Pitt basketball is relevant again
- Thread starter Saboteur
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Yesterday's game was one of the few that Capel has won with less high level recruits than his opponent coach had. Dixon did that routinely. Anyone banking on Pitt having consistently better recruits than the top teams in the league are fooling themselves. For Pitt to win, they have to do it with a better game coach. The jury is still out on that with Capel.
Exactly. That's why we need to see more of the body of work with Capel at Pitt for him to demonstrate that he can get the most out of lesser talent and compete consistently with the top teams in the ACC. As you said, he hasn't done enough yet and so far, his teams haven't approached the level of a Dixon team, even in Dixon's last couple of years here.
I can't wait for the time to come, as it used to be, when you'd walk into The Pete and know that no matter who we are playing, we have at least a 75% chance of beating them. That was a good feeling back then. Someday, I'm hoping it's back.
4 year and red-shirt 5 year players are a good blueprint for non blueblood programs to get to the tournament and achieve success.
We were 8-10 and 9-9 in Dixon's final two years in the ACC. Let us see how we finish this year under Capel with a much younger squad than what Dixon had.
I am in no way arguing that Capel is a better game day coach than Dixon. I am arguing that you have to have real talent to win in the ACC. Capel will give us a chance to get that talent as the team improves.
If you want to, pardon the pun, pit Dixon against Capel, then give Coach Capel a chance to get some upperclassmen like Dixon had and then you have a fairer comparison. I would say if and whenTrey and XJ make it to be seniors, that would be a good time to pass judgement. Capel, after all, is actually assembling a complete roster.
All that said, Capel has us involved with a lot of top tier players. If he continues to pluck one or two each season, we are going to have a chance to get back to where we want to be. The Pete will be packed again and we will be a tournament team. Who knows, maybe under Capel we could make a sneaky deep run sometime in the not so distant future.
We have a 5 star pt. guard scheduled to come here in 2022. Can we add Jeffress this year or next? Players like these can really make a difference. These types of players were not considering Pitt when Dixon was here.
Honestly makes me want to puke that you guys never put Dixon in context. I agree he was a very good coach, but he didn’t walk into a total rebuild/turnaround situation like Capel has. Howland did the heavy lifting and Jamie took it to the next level
Dixon built that with howland.
He literally ran the practices
PITT could - da, would-da, should - da beat Nickel and Dime St, Wake, and Louisville.
Put that in your laptop and where would we be.
Very Relevant!
Put that in your laptop and where would we be.
Very Relevant!
Amazing how distant facts grow legendary and larger when it comes to Dixon. He wasn’t even the first choice to replace Howland. But he did prove everybody wrong to his credit
This is a reasonable debate to have, especially since TCU will probably end up being your classic bubble type team yet again this season. Talent level a little down this year, when the games get a little quicker paced they don’t fare as well, especially the last 2 where they have been totally smoked.
I think in the end they probably win enough games to be in the debate.
Howland has a similar type of up and down team at MSU this year, thinking they are more of an NIT team.
He was the top assistant and ran the practices .
so it’s a program he helped build before getting the top job
so if you’re going to give context -give the full context .
nothing legendary or distant about my post .
Context: Starting 5 Jamie’s 1st year: Krauser, Brown, Page, Taft, and Troutman
In total agreement - If X and Trey play their senior years here, that year will be the clearest picture of where the program is and is going.
It is the most apt comparison of Capel versus the Dixon ACC years (and that is what is up for comparison: The ACC years.)
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Well ... plenty of these level players WERE considering Pitt is Dixon’s last three years.
For example ... we were “second” for Cassius Winston. And Rowan and Heron were actually committed for a time. But those last three years for Dixon — while plenty of players were considering Pitt, we just couldn’t land them.
And second place for Cassius Winston is no better than second place for RJ Davis.
If Capel can recruit like Dixon did from his Young / Artis / Newkirk class and all the years before that, I do expect that we will be a perineal tournament team again.
Capel did an extraordinary job in his first six weeks and getting McGowens, Johnson, Toney and N’Dir. Almost a miracle really, considering what he was up against.
On paper, coming into this season, Champagne, Coulibaly, Drumgoole and Hamilton was only ok. Justin has been a nice surprise, but the point still stands. Hugley is a nice recruit, about on par with Mike Young. Collier could be considered like Jamel Artis. Max is a nice developmental player.
Hood Schifino is just a huge get. If we add Jeffries to that then we should have a great deal to look forward to around 2023.
I like where Capel has things moving, but he needs to keep it moving.
“What would have happened if Cassius Winston had committed to Pitt in the 2016 class” is a particularly fascinating thought experiment, given how things played out for Pitt in the years since.
It’s not really a game to play in my opinion because it was always such a forgone conclusion he was going to Michigan State.
From what I was told, Smoke and Dixon did a tremendous job making a relationship with Winston. He gave Pitt a really good look. But Winston probably had made up his mind to go to Michigan State sometime in the 3rd grade!
I think he us a darn good "coach." He isnt as hands on during games, but that is letting the shackles off after all the work and development.
The team he has this year has the bare minimum in depth, and in ACC play is going to have an experience deficit pretty much every game - top 5 players are three sophomores, a freshman and a junior transfer who is at his fourth school.
As with last year, he gets the most out of what he has nearly every game.
Very fair post. I understand we were close to getting Caleb Swannigan as well. For whatever reason Dixon just didn't have what it took to close.
I am really excited about where coach Capel has us and where it looks like we are headed. I would love to see Jeffress reclassify and be here next year, but, if we have to wait a year I would still be very happy.
I think NIT this year. I hope I am not being too optimistic.
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We were in the final 3 for Swannigan. I don't know if we ever had a really good shot.
I'm excited about Coach Capel too. Very much in fact. My purposes of my rebuttals is not to quell your enthusiasm in any way. He's so easy to root for, and I would love for him to end up being the most successful coach ever here. More or less, one Final Four entry would do the job.
And if he leaves for Duke about 5-6 years from now, that would actually be a great thing because it would probably mean that he achieved that elusive Final Four.
My point is always to try to present as much accurate information into the record as is possible. People's memories are not always on point.
As far as the NIT, I'm not ready to go there just yet. I said 7-13 in the ACC before the year started, and I'm thinking that could be a little low. Not necessarily because we are better than I expected, but the ACC as a whole does not seem as strong.
8 ACC wins (before the ACC tourney) means 17-14. Not sure that gets us in. We might need 9 ACC wins, which means 6-7 the rest of the way.
That seems doable.
But I'm still leary because we started the ACC season last year at 2-2, and ended 3-15. I still see bits of pieces of last year's team in this team.
Let's have this conversation again in a week after we have played BC and Syracuse. Go 2-0, and I'd say yes -- NIT is in our future.
I want to see how well Capel recruits when Pitt becomes one of the better teams in the ACC. He hasn't really been able to sell us as a winning program yet.
Well I know he isn't a Jay Wright and he doesn't have a coaching tree.
The two were running neck and neck. Wright has an advantage being in Philly. I95 is loaded with talent north and south.
But I'm confident they like him very much in Fort Worth. As well they should.
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Maybe "coasted" isn't the right word, but something was missing.
THIS. I liked Jamie, but I think his recruiting acumen was geared toward identifying good, gritty, under-recruited players and developing them into solid team-oriented upperclassmen.
The ACC is just too athletic for his method, which played better in the BE, and he knew it (which is why I assume he was unhappy about the move). Further, the officiating called ACC games (especially right after we joined) with a more "finesse" game as opposed to the "let-them-play" style of the BE.
My take is that JD realized this, and tried to recruit better athletes. However, we whiffed on almost all of them and then ended up having to fill the empty spots with Issiah Epps type players. The ACC was just a bad fit for Dixon - and the rest is history.
His recruiting was starting to weaken before the move to the ACC.
He is recruiting plenty of "athletes" down at TCU.
Don’t really agree that his recruiting was starting to weaken before the ACC move.
The 2011 class was his highest ranked ever.
The 2012 class had top 10 Steve Adams and top 60 James Robinson.
The 2013 class had top 100 Mike Young and top 150 Artis and Newkirk.
I don’t know if the ACC had anything to do with how recruiting feel off a cliff after that. But I can say for pretty much certain that the ACC is not too “athletic” for his method. That concept that the Big East was physical and the ACC was athletic and finesse was never close to true. I’d suggest it was just a tv driven narrative based on some of the GTown teams of the 80’s. But there was never one bit of fact to prove the narrative.
When we announced the move to the Big East, Dixon supposedly did express some concern privately to Mike DeCourcey based on recruiting brand tied more to the northeast geography. If he did express this concern, I think that is also BS.
My take about Dixon’s recruiting drop off has always been about message. From the beginning, Dixon’s message was always: come to Pitt, learn the system, get better and earn your time, play defense and go to class.
Around 2014, he started losing players and scrambling and this message didn’t work quite so well for players who wanted to come in right away. It also didn’t work as well for a team who was “just another” in the ACC versus the new top dog in the Big East.
Finally, I think recruiting Khem Birch really changed Dixon’s outlook. After that, Dixon really doubled down on the message mentioned above. He wanted only those who really wanted to come here and wasn’t trying to tell them anything they wanted to hear above this base message.
Capel is struggling at times in the weakest ACC in years. No sense in passing judgment until he has a roster with his guys here for more than 2 seasons....Terrell was a Stallings recruit. We need to see improvement and consistency.
Dixon had winning records against Calhoun, Boeheim and Wright.
I think the problem was not Dixon's message but Dixon's changed perspective.
Some writer (maybe DeCourcy) said one of Dixon's greatest strengths was that Dixon did not waste time and resources on recruits he was not likely to get. Dixon was able to identify who was "truly" available to Pitt.
I think Dixon either felt public pressure to take recruiting up a notch or Dixon himself believed that was necessary either to compete in the ACC or get to the "next level".
His new approach did not work. We were a lot of close but no cigars A lot of not realizing who he was dealing with.
Instead of completing the bulk of recruiting in the early signing period, we most often were left scrambling and reaching late.
Instead of a built roster with players waiting in line to take over, we were patching to eke into the tourney each year. That was not sustainable.
Pressure from outside wasn't as problematic as the bungling idiot SP telling him who to hire and the crooked Barnes pushing him out.
I think there are similarities in both of our takes and they can combine to make greater sense for both.
I agree on results. Most of those teams had a high floor but a low ceiling. They lacked in talent but made up for it with smarts and senior leadership. I see our team now as having a higher eventual ceiling but a lower floor given their higher level of talent, limited by their youth.
The tournament appearances were nice but I am having much more fun watching this team mature and eventually reach their potential.
Totally agree on the style of play thing. You are going to get homered at duke and NC, but his teams/style with his highly successful BE teams would have done equally as well in the ACC.
I also tend to agree that getting burned on Birch possibly played a role in the downturn with recruitig.
if you think Birch was a turning point, how do you explain Heron? I think he was obviously looking for something.
That was a previous relationship with Slice. He committed early because of that relationship.
Yeah, I mean a tough, physical, experienced, defense first team could never win the ACC and then follow that up by winning the national championship.
Wait a second....
the Big East was much better than todays ACC when Dixon was winning championships or competing at a high level.
Has Dixon improved his eye contact? If we’re gonna continue to beat this stuff to death then let’s go all the way.
And by
but was it?
Our worst class had a first round nba pick in cam Johnson snd a p5 player at Pitt and Arizona in Ryan Luther .
When you read my entire comment in context, its absolutely true. Dixon did not recruit the type of players necessary to win while playing his preferred style of basketball.
UVA was quick, athletic, long and had multiple great shooters. Dixons teams usually only had one great shooter and several undersized but tough starters. UVA compares better with Villanova than it does the Dixon Pitt teams.
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