Dixon was victim of own success at Pitt
Has there ever been a better example of “What have you done for me lately” than Jamie Dixon?
Dixon left Pitt for his alma mater, TCU, last week and he wasn’t fired. But there’s a good chance that he thought he might be if he didn’t win some NCAA tournament games next year.
Social media and the talk shows lit up with people who were thrilled to see him go, so there’s also a good chance that Dixon knew the party was over for him.
Dixon was part of the total turnaround of Pitt basketball when he came in as former coach Ben Howland’s a assistant in 1999. Howland did well enough to get hired by UCLA.
There haven’t been too many times when a program like UCLA considers stealing its new coach from Pitt.
Pitt basketball was a joke when Dixon showed up with Howland 17 years ago and it wasn’t long after that until Pitt became a top-20 program and even a top-10 for a while.
Dixon’s teams went to the NCAA tournament 11 times in 13 years and brought Pitt’s program to the point where he became a victim of the bar that he set for himself.
Fans and media got a taste of what it’s like to have a tier-one basketball program.
Moving from the Pitt Field House to The Pete made a Pitt basketball game an event.
Nobody batted an eye when Dixon signed a 10-year contract in 2013, but that was the beginning of the end of his time in Pittsburgh.
His record in the ACC is 44-44. Can’t get much more mediocre than that.
Dixon won more than 70 percent of his games, but way too many of those wins came against teams called Central Arkansas and Eastern Washington. Or was it Eastern Arkansas and Central Washington?
One theme that existed throughout Dixon’s tenure was an embarrassing non-conference schedule. There’s no criticism of the non-conference schedule if he goes 53-35 in the ACC instead of 44-44 and wins an NCAA tournament game or two. The last two seasons, Pitt lost to George Washington in the NIT and Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Pitt’s only accomplishment the last two years has been proving that too many teams are invited to the NCAA tournament and that the NIT is one postseason tournament too many.
Dixon said going back to coach at his alma mater has always been his dream, but TCU is no dream job for lots of reasons, beginning with a 2-16 record in the Big 12 last season. The Horned Frogs haven’t made a NCAA tournament appearance since 1997.
The coach Dixon is following, Trent Johnson, won 12 Big 12 Conference games in four years.
High school kids in Texas don’t grow up dreaming about playing for TCU.
And nobody in Texas not affiliated with TCU knows who Dixon is.
Dixon wouldn’t have been fired if he hadn’t chosen to go to TCU, but if his team struggled next season there would be plenty of heat put on Pitt to get rid of him.
Call me crazy, but if Pitt were still playing in the NCAA tournament, and if recruiting had gone much better the last three or four years, alma mater or not, I don’t think Dixon would have been dreaming about TCU.
So, what have you done for me lately? In this case, it was a perfectly legitimate question. And Dixon didn’t have a good answer.
And he knew it.
• The Arizona Diamondbacks are the latest billion-dollar enterprise trying to steal money from local citizens to fix their ballpark. They’ve asked Maricopa County for $200 million. An Arizona consulting firm took a poll on the issue. Sixty-two percent said no and 18 percent said yes. Put your money on the Diamondbacks getting the $200 million.
John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.