RE: When the ACC invited Syracuse and Pittsburgh...
I can't speak for Syracuse but in Pitt's case the overwhelming majority would agree that the firing of our athletic director was addition by subtraction.
Our former AD was an imbecile on every level and it is a mystery right up there with the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and the pillars of Easter Island as to how he lasted as long as he did? Seriously, that one is a mystery for the ages.
I do not know what happened at Syracuse but from the sounds of it, ours is a very different circumstance than theirs. In the Cuse's case it sounds like their administration was overly involved in athletics and that lead to trouble. Pitt, on the other hand, has often treated athletics as a necessary evil, but not something that they have embraced.
Unlike many schools all across the country, especially the one in the center of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh does not gain its institutional identity from its athletic programs. It never has and it never will. It is a research powerhouse with an incredibly large endowment. Many there couldn't give a damn how good their football or basketball teams perform. That could be a good thing and a bad thing depending on your perspective.
What is very notable about the new chancellor is that he has pledged a much greater commitment to athletics in raising the institution's profile nationally/internationally. That is a significant sea change from the approach of the previous administration.
He also has put his money where his mouth is in firing the AD, hiring a fairly well regarded assistant football coach without an AD, scheduling major out of section series with SEC schools, and taking his time to land a new AD. He has also pledged more money to recruiting budgets and facilities improvements. All of this is radically different than what we have heard in the decades leading up to the ascension of chancellor Gallagher.
Truthfully, as a longtime season ticket holder in both major sports, I have always strongly believed that the University of Pittsburgh's ceiling is significantly higher in football than it is in men's basketball. There is just a lot of Division I talent within a 100 mile radius of the University. Now, they do have to fight off some pretty competitive programs to retain the talent including Penn State, West Virginia, Michigan, Ohio State and Notre Dame among others. However, in the Northeast/Midwest, I cannot think of a more fertile recruiting area than the Western Pennsylvania/Eastern Ohio corridor.
There's not as much talent here as there was 30 years ago but there are still plenty of excellent players to be had in this part of the country and if Pitt can just get its fair share of such talent, it can absolutely compete for the top echelon of this conference in football. Of that much I have no doubt whatsoever.
Basketball on the other hand is more worrisome to me. I just worry that Pitt has lost its recruiting momentum and will have a tough time regaining it under Dixon. I think Jamie is one of the best X/O coaches in the country. It is unusual to see his teams unprepared for an opponent or fail to adjust during a game.
The problem is we are always lesser talented than the teams we are facing. For all the success Pitt has had over the last decade – and Dixon is the winningest coach in the history of the Big East conference and to sample side is more than a decade long– almost nobody has surfaced as even a starter in the NBA.
I cannot think of any other program in the country that has been as consistently good as Pitt has been against the best competition in the country without producing any NBA first round draft choices.
You can look it up yourself and you will find the list is basically Steven Adams – a one-and-done Kiwi Pitt landed because Jamie Dixon play professionally in New Zealand 25 years ago. That is the entirety of the list of Pitt's first round draft choices in the last two plus decades. The rest of the list is full of guys like Brandon Knight, Carl Krauser, Jaron Brown, Levance Fields, Sam Young, Chevy Troutman, Dejuan Blair, Aaron Gray, etc. All of those guys were outstanding Panthers but none of those guys were first round draft choices and few of them even played in the NBA much less made an impact in that league. And those are our big names! The rest are a whole bunch of guys nobody outside of western Pennsylvania remembers or has ever even heard of.
I used to marvel that we would sweep schools like Syracuse, Connecticut, Villanova, Georgetown, etc. and the lottery would basically be a list of the guys we beat with guys who barely had contracts to play in Europe.
Unfortunately, the talent we have now is at such a low level that it is alarming. Now we have guards who can't even guard anyone in the league and also struggle to guard players from lesser prestigious leagues too. I think I read a blurb the other day that said that in league play alone, 11 different ACC players had their career highs in points against Pitt this year. That is as amazing as it is damning.
I love Jamie Dixon and would never advocate that Pitt replaces him. He has done too much in his time here for me to do that to him. However, I will concede that I am worried about the future of the men's basketball program. It is down and severely under-talented. It will definitely take time to get back to the level where it was before we entered this league. I hope he can regain his recruiting momentum from earlier in his tenure here. If he can do that we will be just fine. If not, we could be headed for dark days and some difficult decisions ahead.
|
/
When the ACC invited Syracuse and Pittsburgh...
