The Pittsburgh men’s basketball team is off to a fast start once again this year. Thursday night will likely put the first blemish on their otherwise spotless record. Duke is the first real challenge the Panthers will face, in fact, probably the only challenge before the Big East season begins.
It’s not that I think Duke is the better team; as someone who was born and bred in Kentucky, I think the dump I took this morning is better than Duke’s basketball team. Pitt plays tough defense, and with the team no longer weighed down by the overrated failure Aaron “The Ghost” Gray, the offense is actually scoring points. No, the problem I foresee for Pitt is not the players.
It’s Coach Dixon. Maybe I should go easy on him, and take his 115-30 record as a head coach as a sign that he’s the next… Krzyzewski? But I’ve watched Pitt basketball for Dixon’s entire run, and every year I have been frustrated as I watched good teams lose games because of bad coaching. The sad truth is that Dixon was thrust into a head coaching job at an emerging basketball power and he was not ready for it.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Pitt has a chance against Duke tomorrow and I think that Dixon could someday be a good head coach. But let’s face it: he’s no Coach K. He’s more like the next Boeheim, destined to sit on thirty years of good-but-not-great teams, unable to coach them to any real achievements, then luck into a title when an NBA talent stupidly goes to college for a year.
Prove me wrong, Dixon.
-Post written by Matthew Tynan
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2 responses so far ↓
Tony DeFreitas // December 20, 2007 at 9:04 am
Would a win on Thursday be the biggest in the programs history under DIxon?
Matty Dog // December 20, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Unquestionably. Although Pitt has a few victories over great UConn teams and has been dominant in the Big East, they are otherwise lacking for bigtime wins.
A victory over Duke will show that Pitt is a national powerhouse perhaps worthy of the top ten ranking they have backed themselves into.
Pitt needs to show they can win more than Big East games. This would be a good way to do it.