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What is the problem with Dixon's recruiting?

J

JS School

Junior
Aug 17, 2011
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Is it that he can't get 4 and 5 star recruits? Or is it that the 4 and 5 star recruits he gets are disappointments? It seems that the argument changes with every roster development.

There were a couple of bad recruiting years in a row. Did Dixon change his recruiting philosophy, can he no longer identify good players, or has he just been unlucky?
 
Dixon isn't a great salesman, doesn't have that life-of-the party personality so recruiting doesn't come naturally to him. That, however, won't in and of itself prevent us from landing good players. But, when you add that to the fact he hasn't had any "life of the party" assistants, its a pretty bad formula. Maybe Smoke can be our Slice.

Perhaps the biggest factor has just been bad luck. I mean, really, when you're watching AAU ball, could you really tell the difference between McGhee and Gilbert, Wanamaker and Wright, , Gil and Moore, Fields and Epps (when he was a Soph. or Jr. in HS)? Quite simply, Jamie got pretty luck with Top 75-200 type recruits during our glory days but has been painfully unlucky in recruiting the SAME type of players since then. As I posted yesterday, 9 of the 12 players we signed from 2010-12 didn't finish here and it wasnt because they were so great and left. Most left because they weren't good enough to play here.

A program like Pitt has to rely a lot on luck unfortunately. We're never going to get consistent Top 50 players so we have to rely on guys developing like Fields, McGhee, Gilbert, Wanamaker, etc. But, sometimes they go the other way like the Malcolm Gilbert, Wright, Moore, and Epps. Just about every one of Pitt's signees have badly underperformed relative to where people thought their potential was. Maybe this will change with Young, Artis, Luther, Cam Johnson, Wilson, Nix, etc.
 
Sean Miller Fan posted on 4/16/2015...
I mean, really, when you're watching AAU ball, could you really tell the difference between McGhee and Gilbert, Wanamaker and Wright, , Gil and Moore, Fields and Epps


Maybe this is the difference? I always thought Dixon recruited wisely in the past by talking to high school coaches, principals, guidance counselors, etc. Now he seems to be recruiting more via the AAU system.
 
Originally posted by JS School:
Sean Miller Fan posted on 4/16/2015...
I mean, really, when you're watching AAU ball, could you really tell the difference between McGhee and Gilbert, Wanamaker and Wright, , Gil and Moore, Fields and Epps


Maybe this is the difference? I always thought Dixon recruited wisely in the past by talking to high school coaches, principals, guidance counselors, etc. Now he seems to be recruiting more via the AAU system.
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Coaches have always had a large presence in the AAU scene. Its true now that HS basketball recruiting has all but gone away but I dont agree at all that this shift has caused Dixon to misevaluate players. Its much more to do with luck than anything else. He's always gotten "3 star" players. They used to turn into 4 star or 5 star players. Recently, his 3 star players have turned into 1 star and 2 star players.
 
The AAU vs high school coach, principal, etc. change is a part of the problem. Recruiting bumped earlier a few years back, to the extent that the NCAA tried to step in and prohibit offers until July before the senior year back in 2010, but that didn't pass. 2016 kids have gotten offers and are started cutting their lists very soon.

Most seasons, half to two-thirds of the Rivals 150 are signed in the November early signing period. As I've posted almost 90% were signed or committed by early February.

Many kids spend more time and play more games with their AAU coaches and the AAU coach has more influence over their decisions than a high school coach. High school coaches have pretty much become irrelevant for many kids.

The players get their uniforms snd gear from the AAU coaches and teams. They travel together to tournaments evety weekend in Spring and much of the Summer, get meal money and rooms from their AAU coach. Many times, it is the AAU coach who is the father figure.

That's why somebody like Smoke was hired. This isn't really that new. Slice worked through AAU programs in New York. We had Mike Rice with Philly/Jersey contacts and David Cox with DC Assault. Going back an earlier decade, Troy Weaver brought kids out of DC and Baltimore for Wiiiard and for Syracuse.

Dixon was good at selling hard work and academics to HS Coaches and Principals. I don't think those sell to AAU guys. And, there are a lot of guys with their hands out.
 
SMF I have to agree with you to a certain extent that luck has played the biggest part in our recruiting. It seems to me that the problem may be that we set our sights higher the last so many years and that has been a problem. We have shown almost no ability whatsoever to land our Plan A guys. That has had an effect on us getting the 3 star players that we normally land, mainly because we were not there early enough and other teams steal the interest of these players while we try to land the 4 star player that we just don't seem to get.

We identified guys like Lamar and Brad early in the past and worked hard on getting them and we did succeed. We must get back to that. These guys were the type of player we needed. I realize they were top 100 or so players, which seems to be right about where we have our best success rate. Anything higher than that has been near unattainable for us, other than a few exceptions. Used to be when we missed we could occasionally get a good player late, for example, Antonio Graves was very solid for us. When we miss now, it seems as if we panic and offer any warm body.

I remain hopeful that 2016 will be a new beginning for the Pitt program and its recruiting. The two early commitments give me that hope. Heron could be one of the best guards to play at Pitt in a while. If I see him sign that letter of intent, I will believe that Jamie can get this thing back on track. If not, we could spiral ever deeper in the wrong direction.
 
Originally posted by Harve74:


Dixon was good at selling hard work and academics to HS Coaches and Principals. I don't think those sell to AAU guys.
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Overblown. HS coaches and principals (seriously, principals?) have very little say in where a kid goes to college. I doubt we landed Wanamaker and Gilbert Brown (neither of whom were marquee recruits) because Dixon and their principal hit it off.

We've had bad luck. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
Originally posted by Plan B&C Recruits:
We have shown almost no ability whatsoever to land our Plan A guys. That has had an effect on us getting the 3 star players that we normally land
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While its true we've lost out on most of our Plan A guys (and may lose Heron and Rowan, both of whom actually were committed), we've still landed mostly "3 star" players during this down period. Gilbert and the Johnsons were solid "3 star" Top 75-150 type guys. JJ Moore was a 4th star, might have even been "Plan A." Dante Taylor was a McDonald's AA, Plan A who peaked when he was 15 or 16, similar to Epps, similar to Robinson.

On paper, we're signing the same players. Its just been bad luck that most of the last 15-20 players we've brought in here have simply not been as good as they were SUPPOSED to be. Most of the previous 20-30 players were better than they were supposed to be. The market seems to have corrected itself. After getting pretty lucky on the recruiting trail and overperforming, those same types of players are underperforming.

Its kinda like a mutual fund manager who beats his benchmark for a 5 year period, mostly due to factors outside of his control. Everybody thinks he's great but he was just lucky. Then, all of a sudden, he underperforms the benchmark for 5 years and everybody says "what's changed, this guy has lost his touch." No, its just that he was lucky and now he's been unlucky.

In sports, we always seem to try to have an answer for everything. It makes for a good debate. When, in many cases, like this one, the same recruiting philosophies and rankings produced 2 different results:

The Gray/Kendall/Fields/Blair/Young/Gibbs/Wanamaker era: Greatly outperformed their "benchmark"

The Wright/Robinson/Jones/Moore/Durand era: Greatly underperformed their "benchmark."
 
SMF, Dixon didn't use principals to persuade kids to come to Pitt. He used the principals to identify kids that he wanted at Pitt. He never wanted kids that were lazy, troublemakers, or had a bad attitude. You can find out if a kid is a potential problem from people at his high school. You are lot less likely to get an idea of a kid's intangibles from AAU coaches.
 
Will/can Smoke deliver?

I can tell you this with my own local knowledge, his ties to The Family aren't getting Piitt anywhere in Michigan. Not one of the future Power 5 kids in that AAU organization is seriously considering Pitt. I hope tapping that particular pipeline wasn't the reason JD brought him in-because that ain't happening, and it ain't ever happening.

I personally know of one star Family player headed to a high Power 5 team next year who never heard a word from Ole Smokey. Meanwhile he had guys from several other ACC schools talking to him all the time, following him around at Peach Jam, talking to his dad and godfather in the stands during those games and practices, etc.

If Smoke has some juice, he needs to show it at some point.
 
Originally posted by thebadby2:
Will/can Smoke deliver?

I can tell you this with my own local knowledge, his ties to The Family aren't getting Piitt anywhere in Michigan. Not one of the future Power 5 kids in that AAU organization is seriously considering Pitt. I hope tapping that particular pipeline wasn't the reason JD brought him in-because that ain't happening, and it ain't ever happening.

I personally know of one star Family player headed to a high Power 5 team next year who never heard a word from Ole Smokey. Meanwhile he had guys from several other ACC schools talking to him all the time, following him around at Peach Jam, talking to his dad and godfather in the stands during those games and practices, etc.

If Smoke has some juice, he needs to show it at some point.
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Wasn't Smoke the lead recruiter for Manigault?
 
Maybe. Is that all you got?

The point of my post is, Smoke's strongest connections are to Michigan and The Family. We aren't going to get any of their high D1 guys, now or in the future. Given the fact that Smoke ran that program for years, I find it odd that we aren't even on any of their long lists.
 
Originally posted by thebadby2:
Maybe. Is that all you got?

The point of my post is, Smoke's strongest connections are to Michigan and The Family. We aren't going to get any of their high D1 guys, now or in the future. Given the fact that Smoke ran that program for years, I find it odd that we aren't even on any of their long lists.
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Maybe he left that prgram because they didn't like him and he didn't like them anymore.
 
Entirely possible. There is money and power involved in those kinds of big time AAU programs.
 
I agree with those regarding Dixon's lack of "salesman" characteristics. I don't think that is who he wants to portray, and he strikes me as a coach a) who wants a student to invest in the University because of the University, b) wants quality individuals that happen to play basketball well, and c) doesn't want to sell the school so the players "buy in" to his way of coaching. If that is indeed the case, I don't mind what Jamie stands for. But I think there are other coaches who have no character issues with selling themselves to get the kid, or finding ways around some of the background baggage a player might carry. I have never been in a room when they talking, but I imagine that could be used against Jamie.

I think the best players that Dixon recruited and developed were more interested in the name of the front of the jersey than the name in box score.
 
Originally posted by Ski11585:


Originally posted by thebadby2:
Will/can Smoke deliver?

I can tell you this with my own local knowledge, his ties to The Family aren't getting Piitt anywhere in Michigan. Not one of the future Power 5 kids in that AAU organization is seriously considering Pitt. I hope tapping that particular pipeline wasn't the reason JD brought him in-because that ain't happening, and it ain't ever happening.

I personally know of one star Family player headed to a high Power 5 team next year who never heard a word from Ole Smokey. Meanwhile he had guys from several other ACC schools talking to him all the time, following him around at Peach Jam, talking to his dad and godfather in the stands during those games and practices, etc.

If Smoke has some juice, he needs to show it at some point.
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Wasn't Smoke the lead recruiter for Manigault?
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You guys are still holding onto Barton's value because he landed Artis.
 
is he that boring/unable to relate or he just wont play the game. Is it that his style of play is boring?

But how come all the decommits after they sign?
 
Winning along with good coaching breed good recruits. One poster says Pitt will never be a top program and get the top recruits. I disagree completely. Bring in a top 10-15 coach and he will bring quality recruits to the program. If Sean Miller came to Pitt tomorrow do you not believe he would make a immediate impact with recruits. No question a top level coach could change the landscape immediately.

IMO..... JD is not a top notch coach. He is decent and better than average but not one of the top tier college coaches. His style and personality on the sideline looks out of control and almost comes off as over coaching the players. Pitt players as a whole on many occasions look tight and afraid to make a mistake. All his intensity seems to create a lot of uneasy tension in his players. Personally I do not like his style of coaching and may be a issue with some recruits and parents.
He would be better to tone it down and let the kids play.

To be successful on the college level it's a two way street. Not only do you have to have a very high skilled coach who can keep cool and show leadership on game days but a guy who can connect with parents and recruits. This is where JD is not skilled and it is really beginning to show. Pitt plays in one of the best basketball conferences in the country and should have no issues in recruiting. The same situation exists for SEC Football where all the best players want to go. Pitt should have plenty of talent knocking at the door to choose from. This is what is so unusual about the current state of the program, no one is knocking. Most of all the other ACC schools are getting their fair share of decent talent but not Pitt.
Very strange situation or is it Jamie Dixon. Yes, as many have mentioned we do not have good assistants who can recruit but I have to believe it is more JD and his personality. He just does not come across as a cool collected coach based on his recent record and side line demeanor.

I things get worse before they get better. JD will need to adjust his style and make changes.
 
What top 15 head coach is coming to Pitt? NO ONE IS THE ANWSER. First thing is you need 10million to buy out JD then probably 4/5 mil per year for 5 yrs.for the hc then more for the assistants that's at least 25 million so Pitt can attract a better student Athlete . Not going to happen. Yes things need to improve but remember the University of Pittsburgh is an educational institution not a pro sports franchise . All you who are panicking remember this is still the winningest head coach in Pitts history and these last 10 yrs have been the glory years of the program.
 
Originally posted by SouthSidePanther:
College recruiting, especially on the basketball side, is nothing but a sleazy market. It's all about cash and connections, in that order. Dixon simply refuses to engage, so he loses out on the top guys. It's no more complicated than that.
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This is the most true post in this thread and possibly in the past several weeks.
 
It's not "luck" when it has become a trend. He/They have failed at identifying players w/ a high upside. I feel because they have gone to more of a size/look rather than a bball IQ tact. JJ Moore might have had the "look" but he had the bball IQ of a 8 year old.

Originally posted by Sean Miller Fan:
We've had bad luck. Nothing more, nothing less.
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First off D1 sports is a business, a big business generating millions $ to those involved . Any bussiness that's successful needs to acquire assets,in this case the assets are players and coaches. There's many here blaming the coaches and yes they are directly responsible for idenifing and obtaining the talent ,but what constraints are they operating under ? One poster referred to college recuirting as a cesspool and that might be too nice an adjective. Your offering a college scholarship as pay to a vast majority of kids not really interested in academics nor are they really qualified to take advantage of what's offered anyway.mm xmThey've come to your school to play ball period, what other perks are you offerering? If JDs bosses say play by the rules ,you play by the rules ,he's gotten this far running a pretty clean program now you want him to get his hands dirty. I wouldn't if I was him if Pitt wants to become a win at all cost school pay him off and hire an outlaw coach it's that simple.
 
Originally posted by Fsgolfdr:
First off D1 sports is a business, a big business generating millions $ to those involved . Any bussiness that's successful needs to acquire assets,in this case the assets are players and coaches. There's many here blaming the coaches and yes they are directly responsible for idenifing and obtaining the talent ,but what constraints are they operating under ? One poster referred to college recuirting as a cesspool and that might be too nice an adjective. Your offering a college scholarship as pay to a vast majority of kids not really interested in academics nor are they really qualified to take advantage of what's offered anyway.mm xmThey've come to your school to play ball period, what other perks are you offerering? If JDs bosses say play by the rules ,you play by the rules ,he's gotten this far running a pretty clean program now you want him to get his hands dirty. I wouldn't if I was him if Pitt wants to become a win at all cost school pay him off and hire an outlaw coach it's that simple.
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Another very true post.
 
SouthSide and Harve....

I posted this on the pay board, but seeing your comments about cheating, etc., wanted to engage here as well. Please see my perspective below....thanks....

With "payoffs" so clearly prevalent, it's absolutely amazing that there aren't more reporters really going after these stories. So many 18 year-old high recruits driving Escalades, etc. If I'm a reporter looking to make a name for myself...this is a story ripe for big time and ongoing investigation. Years ago, retailers routinely shook down manufacturers...it was routine. Then, Walmart came to be, and they instituted strict policies of their employees not even being able to accept lunch from a vendor. Changed a corrupt system for everyone. If the NCAA won't stop looking the other way, shocked that some big time investigative reporters don't really go after this and expose the massive cheating that is clearly taking place.
 
The NCAA is not an authoritive institution which is above the fray. It is a confederation of the schools themselves. It has a VERY limited enforcement staff with no subpoena powers. Look what happened at State College when they imposed some actually relatively gentle sanctions following the evidence actually revealed by an independent investigation the school itself had authorized and paid for. They ended up backing off most of the sanctions when threatened with lawsuits. And, nobody seemed to care.

There actually are stories written pretty much every year about some kid or his parents that are paid off. Auburn won a BCS title and it was established that they had paid Cam Newton's Dad around $100k. Pretty straightforward. Auburn should have fofeited every game and the championship to Oregon, right? Nope. It was IGNORED, just like the Chicago newspaper article on Anthony Davis's father selling HIS son to KY for about the same fee.

It is difficult to prove these cases unless one party or the other comes clean. But, everybody knows they happen. When a school rises too fast or cheats a little too obviously, the NCAA will squash them, as long as they are a nobody and no big TV money is involved. Tennessee's coach Donnie Tydell just got fired and sanctioned for violations at Southern Miss.

Bigger schools tend to get a wrist slap because the conference TV contracts would lose too much money if a "name" school was shut down. UNC 's acadmic scandal is MUCH worse and longer running than Syracuse's yet UNC has barely been mentioned.

Those who endorse cheating from a punishment/reward point of view have a good argument. When we self-reported and got minor sanctions in 1992 or '93, we got a wrist slap. Of course, we self-reported relatively minor stuff and ignored the major violations.

Ultimately every school has to make their own decision. Many openly and freely cheat and hold their heads high. Others don't. When I was an undergrad in the 1970's, I knew what was going on but didn't care. Now, I feel differently. To me, a win obtained by cheating isn't worth much.

But, most people don't seem to care.
 
Harve,

I get all of what you are saying, and I know there has been SOME coverage of the payoffs, etc. Guess I'm just saying...very early in my career I was a journalist (before I realized I needed to make a better living for my family) and just hard to believe there isn't a Woodward and Bernstein out there that really grabs onto this and forces the hand of the NCAA and ultimately the administrators at Universities. As I mentioned, payoff was common place in the manufacturer/retailer relationship prior to Walmart cleaning things up. Today, all corporations have codes of conduct, whistle blowing mechanisms, etc. Big opportunity for an ambitious reporting team...key is being relentless....
 
All you would be doing is exposing what everybody already really knows. The simple solution is to make two leagues one a minor league and one academic. Your school chooses which direction pay and win or academic integrity or field two team if you want too . A true student athlete with the demands being placed on them is a rarity and your asking questionable college level students to succeed at both.stop the nonsense is this about student athletes or victories and money. Right now it's all about the money.
 
You gotta find an audience to be outraged.

Right now the only people who would be outraged about a payoff scandal at school X would be their arch-rivals at school Y.

SEC is widely known as Sure, Eveybody Cheats. Everybody involved KNOWS almost everyone cheats.
And, to be honest, the NCAA rulebook is so convoluted that it is probably impossible to not break some rule. Giving the kids and their families money is excused as "helping" the kids, not cheating.

Jim O'Brien, Thad Matta 's predecesser at tOSU, actually used that as an excuse when he got caught payng a Euro big man and despite solid evidence of illegal money transfers, an Ohio jury found OSU in breach of contract for firing him and had to pay him $2.4MM, even though the NCAA banned him for several years because he paid the kid.

Calipari has been named coach of the year and I think nominated to the College HOF despite bring the ONLY coach to ever have two Final Fours vacated. People just don't care. It's baffling to me.

Besides, the only kids who will talk are guys who got thrown out.
This post was edited on 4/19 5:56 PM by Harve74

This post was edited on 4/19 5:57 PM by Harve74
 
Fsgolfdr : there apparently is some talk of this.
Can't link on a Kindle but a few weeks ago there was an nbc/Notre dame article talking about such a thing, using Oregon and Stanford as examples.
 
Havre,
You are right it is a corrupt temple. I doubt the press will ever bring it done. If you are a sports reporter you have to be careful about biting the hand that feeds you. If you are an SEC reporter, why would you pursue allegations of payoffs in recruiting? No SEC school (perhaps Vandy) is above recruiting scandal. Thus, if a reporter attached to a paper in the south tries to make his bones on reporting recruiting payoffs I suspect his editors will nudge them in a different direction quickly.

I honestly don't have a problem with kids accepting money from alums in an attempt to lure them to a particular school. Both college football & basketball are meat markets, where elite schools and coaches are extracting monopoly rents from "amateur" athletes. Until this kids are paid in an open free market, I say let schools cheat. I think it more ethical to give the kids cash than to delude ourselves into thinking they are getting a valuable education for "free".
 
If Dixon is responsible for every part of the program, what is the point of writing he is responsible for this or that? isn't that redundant? has anyone suggested anyone else is responsible? I guess the only way he might not be is if he were forced by the AD to take an assistant.
 
If all of these players are being paid for how has Pitt ever been able to land anyone above a 2 star over the last decade or so? Or are we to assume that the ones that Pitt does get just happen to be honorable kids who turn down large paydays just to go play for Pitt?

As mediocre a college player as he turned out to be Dante Taylor was a 5 star recruit. Does this mean he came to Pitt just for the glory when others were offering him thousands of dollars?
 
BFo8 posted on 4/19/2015...
As mediocre a college player as he turned out to be Dante Taylor was a 5 star recruit. Does this mean he came to Pitt just for the glory when others were offering him thousands of dollars?

That's an interesting question. I know why Adams and Birch came to Pitt, but I have never heard anything about Taylor.
This post was edited on 4/20 9:42 AM by JS School
 
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