The Blue-Gold Scrimmage was Sunday. There’s another fan/student event on Friday night — nice tie-in for homecoming weekend. The first exhibition is on Halloween. The season opener is in 3 1/2 weeks. Time to run some links.
I’m going to skip specific preseason prognostication mags. Basically Pitt is being projected into the NCAA Tournament. The expectations in the ACC are anywhere from 5th to 8th with most putting Pitt at 6th behind Duke, UVa, Louisville, UNC and Syracuse.
In the Blue-Gold Scrimmage, Durand Johnson was out on the court for much of the time. Playing 28 of 32 minutes.
It was his first game action since the injury Jan. 11, and Johnson said he feels good, though he knows he still has a little more work to do to get back in game shape.
“I was just happy to be out there with my guys,” Johnson said. “It was nice to be back and playing in a game. I felt like I did OK, but I can do much better. Overall, I feel good. [Getting back in shape] will come with practice. Every day I need to practice.
“I need to do extra running, work on the treadmill, jump rope, whatever. My conditioning is getting a lot better, but it has been 9½ months since I ran with the guys, so they have a little bit of a head start, but I am right behind.”
Johnson scored seven points, grabbed two rebounds, had five turnovers and fouled out, but coach Jamie Dixon said it will take time before he is able to play consistently at a high level.
Dixon said Johnson has had some really good days and some days he hasn’t played particularly well, but the key is he is back playing and in time he should return to form.
Given that Durand Johnson has never lacked confidence, I’m assuming he’s not sweating the tepid review from Coach Jamie Dixon on his progress. Odds are, if Johnson hadn’t fouled out he would have kept playing.
Johnson missed Pitt’s first scrimmage two weeks ago because of an ankle injury, and he wasn’t sure how much he would play Sunday until he got into the flow of the action.
“I’m never going to be the guy to tell coach I need a sub,” Johnson said. “If he needs me to play, that’s what I’ve got to do.”
During the Blue-Gold scrimmage, James Robinson was taking more shots.
Dixon wants Robinson to be more assertive on offense.
“A better knockdown shooter,” Dixon said about Robinson, a 6-foot-3 junior from Mitchellville, Md., who has started 68 of his 69 college games. “He’s not the blow-by guy, drive guy. We pass so well. We get guys open shots. He’s got to be a knockdown shooter. That would help our game and help his game.”
Robinson, who averaged 7.6 points on 5.8 shots per game last season, scored a game-high 18 points in 32 minutes at the Panthers’ recent Blue-Gold scrimmage. More important, he and sophomore Chris Jones attempted a game-high 12 shots.
Dixon is right. As we have seen in the first two seasons, as good a point guard as James Robinson is, teams don’t have any fear of him on the perimeter. The better teams sag off of him to defend the pass and dare him to shoot. No one expects him to be Ashton Gibbs from outside, but somewhere around Travon Woodall and Levance Fields would change things and open up things up for Pitt. A very important thing when you look at Pitt’s front court.
Mike Young and Jamel Artis need a little space to score. Derrick Randall and Joseph Uchebo are not above-the-rim centers. Keep the defender closer to Robinson and there will be space for a wing player to slash to the basket. I don’t want to make it seem like it would be a cure-all (though, as I reread it, I know how it looks) for the offense. But all too often, we’ve seen the offense clog itself. Better spacing in the halfcourt would go a ways to helping to minimize those times.
I also found that article interesting insofar as Dixon also talked about slimming down James Robinson a bit more.
“Shooting and being a lockdown defender for us, keeping the ball in front of him,” said Dixon, who credited Robinson’s offseason weight loss as being critical to upgrading his offense. “We believe he has to be below 200 (pounds), closer to 195. Some guys, it makes them better players. Quicker. Better conditioned. Lighter. Lower body fat.
“The numbers show it’s better. He’s a good defender. We need him to be a great defender. We’ve got to become the best defensive team in the conference.”
I know, shocking that Dixon is stressing defense. To be fair, Pitt was not a great defensive team last year. Not bad, just not as good as they needed to be. One of the early challenges for the team, as far as defense goes, will be going without Cameron Wright.
The period without Wright, and as Durand Johnson rounds back into form will be the window for Chris Jones. While Coach Dixon has said that he does not plan to redshirt Cameron Johnson or Ryan Luther, I still struggle to see the minutes available to make burning the redshirt for both worth it. Not when you add in Josh Newkirk and Sheldon Jeter as well.
Then there are the big men. Small concern with Derrick Randall spraining his ankle during the Sunday scrimmage. Probably no rush on his return. It will give more time in practice and scrimmages for Joseph Uchebo, who looks to be ready to rebound.
“I don’t know that I am 100 percent back, but I know I am getting close,” Uchebo said. “I know I will have pain always but I have to go hard and keep fighting through it.
“But those things on offense and defense are what I am capable of doing if I can get from one end of the floor to the other.”
Dixon said Uchebo got stronger and healthier throughout last season and then had a great offseason. Now, Dixon said, Uchebo needs to progress and show that he can play for long periods at a time.
“He keeps [playing well], so we will keep giving him opportunities,” Dixon said. “One of the things we always say is rebounding translates. No matter what you do, if you grab a lot of rebounds, it usually means at the next level you will rebound, too, and his numbers were really good before he got hurt.”
Randall being out, also means more work for the newest junior college transfer, Tyrone Haughton to get up to speed.
Haughton, however, is way behind because he didn’t arrive for the summer and has missed significant practice time for various reasons.
“I just need to learn the plays, learn the system,” Haughton said. “The one thing I always have done is play defense, block shots, rebound — the offense will come along as I get more used to what they are asking me to do.”
Haughton is quoting straight from the Jamie Dixon quote book.
When Coach Dixon hired Smoke Williamson as an assistant after Barry Rohrssen left for Kentucky, it raised eyebrows. In no small part because Williamson’s recruiting ties are much more midwest. An area Pitt basketball has not dipped into beyond rare pick-ups from Ohio (Antonio Graves and Cam Wright are the only names that come to mind). But with this move, Pitt is making an interesting move.
Prior to his two-year stint at Massachusetts, Williamson spent nine years as head coach and president of youth operations for a prominent Nike Elite Youth Basketball League AAU program known as The Family in his hometown of Detroit.
“I definitely will be keeping a close eye on Detroit. That’s home,” Williamson said recently. “That’s not a secret.
“The Family is my family.”
Recent Family alumni include NBA first-round draft picks James Young and Jordan Crawford, who attended Kentucky and Xavier, respectively. Draymond Green (Michigan State) and Chris Douglas-Roberts (Kentucky), both of whom played in the NBA last season, also are Family alumni.
Williamson is on a first-name basis with those players, and he also is familiar with two current members of The Family who rank among the top recruits in the country: point guard Cassius Winston of University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy and senior guard Eric Davis of Arthur Hill High in Saginaw, Mich.
The competition will be fierce for those talents. But beyond that, Pitt has been mentioned in pursuit of several other players in the midwest area of late.
Places where they never even looked, they are now pursuing some players. I wonder if this is part of an adjustment or even broadening of recruiting. As much as Pitt has and will continue to rely on the East Coast, it feels increasingly crowded. The midwest, though, has lightened a touch with the Big East’s diminishment.
The midwest becomes a little more open to Pitt as a regional option for a midwest kid interested in playing in the ACC. The Big Ten is still the regional force. And, yes, Duke, UNC, ND and Louisville are ACC players in this region, but Duke, UNC and Louisville are national recruiters.
Finally, an article focusing on Pitt’s consistency year-after-year under Dixon.
Do you know how many of the other 350 Division I teams in college basketball have been in 12 or more of the past 13 NCAA tournaments?
Six.
Six!
Bet you wouldn’t have put Pitt in that list.
There are three bluebloods (Kansas has made 25 tournaments in a row, Duke 19, Michigan State 17), one perennial sports powerhouse (Texas) and two schools considered models of basketball consistency (Gonzaga and Wisconsin, each of which has made 16 in a row).
Dixon does not collect McDonald’s All-Americans like a Sean Miller, or provide endless headline fodder like a John Calipari, or have a legendary aura like a Mike Krzyzewski. He doesn’t have a school with a blueblood brand like a Steve Alford at UCLA or a copyrighted brand of basketball like Shaka Smart’s Havoc at VCU.
Instead, Dixon’s brand is consistency: simply winning, with players who simply outwork opponents.
It’s a work ethic that plays as well in this blue-collar city as it has in the standings. Among BCS schools over the past 12 years, Pitt has the third-best record, behind only Duke and Kansas. The Panthers might not be the highest-scoring, fastest-paced team in the nation — after all, those statistical measurements are too sexy for Pitt basketball – but the Panthers are always among the most efficient teams in the country, second to only Duke in offensive efficiency in the ACC last season.
And the “problem” it creates.
And now, those expectations have led to the only hometown rub against Dixon: that he’s never been able to get over that hump. Pitt has been to the Sweet 16 five times since Howland arrived but never to a Final Four. After Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan made the Final Four last season, Arizona’s Miller took the unofficial title of “best coach who hasn’t made a Final Four” — but Dixon is close behind.
“We’ve created a standard, and people are waiting for us to exceed it,” Dixon told me from the sideline as his team continued its workout.
It’s true: Once you keep getting in the Big Dance, people get impatient when you don’t go further. It’s the sign of a fan base spoiled with consistency. It’s a problem most schools would kill for.
It didn’t help that last year, Pitt went 0-7 in the regular season against teams that were higher ranked than them. But I’m not always sure its impatience, so much as frustration. Feeling so close. Seeing other teams get those amazing runs. And it just not happening with Pitt. Yet.