in the huddle,” adds Antigua. “He gets his point across. But he knows that you don’t have to berate somebody to get them to do what you want.”

Dixon’s improvement will be needed this season as the team gets even younger with four new additions, all of whom are expected to see playing time. It’s a chance for Dixon to prove he is the right man for Pitt.

“It’s a long ride to be a top program,” says DeCourcy. “It’s very hard. UConn didn’t make the tournament every four years, like clockwork, until recently and that’s because they lucked out with Emeka Okafor. They had no idea how good he would be. You can’t win 30 games every year.”

With improved recruiting over the last few years, the Panthers continue to strive to be a national program, similar to UConn.

“We consider ourselves an elite program already,” says Antigua, who admits last year’s team didn’t live up to expectations. “For a supposed down year we still won 20 games.”

Howland agrees.

“Go back to his first year as a head coach where they were 31-5 and won their first 18 games,” he says. “Look at his first two years and you see 51 wins, and that’s the bottom line.”

Chris Dokish covers college sports for the Pittsburgh Sports Report and is the lead writer for PSR's Keystone Recruiting newsletter.