I'd agree with that too.
I think he became increasingly frustrated after missing a couple shots and just tried to do too much to end his scoring drought.
Virginia Game & Other Dribbles ...
- Thread starter DT_PITT
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I think he became increasingly frustrated after missing a couple shots and just tried to do too much to end his scoring drought.
I think Jamie "believes" that his bench is a strength (perhaps it is a little) on a team that needs to make the most of whatever strengths it may have. With that, one does get the impression that he's trying to "force the bench" to unsuccessful results.
While I too was questioning several of Dixon's lineups today, truthfully I'm not sure it would have made much difference.
Exactly how I feel. Agree with you and somewhat Coach Dixon. I think the bench is a strength, or at least our depth. But you could predict the exact minute and second that mass subs will come in for Pitt. And honestly in a few games, that has been what totally killed all first half momentum leading to insurmountable deficits.
Agreed. The next time Dixon benches Robinson for poor or ineffective play will be the first. Robinson is literally immune from being yanked unless he's fatigued or in foul trouble. The Dixon-Robinson brigade will of course claim there are / were no suitable replacements but that excuse only gets you to halftime, barely.
You recognized James didn't play nearly the final 8 minutes today, right?
Yeah, me too.
How can you explain a guy who has played 30+mpg for 3 years and has not gotten any better at shooting wide-open 3 pointers? At some point you have to cut your losses and just let Mr. NCAA All-Time Assists-To-Turnovers Champion ride off into the sunset w/ his participation trophy.
I'm not disagreeing with your assessment of his shooting, or even the idea of playing him less, per se.
But I wouldn't chalk up his lack of improvement to "mental issues." Maybe it's more than he maxed out his ability as he arrived here.
Yeah, but if you don't count all the times that he's been sent to the bench for poor play then it's pretty clear that he's never been benched for not playing well.
When the game was over, you mean?
Please, that hardly counts as yanking him. More like throwing in the towel, lets cut our losses James & fight (i.e. pump those stats) another day.
Robinson only gets benched when he's in foul trouble, fatigued, or during garbage time.
Whose fault is it that we have players in this team who either can't or just refuse to play S
D? Who is responsible for recruiting these players.
Please explain to me one single time when I, or anyone else, tried to displace the responsibility for the state of the roster away from Jamie Dixon.
But you (whom most people on here respect)have not mentioned if you think Jamie should go or any of his assistants. We all know the root cause, it starts with the head coach so what does Pitt do about it? Does Jamie have carte blanche over the program where he can leave these useless assistants on the bench every year?
I have a much longer opinion on this, but if we don't get to the Tournament in this year or next, then a decision must be made.
I don't have an opinion on assistants. That's up to Dixon and his results will set his own course, regardless of his assistants.
I feel it DT, I feel your confidence in Jamie is starting to get rattled lol. Don't worry, it was rattled for me when he got that ridiculous 10 year extension after losing early again in the tournament.
I did not have an issue with the extension. It is commonplace for a Coach with the longevity and success that Dixon had to that point. We extended Narduzzi before he even completed one year. That's the business world we live in.
There are a LOT of issues, but the primary issue is the "overall toughness" of this team.
That is the mortal flaw.
When the going gets tough, this team folds.
You have seen it in how when they lose, they lose BIG. Something that was never the case in the earlier years.
And, that lack of toughness is so pervasive, it can break their back even when things aren't bleak.
They actually were able to get up or down by one point in the second half, and somehow, two minutes later were down 11 ...
Unfathomable
Your last point ... You would rather move foward with JD. Good man, proven winner. And, making new hires, as much as some just fluff it off, are complete crapeshoots. But, it becomes untenable if JD is struggling just to make the NCAAs ... .
It's also not much of a punishment for poor play especially when compared to Wilson (or really any freshmen guard under Dixon for the most part) makes a poor decision, he gets yanked.
I get that Dixon really does not have much of a choice, since who else on this team can play point besides Robinson?
As long as we have hope to make the NCAA, Dixon has to start and play Robinson.
Not accusing you of that, your OP was pretty honest. Just pointing out that 1 man is responsible for what is increasingly looking like the wreckage of Pitt basketball: Jamie Dixon. His recruiting has been just horrible. Meanwhile, Providence and West Virginia are dreaming of a Final Four. WTF is going on?
All good points, DT. At the time of Dixon's extension, I doubt any of us know all of the circumstances surrounding those negotiations. That's why, based on Dixon's long-term success and the landscape of college basketball coaching at that time, an extension was in order. I'm not sure 10 years was entirely appropriate, but like I said, we don't know the real circumstances.
And giving Narduzzi an extension before he completed one full year of head coaching is a head scratcher. He has proven little to this point. But again, the coaching landscape at this time dictated that he be extended. I suspect that if Narduzzi goes 6-6 next year, which is highly likely with that schedule, there will be people on here screaming for the heads of Barnes and Gallagher.
I don't have an issue with the fact that Jamie's contract was extended but do have some questions regarding the length of the extension ..... I think 10 years was too long.
I believe assistant coaches significantly matter in the success of the program and thus Dixon's results which will set his own course will depend to some degree on the strength (or weakness) of his assistant coaches..... it behooves Jamie to have the best set of assistant coaches that he can get..... just my opinion.
Narduzzi could very well go 6-6. He has 3 almost built-in losses with road games at OKST, Clemson, and UNC, not to mention at Miami who has a real coach now and will always have better players than us. No shame in losing those 4 games but hopefully we are at least competitve.
Its going to take Narduzzi a few years to get his more highly recruited players developed.
I don't agree... Wilson has been given a long leash.
Typically James gets reinserted when the offense stops running a few trips in a row.
Well, not aiming this at you Goalie, but FIRST : The 10 year extension is and was no mystery whatsoever. Has everyone on here selectively lost their memory?
Pitt simply matched the offer USC put on the table, 30 years , 30 million dollars. Steve actually got a bit creative and saved some money with the way things got structured, treating it as an 8 year extension to his existing contract, with bonuses etc. And, we didn't quite match some of the detailed perks, like full use of a private jet for recruiting, etc. Dixon has SOME use of a jet but still spends a lot of time fying commercial. People have posted about seeing him flying coach class.
We had a very clear choice. Match the offer ( with a bit of home-town discount) or let Dixon walk. This was at the time when some posters were saying Jamie was not accompanying the team home from the Wichita State loss, but flying to LA to be announced as the new USC coach. Obviously, that didn't happen.
I was told that before matching the offer, Pitt had made quick contact with several young, "name" coaches to inquire if they would be willing to talk with us about a possible vacancy. ALL of them declined even preliminary talks.This really isn't a particularly attractive job.
The USC offer is gospel. Those details were openly and widely discussed on here and elsewhere. USC actually had another huge advantage to offer Jamie. His parents live in Southern California and he and his children could see them easily.
I don't KNOW the part about contacting 4 coaches is true but the people who told me this are reliable. I believe it and nobody in the know has ever contradicted me on that.
Maybe we COULD have low-balled him or offered LESS than USC had. Maybe he would have stayed anyway. But, again, everyone should remember that he was getting lucrative offers virtually every year. The long extension was supposed to end that almost- yearly intrigue and provide stability.
SECOND: Can ANY of those posters always harping about Jamie needing to fire his assistants actually name 5 college assistant coaches other than the handful of "name" recruiters? Or define exactly what any of those assistants from other teams actually do that might help us improve? Other than recruiters, college assistants are invisible.
Maybe we DO need some new blood to shake up things. But, frankly, much of the outcry for new assistants has been coming from people who can't even describe correctly what our problems are.
Hint, when you make statements about things that you say happened in a game and Joe the Pantherfan easily shreds your spin with facts, you clearly don't understand what you are watchng enough to be entitled to a serious opinion about much of anything.
Hey, it is VERY troublesome to me that for the second year, these guys are seemingly ignoring Dixon's coaching. And presumably Knight's, Barton's etc. The team is regressing- Again. Because the core of the team is 3 guys who can't or won't play defense, next year may be just as bad or worse.
In the pros, you fire the coach because the money is invested in the players. Here, it's the opposite. The best way out of this is just to turn the roster over. There will be some additions next season. But, it's late in the recruiting cycle. Even if we did want to push out one of the core guys, we couldn't replace an Artis, Young or Jeter with an upgrade.
We have to live through this. Unless Dixon chooses to opt out, Pitt can't afford to fire him. We'd have to rebuild anyway with a new roster and a new coach. We'll have the new roster after next season. There's no good reason to gamble on a new coach too when we already have one of the top 25 guys here.
It seems that when he misses his first few shots - like he did yesterday - he losses confidence, and continuing to miss erodes his entire game as well. The missed layup on the fast break late in the game was as bad as it gets.
Gee....how many of our guards since 1999 played in the NBA?? BK for a very small time until his injury. That's it. Some pretty strong teams in that stretch. I'd be happy with Antonio Graves at this point.
Agree 100% - we were at our best when we had good assistants. Every good HC has good assistants.
No. You are right on all accounts.
1) All of James' misses (I mean shots) today were open shots and within the offense.
2) It seemed like everytime James got into the lane, he stopped. He stopped, and the play died.
3) Any break never happened because James never "pushed it". Of course he didn't commit any turnovers, but we also had no run outs either.
4) Sure it is piling on I guess. But when you are a 4 year starter at PG and this is becoming commonplace in games against the best competition, well.......what do you want people to say, that he is "trying hard"?
We did skip ahead in transition, uva did a tremendous job getting back.
Artis may have had our only transition bucket and it took an incredible spin move in the Lane to get to the rim and was contested.
Ahh yes the snarky crowd ganging up on the critics.
You are right, he was benched, (and not sure what that was when Jamie sat him down and Brogdon went off). But let's not jump on every comment to try and discount criticisms.
They did no doubt. They were fantastic. But sometimes you need to push the play, even if it just draws a foul. That being said, this is obviously where James's lack of athleticism and quickness hurts him/us. We saw Wilson get at least at the rim (even though one was a prayer) where JRob couldn't do that.
I'm not saying James was anything other than bad on offense...
I'm pointing out things don't happen in a vacuum.
There isn't plays to push when you're being defended well.
When the opponent shoots 50% transition isn't an option unless you create turnovers.
We don't create turnovers, especially against a patient and sound team like uva.... Because our defense stinks.
Everything boils down to bad defense is stifling easy offense opportunities.
Well even in our best defenses, we didn't create that many turnovers and transition baskets. We just would suck the life out of the shot clock, have them force up a bad shot and always, always rebounded their misses.
Ahh yes the snarky crowd ganging up on the critics.
It's not the snarky crowd ganging up on the critics, it's someone who thinks that if someone makes a post about the game it ought to at least sorta kinda reflect what actually did happen in the game. When someone says that Robinson never gets benched for poor play right after a game when he did get benched for poor play, the problem isn't that I pointed out the OP was full of crap, it's that the OP was full of crap. When someone says that Robinson was awful all day long on defense and I point out that Robinson was the only Pitt player all day long that had any real success guarding Malcolm Brogdon and that he went off against the other guys who were guarding him the problem isn't that I pointed out the the OP was full of crap, it's that the OP was full of crap.
I said something similar to this before when people's hatred of Steve Pederson got to the point where they would blame him for things that he had absolutely nothing to do with. There are enough problems going on with this team right now that we don't actually have to make up stuff to complain about. Instead of incorrectly bitching about Robinson never getting benched, bitch about (for instance) how poorly he shot the ball. Instead of calling Robinson out for awful defending, call out the guys whose defending killed us all game long, Smith, Jones and Artis being a good place to start. And so on.
After playing a second half the way we did yesterday, why do people feel the need to just make crap up to complain about? Why isn't all the actual crappy stuff that happened enough?
