One Game Doesn't Make a Season

ONE GAME DOESN’T MAKE A SEASON

Pitt was thoroughly dismantled tonight by a very well coached and athletic Louisville basketball team. Every once in a while, a team has these games where they just didn’t seem to have shown up or played with a lack of energy. All teams have these games, not just bad teams, all teams. Tonight, Pitt had one of these games. The thing that amazed me about tonight’s game was not the outcome, but the reaction from the fans afterwards. Now, I know that I live in a city that sets its standards high for its teams and that hates losing, but after listening to the Pitt post-game show with Greg Linnelli, I realized one more thing, this city doesn’t know the first thing about basketball.

HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF THE CALLS THAT I HEARD TONIGHT.

Caller #1: Well, here we go again, Jamie Dixon just can’t win the big game. Wait a minute, since when was Louisville in the middle of February a big game?? And secondly, how is Bill Cowher doing? How about Jim Boeheim? They are some coaches that couldn’t win the “big game” either. Heck, I’d rather not win the big game as a coach if that is what it takes to be put in the same sentence as those two Hall of Fame coaches.

Caller #2: This team is overrated; they are the same Pitt team we have seen in the past, and they will be out of the NCAA Tournament in Sweet 16 again this year. Ok, they MIGHT be overrated, I think I can give you that. But to complain about getting to the sweet sixteen is just plain stupid. I realize that every team and their fans ideally would like to cut down the nets at the Final Four, but let’s be realistic. There are 336 schools that play division 1 basketball. Only 65 (19.3%) even make it into the NCAA tournament, and when you take into consideration that of those 65, 32 of them are the conference winner, that leaves just 33 (9.8%) spots for the best teams in the country to battle over just to make it into the tournament. Of those 65 teams, 49 of them lose in the first weekend, allowing only 16 (4.7%) to advance to the 2nd week of the tournament. How can Pitt fans be disappointed by consistently being in this top-tier for the past 6-7 years?

Caller #3: Jamie Dixon always seems to get outcoached by all the big name coaches, like Rick Pitino. Really, is that why he has the highest winning percentage of any coach in Big East history? Or maybe that is why he has 10 wins against the Big East’s best coaches, Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun and Rick Pitino, in less than four seasons. It is probably also why he will become one of the top 15 fastest head coaches in NCAA history to get to 100 wins (he needs 2 more). I agree he can’t coach a lick.

Caller #4: Pitt always seems to fall short of their expectations. Well, who puts the high expectations on this team? The media and the fans!!!! Think about this, Jamie Dixon has the top team in the Big East this year, he had the runner-up in the conference tournament last year and he continues to have them among the elite in the country every year since he stepped in for Ben Howland. He has done all of that with basically a bunch of nobodies. The coaches I have mentioned before, Boeheim, Calhoun and Pitino, they don’t recruit kids, they select them. On Pitt's roster this season, only 4 players were considered 4-star recruits (out of 5 stars) coming out of high school, the rest were lower. 3 of those 4 are sophomores. Levon Kendall did not have another scholarship offer when he chose Pitt. Antonio Graves chose Pitt over Charlotte, Bowling Green and Rutgers. As a high school senior, Aaron Gray had only one other offer from Rutgers. That group is the seniors on this team. The juniors aren’t much better. Mike Cook transferred to Pitt after selecting East Carolina over Rhode Island out of high school, and Ronald Ramon had offers from just St. Bonaventure and George Mason. Dixon has taken these kids that nobody wanted and made them pretty good. It isn’t like Dixon is working with blue-chip recruits; he isn’t working with ANY, yet he still manages to win games at the highest level. Are the high expectations good for a program to have? You bet, but you can’t then criticize them when they don’t reach lofty goals. Especially when you realize that this group of players have been over-achievers from the day they arrived in Oakland.

I turned off the radio after that one. I had enough.

I still believe that Pitt has a very talented and good basketball team, and I still think that they could make some noise and maybe even put together a magical run in March. But lets just take it easy after they lose one game. The last team to go undefeated for an entire season was Indiana in 1976. TEAMS LOSE GAMES, and I fully expect Pitt to lose 1, 2, maybe even 3 more this season. Does that make them a disappointment or a failure? Depends on who you ask. One tip, you may want to avoid asking that question on a public forum, like on a post game call-in show after a loss that does end their season.