Dwight Miller Update

Ray Fittipaldo of the Post-Gazette says that all three of Pitt's incoming recruits, Isaiah Epps, Cameron Wright, and J.J. Moore) have qualified academically.  That means a move must be made and Dwight Miller is transferring to Midland Junior College (TX).  As he attended high school in Texas, it's not a surprise that he headed to a school near home.

Miller saw action in most of the team's non-conference games, but his minutes shrunk considerably once Big East play began.  He shot only 27% from the field and 14% from three-point range.  With a slight emergence by JJ Richardson, that essentially made him the odd man out.  Hopefully he can get a fresh start somewhere.

Dwight Miller Out

Ray Fittipaldo of the PG+ section (Note: If you are not a subscriber to this section, you have a limited number of page views to the content before you must subscribe) says that it is looking as if JJ Moore has qualified academically, meaning that Dwight Miller is looking to transfer.

With JJ Richardson playing well in spurts last year and Travon Woodall getting much better as the year went on, Dwight Miller's fate was looking worse and worse.

As Fittipaldo mentions, this has not been confirmed by Pitt yet. But assuming his information is true about Moore, I'd expect Miller would be the one to go.

He put in a lot of work with Rockets great Hakeem Olajuwon and I'm sure Jamie Dixon doesn't like the way this looks. But Miller would likely have been hard pressed to get minutes anyway, so this is probably best for him.

Digesting the Classic

So Pitt hung on in a triple-overtime thriller against WVU. This is, of course, the second time lightning has struck for Pitt. In the end, WVU, wasn't overly gracious:

Da'Sean Butler had 32 points and 11 rebounds, Darryl Bryant scored 20 and Devin Ebanks had 17 points and 10 rebounds, yet they couldn't prevent the Mountaineers (19-5, 8-4) from losing their second in a row after they led by double digits in each half.

"This is definitely one of the toughest losses I've had," Bryant said. "This game probably put Pitt in the NCAAs."

Well, it certainly didn't hurt, but I hope he wasn't referring to Pitt as a bubble team. That simply wasn't the case and with a good RPI and some solid wins, Pitt would have really had to collapse over their last few games to not make the tournament. Then of course, Huggy Bear weighed in:

"I've done this for 30 years, man," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said, asked if he could remember a game with so many swings. "There isn't much I haven't seen. They didn't fold, they continue to compete, but they couldn't have won without a lot of help from us."

That may be true and I'm actually inclined to agree with him. WVU had a major collapse in the final minute. But after it getting past regulation, Pitt blew TWO chances to put game out of hand. Even if you ARE right, show a little class. Note to coaches: You refusing to simply credit the winning team and leaving it at that doesn't make you sound intelligent. It makes you sound like a buffoon.

As the road team found out, it's incredibly difficult to beat Pitt at home. A lot of talk has gone on all season about the identity of this Pitt team and just how good they are. I have to admit we still might not know. But I really feel like this team grew up a lot in this game. A lot of guys played key roles and it was good to see a guy like Travon Woodall have an outstanding game.

About the whole atmosphere thing, I quietly chuckled to myself about WVU bracing themselves for the worst in Oakland. Pitt may have creative chants, but I don't ever recall any physical items being thrown from the Zoo at coaches or players. That's not to say it can't happen. A few knuckleheads can ruin it for everyone. But there's no history (to my knowledge) of that happening.

And as I mentioned earlier, both sides did their best to lose the game at times.

There's so much to point out in this game other than the game-changing play, Ashton Gibbs' three-pointer, which I mentioned in the previous post. Here are a few of my usual notes:

- Pitt just got killed by offensive rebounding. Had they lost this game in regulation, that would have been the main culprit. The final rebounding numbers didn't look that lopsided as WVU had 16 offensive boards. Problem was, in regulation, they had 14. FOURTEEN. In the words of Martin, "Damn, Gina." Part of it was due to the size, but much of it had to do with good ol' fashioned effort. And Pitt just wasn't trying hard enough.

- With so much height on WVU's team, I really wish Jamie Dixon had considered playing two bigs at the same time - especially when it was becoming evident that Pitt was getting killed on the boards. I'm not going to bring up the whole Dante Taylor/PF issue again, but a mix of McGhee and JJ Richardson in the frontcourt might have been intriguing. Richardson really played well again in the limited minutes he had.

- Back to Woodall - he really played incredible. To anyone who might have disagreed with my sentiment a few games back that Woodall needed more PT, how did this line taste? In 31 minutes - 12 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, and...wait for it...0 turnovers. This isn't to say that he's 'back' or that he should be starting or anything absurd like that. I'll probably be criticizing him at some point in the near to immediate future. I'm merely stating that his play has gotten better lately and that he's earned more time in my opinion. He played well within the flow of the game today and he had two huge FTs with about :25 left in the third OT which he nailed.

- Not sure if anyone else noticed, but Coach Dixon broke an unwritten rule that he really hates doing by playing Gilbert Brown in the 1st half with two fouls. I'm guessing that he felt, like I did, that without he or Jermaine Dixon in there, that the game could have gotten a little out of hand.

- In my opinion, Brad Wanamaker has reached another plateau in his career. He's now gone from being a dependable player to turning into a leader. He had several moments where he took charge, driving to the basket and not waiting for someone else to make a play. I'm not saying I'm ready to declare him the guy who has to take the final shot in a game, but I wouldn't be terribly uncomfortable with it. He still has the inexplicable turnovers at times, but his game has really improved.

- McGhee ended a pretty decent game (including a very good defensive effort) with an incredible play late in the 3rd OT, handing the ball off to Ashton Gibbs before he could be fouled himself. Smart, smart, play.

- I don't do this much, but focusing on the other team for a minute here. WVU really is going to need to correct the free throw problem if they want to be a serious threat in the postseason. They shot a reasonable 70% tonight, but missed a bunch of key ones and that isn't the first time that's happened. WVU could really be in for a big upset if they're in a close game. If you take WVU's five closest games, they've been decided by a total of nine points and the team is only 2-3. Contrast that with Pitt's five closest games, which have been decided by a total of 17 points, but Pitt is 4-1. Missing free throws in close games will KILL you.

It was nice to see the Pitt fans stay classy until the bitter end, not rushing the court. I've seen too much of that this year and even though it's a big win, Pitt certainly shouldn't be storming the court anymore. Upset? Please. A ranked Pitt team beating ANYONE at home is no upset.

Desperate to see it again? Check out ESPN360.com (if you have the right cable provider).

Back To Business

Pitt got back to the business of taking Big East teams to the woodshed at home with a 25-point beatdown of Seton Hall on Saturday. The handy-dandy game flow chart shows a close game initially with Pitt pulling away for a big win. This was one that Pitt had to have and they responded as such.

Pretty much everything went the Panthers' way and they played about as well as possible. Shooting over 50% from the field, 45% from 3s, and 71% from the line. They outrebounded Seton Hall by nine, had 20 assists, and only turned the ball over nine times.

As I said - pretty perfect game.

Perhaps the biggest plus was the balance of scoring - 23 for Gilbert Brown, 15 for Jermaine Dixon, 13 for Brad Wanamaker, 12 for Gary McGhee, and 11 for Ashton Gibbs. Pitt will be at their best when they can get a bunch of guys into double figures and don't have to rely on 1-2 players. J.J. Richardson, who's been seeing increased minutes lately, had the same output as Dante Taylor (2 points/2 rebounds/1 block) in 2/3 less minutes.

Back to Gibbs - He took the second fewest shots of this season (7) and the 'share the load' mentality seemed to work. Pitt cannot rely on him to go out and score 20 points. He may do that once in a while, but as we've seen recently, Pitt needs other guys to step up if they're going to win games.

And going hand in hand with that is going to be Pitt's ability to get him a breather. Dixon followed the strategy that I laid out after the WVU game of playing Gibbs a bit less and Travon Woodall a bit more to allow Gibbs a breather from PG responsibilities. Gibbs played 31 minutes (his fewest of the Big East season) and Woodall played 19 minutes (his most of the Big East season). Woodall has been playing better of late and has been keeping the turnovers and wild play to a minimum. If Pitt can rely a bit more on Woodall, then Gibbs will be better for it. Woodall has not been getting a ton of assists or points, but in the past six games, has only six turnovers - not bad at all.

Former Pitt recruit Herb Pope had a mild 9/6, shooting 3-13 from the field and fouling out. Pitt also held scoring machine Jeremy Hazell to only two points, keeping him at 11 total in both meetings. Raise your hand if you thought THAT was possible. If your hand is up, please, just, go away. Anyway, Hazell was benched for the start of this game, picking up where he left off with head coach Bobby Gonzalez, who benched him at the end of their loss to Villanova for poor shot selection.

I expected Pitt to get tested a little more and really am surprised that nearly 7,000 people still made it out despite the snowstorm. Even if a lot of them were students, that's still pretty amazing. I was expecting a few thousand to get there and wondered what kind of home-court advantage that would really give Pitt. Not sure how much it helped that Pitt gave free tickets to students - I'm kind of under the mindset that whoever wanted to go already had tickets. But I'm sure it helped at least a little and was a good idea on the part of the university.

Pitt will certainly not play this well all the time, but it's nice to see them get back on track - hopefully this will instill some more confidence after the whooping they took from WVU.

And on a brief side note, I love Curtis Aiken but he was a train wreck tonight. Pitt went up by ten on an Ashton Gibbs 3-pointer with FIFTEEN minutes left in the 2nd half and he called it the final dagger or something, signifying the end of the game. He then followed that gem up by saying that Herb Pope at around the 11:00 mark had only 1 FG in the game (when he in fact had three). He was also completely in the dark on the technical foul rule, unsure of who had possession after the FT. Normally, this is stuff I can overlook. But it all literally happened within like five minutes. Come on, my man.

Next up is Robert Morris on Monday night.

Another Game, Another Loss

I won't be covering Pitt's loss to WVU in-depth as frankly, I don't have the energy. WVU fans were classy as always, forcing their coach to tell them to stop throwing things onto the court. Way to go there, morons - how did 2007 taste?

Anyway, back to civilization where people eat with utensils and don't drag the roadkill straight to the dinner table.

I'll say it again - it's certainly not time to jump off of that bandwagon just yet. Pitt wasn't really expected to win this game so it's not too big of a deal. What IS kind of a big deal is the way they lost.

Pitt rarely loses by 19 points to anyone, and when they do coupled with the way they've been playing of late, there should be at least some cause for concern. They've been getting outplayed offensively and defensively, and worse, outhustled. Plus, when Brad Wanamaker and Gilbert Brown combine for as many points as I had, then you're not going to beat anybody. Pitt has shot under 38% over the past four games and that's something for which the players, not the coach, are generally more responsible.

So I preface these next few 'suggestions' with the disclaimer that Jamie Dixon is an unbelievable coach and don't think he could have done much more over these past few games. These are not 'sky is falling, somebody do something - fast' suggestions - just things to chew on.

With that said -

The stuff that Dixon does sometimes makes no sense at all. It's easy to look past the nonsensical stuff like starting John DeGroat (even though DeGroat was barely suitable for the bench) when Pitt is winning. Heck, it's even kind of amusing. But now that the team is struggling miserably, as has been the case for a while, it's time for a few legitimate questions to be asked. The questions that have been whispered all season and discounted as fans merely looking to stir the pot, should now be at least considered. It was easy, even fashionable, to lay low off the criticism because this team had been overachieving so much. But it's time to throw out the things everyone, except Dixon, seems to know:

- Ashton Gibbs has been downright bad as of late and Dixon keeps trotting him out there for his 35+ minutes per game. This one's tough because shooters need to be given the benefit of the doubt and most of the time, need to keep on shooting. But the defense has keyed on him more as of late and if Pitt can't spring him open, there's no sense in keeping him out there so much. Travon Woodall and Chase Adams have struggled, but it might be time to give them a little more playing time. I'm not saying to split the minutes or anything foolish like that - maybe just throw another five their way to give Gibbs more of a breather. Woodall has actually been better of late with only four turnovers in the past five games. And who knows - with even a few more minutes, Woodall might be able to provide a very small spark at times when Gibbs can't find his shot.

- Bob Smizik pointed out recently that Gilbert Brown should be starting. Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with him coming off the bench and I have a hard time saying he NEEDS to start. Nasir Robinson is a better rebounder and I like the offense Gil brings off the bench. But in effect, he may be your best 'go to' scoring option and he probably should be starting - especially with the Panthers needing more offense of late. I can live without this one, but Dixon should at least be thinking about it.

- Pleeeease get Dante Taylor at his natural spot at PF. He wants to play there and he's struggled miserably at center. Taylor has not been great and many times, he's not even been good, but it's time to see what he can do at the position he's used to. The defense has been fading a bit and Pitt really needed more size and rebounding tonight. Taylor may be able to provide that playing alongside McGhee. JJ Richardson can play backup center and you can still play Taylor there at times when needed. I know of Dixon's desire to keep him at one position this year, but having played a half season at center already, he should be able to serve as a third center if necessary. Taylor will need to develop some low post moves if he ever is going to play in the NBA (should he make it that far), but he can do that as a PF as well - not just at center.

I really hate throwing stuff like this out there because it makes it seem like I'm causing concern for panic when that's not the case at all. A large part of the team struggling is due to poor shooting, and that's something Dixon can't do much about. I think Pitt still makes it to the tournament and don't think there should be real concern unless they lose to Seton Hall at home. That will make getting to 10 conference wins a bit tougher. But it's clear that changes should at the very least, be considered.

More Hoops

The first preseason ESPN/USA Today Hoops poll is out and to the surprise of virtually no one, Pitt was not ranked. They came in at #37 overall, but I would be surprised if they didn't find their way into at least the bottom part of the poll at some point this season.

Pitt's official website is offering up spotlights on some of the new players this year and has a good article on freshman Talib Zanna. One of the things that jumped out at me were the quality of schools looking at him:

That's the thing that made Pitt stand out when Zanna was looking at different colleges. The 6-foot-9 forward snagged the attention of schools all around the country, including places like Oklahoma, Colorado, Connecticut, Boston College and Georgetown, among others. He wanted to go somewhere new and exciting, where he could continue to grow. The most important thing, though, was finding somewhere he'd be comfortable.

"Pitt has a good basketball program and academics, and I liked the coaches," said Zanna, who is now fluent in four languages. "I talked with coach [Jamie] Dixon and I came to some games. I really liked everything."

The first exhibition game is THIS SUNDAY. While it's only an exhibition, it will be interesting to see how the minutes are split up. I expect to see Pitt go as many as ten deep and I'm curious to see if Pitt will try to redshirt Zanna or JJ Richardson this year.

Dante Taylor was only able to come in at #15 on Gary Parrish's list of top freshmen. A less-surprising snub may be that he doesn't have any Pitt players in his top 25 point guards (though Chase Adams may surprise him), top 40 wings, or top 40 big men.

Pitt has four players currently in the NBA. What, Chad Varga or Antonio Graves couldn't get a look?

Oh, and that NBA thing? DeJuan Blair is off to a great start with...you guessed it, another double-double, going for 14 and 11 in 23 minutes. Surprisingly it wasn't Duncan or Parker who got the bulk of the focus in the AP recap:

Parker walked back to the bench OK after a hard landing in the third quarter, leaving the game with 17 points but with rookie DeJuan Blair and the Spurs already well in command of the New Orleans Hornets in a 113-96 victory on Wednesday night.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said Parker simply had the wind knocked out of him after falling to the court almost horizontally following a layup. Blair, meanwhile, continues enticing the Spurs after a dominant preseason, getting 14 points and 11 rebounds in his NBA debut.

The Spurs spent atypically lavishly this summer to add veterans Richard Jefferson and Antonio McDyess. But so far, it's been the former All-American from Pitt getting the most buzz.

"He's showing really good maturity so far," Popovich said. "You just have to give him credit. He's got a great way about him and let the game come to him."

Yeah, I may have gotten this one wrong as I criticized Blair a bit after the draft day fiasco. Based on what he's shown already finishing 3rd in scoring and 2nd in rebounding among rookies in the preseason (he also finished 1st in FG% among rookies scoring at least 5.0 ppg), if he isn't starting over journeyman Matt Bonner before the end of 2009, something is terribly wrong.

Couldn't This Have Happened Last Year

After a mini-vacation, I get back only to hear that Gil Brown apparently thought it was a good idea to get suspended. Had this happened last year, it wouldn't have been welcome news, but with a young team in need of veteran players, it's borderline disastrous. The only 'manageable' aspect is that he has a chance to be back by December 20th - before the Big East schedule begins. But while the schedule may not help them move up the RPI quickly, it's not a complete walkover. Games vs. Wichita State and then against Iowa or Texas at neutral sites could prove to be big tasks. Pitt then follows that up with the game against Indiana at MSG.

It seems like this guy is just always a step behind...with injuries, sometimes streaky play, and now this. He was really being counted on this year with such a young team and most assuredly would have been starting.

So who is going to get the start? Heck, the entire starting lineup is up for grabs. It looks like Nasir Robinson could benefit the most out of this. And yeah, it's early, but if I had to guess a starting lineup for the first game of the season? Well....

PG - Chase Adams
SG - Jermaine Dixon
SF - Nasir Robinson
PF - Dante Taylor
PF#2/C - Dwight Miller / Talib Zanna / JJ Richardson...it's anybody's guess

I'd also look for Pitt to go small (as if they're not already small enough) with a three-guard lineup at times.

I think Ashton Gibbs could end up getting more minutes than either Adams or Dixon, but Jamie Dixon's penchant for starting seniors may not get him the starting role. I expect Adams to start because I think the coaches will want to get Gibbs to SG. I also think Wanamaker and Lamar Patterson (at least until Gil gets back) will see plenty of minutes.

The front line is also completely unsolved with so many young players. I don't think Gary McGhee, the only player with ANY experience, will see much time.

And you thought football camp was interesting.