** Well, it was good while it lasted.
** Two weeks ago, when a poster on the Football Board remarked about the Hoops Board saying: "there is very little enthusiasm and the posts are less and less," I embarked on the task of offering a cavalcade of thoughts (conceitedly called “dribbles”) with the intent of generating some enthusiasm for the coming Hoops year.
** For a while, I was glad thread was so good. And I was even going to start another thread last Saturday, until I realized that the thread from the previous Saturday was still at the top of the board.
** But it certainly tanked into ugliness in the last few days, didn't it?!
** Somehow I think this tanking is partially a symptom of the new message board topic format, that doesn’t allow threads to die their natural death. In the past, throw-away comments at the end of past topics in thread view would go largely unnoticed. Now they seem to provoke a whole new set of thoughts, and most of those don’t seem to be good ones.
** The last couple days of that aforementioned thread saw many of the usual suspects quipping about, which included giving an equally passionate poster such as Owtie the occasion to suggest (on two boards at that!) that he doesn’t seem to like the idea of my (admittedly conceited) offerings of “dribbles,” as he made twice made the point to mock them.
** On a different, less confident day, perhaps comments like those from my virtual pal Owtie would have made me think “to heck with it … I really won’t bother with the time it takes it offer these dribble-like comments.” But tonight, almost completely in honor of Owt’s apparent displeasure of my offerings, my resolve is strong enough to make sure I do this duty.
** So onto tonight’s topics!
** The mess at the end of the thread was followed by a fine survey instigated by ZaraT, which would seem to indicate that nearly all on our Hoops Boards do indeed have some common ground. That is, nearly all posters (with the exception of VJPITT and a couple others who want him fired immediately) think that the best chance for Pitt Hoops going forward is to spend our hopes that Coach Dixon regains his Mojo (with all due respect to Austin Powers).
** So there’s the first question for the night. Where is Dixon’s Mojo?
** I believe that many, or even most, posters believe that Dixon’s Mojo’s been lost in his recruiting.
** I’m not going to argue with that notion. I know I join each and every single poster on this board who passionately wants our Basketball Team to win at the highest level. And this doesn’t even mean the very high level we attained from 2008-2011. Higher than that is what we all want. And the only way we will once again reach that level or better is to get better players. And I hope this notion offers no disrespect to players as wonderful as Lamar and Talib. Maybe it’s better said that we simply just need more Lamar’s and Talib’s.
** Regardless of who Dixon is able to recruit, there is another piece of common ground among posters. All recruits, regardless of ability, need to be bought into what Dixon is selling. We’ve had many great players who did just that, and some are either in the NBA, or at least playing for money somewhere.
** Some other great players weren’t totally bought in. We aren’t going to win at the highest level with players in this category. That’s who Dixon needs to win at the highest level.
** And whether its talent or buy in, every player Dixon recruits needs to get on board with the biggest piece of lost Dixon Mojo that has been lost. The piece is defense.
** Of all of the reply posts on the last “dribbles” entry, I think the very best entry came from the all too wise, but all too infrequent passionate poster BethlehemJohn, who said many great things in his rebuttal. As the center point, I’ll use this: “I have not given up on the team though. We had one of the worst defenses that I have ever seen in my life last year. This is where we need to see most of our improvement. It is not too hard to believe that we can easily win another 4-6 games with just better defense and rebounding.
** Ouch. That’s hurts. But I agree with every word.
** That’s the night’s second question. How can the Panthers regain their defensive Mojo? If anything, I hope replies to this thread will deeply investigate this topic.
** Well, that’s not completely true. If anything, what I really hope is that we come up with some brilliant answer and that Dixon will read it in the next few days and make the necessary change. He should know that us posters are that smart!!
** Knowing that’s not going to happen, let’s go with the realistic. Experience will make our Panthers better defenders. What is a better message board topic is everyone’s opinion as to whether we can get better enough defensively to make the NCAA Tournament next year, or become a bigger threat than that.
** Here’s what we know so far. Dixon seems to think our defense will improve by moving Mike Young back to the four spot, and having his new trio of center men handle the five spot.
** This means that our offensive force, Jamel Artis, will have defend the perimeter. Jamel was only a fair defender when he had to defend other fours down low. Before that, he proved to be a poor defender at the three when he had to defend anyone on the perimeter.
** Heck, for that matter, Jamel even proved to be a poor defender at the four on the occasions when his guy stepped out to the perimeter. Other fours dribbled right by him there too.
** So is it players or tactics? The aforementioned Zara has been pointing to Dixon’s error of going zone against L-ville that led to 2 killer threes. While Zara has his facts right, it should also be mentioned that before those killer threes, Pitt’s defense was getting carved to bits by Rozier’s penetration. I’ll suggest that the zone in that game was surely worth a try.
** But it didn’t work. Pretty much nothing worked defensively last year.
** I suspect there are some issues with Dixon’s overall defensive philosophy. In past years, even in #1 seed years, as it was well known that Dixon’s philosophy was to let teams pass on the perimeter, and then to put the majority of defensive effort into guarding shots.
** That’s a philosophy that gives me pause. But the Hawaii game last year gave me more pause. Very few of us saw that game. Therefore, I’ll use what Bill Hillgrove told me while sitting at a bar in Sheraton Maui as the focal point of next year’s defensive discussion. Bill said Hawaii just lined up in a 1-4 set and just beat us again and again off the dribble.
** Hearing this bothered me that day while drinking my Maui Longboard IPA. And these words never left me, even while drinking a Fat Heads Headhunter IPA later in the year after outscoring fine teams such as Notre Dame and UNC. We won those games. But we really never stopped those teams from scoring.
** For Dixon to truly regain his Mojo, the defense just has to improve.
** If you are the type who likes a reason to worry, then realize that in the CBI year, our defensive efficiency was ranked #149. The improvement to #21 the following year came largely because of the addition of Steve Adams who could hedge all over the court. But it's hard seeing the newcomer who can have that kind of impact next year.
** What’s worse is that is that last year’s defense was a stunningly bad #202. It’s harder to see an equally easy path for this to improve to a sub 100 ranking. That's the kind of ranking we'll need to be a top 40 team.
** The good news, of course, is the knowledge that our offense ranked somewhere around #30 in the country last year. For many reasons, I can easily see that becoming closer to twice as good as that on the offensive end next year. For one, I think we are better off without Cam. But if the defense can’t improve to becoming somewhere in the top 75, will that matter enough?
** All the other metrics notwithstanding, as I see it, our defensive efficiency ranking by Jan 15 should go a long way to learning our whether Dixon and the Panther program has regained its Mojo.
** I suspect that this is what the topic of most of our posts will be about next year, including anything I’ll call “dribbles.” I look forward to writing them, even knowing there as those who ridicule the idea of reading them.
** Two weeks ago, when a poster on the Football Board remarked about the Hoops Board saying: "there is very little enthusiasm and the posts are less and less," I embarked on the task of offering a cavalcade of thoughts (conceitedly called “dribbles”) with the intent of generating some enthusiasm for the coming Hoops year.
** For a while, I was glad thread was so good. And I was even going to start another thread last Saturday, until I realized that the thread from the previous Saturday was still at the top of the board.
** But it certainly tanked into ugliness in the last few days, didn't it?!
** Somehow I think this tanking is partially a symptom of the new message board topic format, that doesn’t allow threads to die their natural death. In the past, throw-away comments at the end of past topics in thread view would go largely unnoticed. Now they seem to provoke a whole new set of thoughts, and most of those don’t seem to be good ones.
** The last couple days of that aforementioned thread saw many of the usual suspects quipping about, which included giving an equally passionate poster such as Owtie the occasion to suggest (on two boards at that!) that he doesn’t seem to like the idea of my (admittedly conceited) offerings of “dribbles,” as he made twice made the point to mock them.
** On a different, less confident day, perhaps comments like those from my virtual pal Owtie would have made me think “to heck with it … I really won’t bother with the time it takes it offer these dribble-like comments.” But tonight, almost completely in honor of Owt’s apparent displeasure of my offerings, my resolve is strong enough to make sure I do this duty.
** So onto tonight’s topics!
** The mess at the end of the thread was followed by a fine survey instigated by ZaraT, which would seem to indicate that nearly all on our Hoops Boards do indeed have some common ground. That is, nearly all posters (with the exception of VJPITT and a couple others who want him fired immediately) think that the best chance for Pitt Hoops going forward is to spend our hopes that Coach Dixon regains his Mojo (with all due respect to Austin Powers).
** So there’s the first question for the night. Where is Dixon’s Mojo?
** I believe that many, or even most, posters believe that Dixon’s Mojo’s been lost in his recruiting.
** I’m not going to argue with that notion. I know I join each and every single poster on this board who passionately wants our Basketball Team to win at the highest level. And this doesn’t even mean the very high level we attained from 2008-2011. Higher than that is what we all want. And the only way we will once again reach that level or better is to get better players. And I hope this notion offers no disrespect to players as wonderful as Lamar and Talib. Maybe it’s better said that we simply just need more Lamar’s and Talib’s.
** Regardless of who Dixon is able to recruit, there is another piece of common ground among posters. All recruits, regardless of ability, need to be bought into what Dixon is selling. We’ve had many great players who did just that, and some are either in the NBA, or at least playing for money somewhere.
** Some other great players weren’t totally bought in. We aren’t going to win at the highest level with players in this category. That’s who Dixon needs to win at the highest level.
** And whether its talent or buy in, every player Dixon recruits needs to get on board with the biggest piece of lost Dixon Mojo that has been lost. The piece is defense.
** Of all of the reply posts on the last “dribbles” entry, I think the very best entry came from the all too wise, but all too infrequent passionate poster BethlehemJohn, who said many great things in his rebuttal. As the center point, I’ll use this: “I have not given up on the team though. We had one of the worst defenses that I have ever seen in my life last year. This is where we need to see most of our improvement. It is not too hard to believe that we can easily win another 4-6 games with just better defense and rebounding.
** Ouch. That’s hurts. But I agree with every word.
** That’s the night’s second question. How can the Panthers regain their defensive Mojo? If anything, I hope replies to this thread will deeply investigate this topic.
** Well, that’s not completely true. If anything, what I really hope is that we come up with some brilliant answer and that Dixon will read it in the next few days and make the necessary change. He should know that us posters are that smart!!
** Knowing that’s not going to happen, let’s go with the realistic. Experience will make our Panthers better defenders. What is a better message board topic is everyone’s opinion as to whether we can get better enough defensively to make the NCAA Tournament next year, or become a bigger threat than that.
** Here’s what we know so far. Dixon seems to think our defense will improve by moving Mike Young back to the four spot, and having his new trio of center men handle the five spot.
** This means that our offensive force, Jamel Artis, will have defend the perimeter. Jamel was only a fair defender when he had to defend other fours down low. Before that, he proved to be a poor defender at the three when he had to defend anyone on the perimeter.
** Heck, for that matter, Jamel even proved to be a poor defender at the four on the occasions when his guy stepped out to the perimeter. Other fours dribbled right by him there too.
** So is it players or tactics? The aforementioned Zara has been pointing to Dixon’s error of going zone against L-ville that led to 2 killer threes. While Zara has his facts right, it should also be mentioned that before those killer threes, Pitt’s defense was getting carved to bits by Rozier’s penetration. I’ll suggest that the zone in that game was surely worth a try.
** But it didn’t work. Pretty much nothing worked defensively last year.
** I suspect there are some issues with Dixon’s overall defensive philosophy. In past years, even in #1 seed years, as it was well known that Dixon’s philosophy was to let teams pass on the perimeter, and then to put the majority of defensive effort into guarding shots.
** That’s a philosophy that gives me pause. But the Hawaii game last year gave me more pause. Very few of us saw that game. Therefore, I’ll use what Bill Hillgrove told me while sitting at a bar in Sheraton Maui as the focal point of next year’s defensive discussion. Bill said Hawaii just lined up in a 1-4 set and just beat us again and again off the dribble.
** Hearing this bothered me that day while drinking my Maui Longboard IPA. And these words never left me, even while drinking a Fat Heads Headhunter IPA later in the year after outscoring fine teams such as Notre Dame and UNC. We won those games. But we really never stopped those teams from scoring.
** For Dixon to truly regain his Mojo, the defense just has to improve.
** If you are the type who likes a reason to worry, then realize that in the CBI year, our defensive efficiency was ranked #149. The improvement to #21 the following year came largely because of the addition of Steve Adams who could hedge all over the court. But it's hard seeing the newcomer who can have that kind of impact next year.
** What’s worse is that is that last year’s defense was a stunningly bad #202. It’s harder to see an equally easy path for this to improve to a sub 100 ranking. That's the kind of ranking we'll need to be a top 40 team.
** The good news, of course, is the knowledge that our offense ranked somewhere around #30 in the country last year. For many reasons, I can easily see that becoming closer to twice as good as that on the offensive end next year. For one, I think we are better off without Cam. But if the defense can’t improve to becoming somewhere in the top 75, will that matter enough?
** All the other metrics notwithstanding, as I see it, our defensive efficiency ranking by Jan 15 should go a long way to learning our whether Dixon and the Panther program has regained its Mojo.
** I suspect that this is what the topic of most of our posts will be about next year, including anything I’ll call “dribbles.” I look forward to writing them, even knowing there as those who ridicule the idea of reading them.
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