Featured FanPost: Who's Gonna Take The Weight? Players Vs. Coach Dixon
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As this basketball season has spiraled down the drain. I have noticed that the local media has ignored the Panthers for the most part. I'll catch a score every now and then, but I rarely hear any serious discussion. About a week ago I happened to catch the Sports Showdown (fast forward to 28:53) where two of the three panelist felt Dixon had no hand in the failures that took place this season. My jaw just about hit the floor when I heard the blind defense of Dixon. Sadly basketball is a serious blind spot for 99% of Pittsburgh journalists.
When did coaches lose responsibility for the recruits that they bring in? If talent is being misjudged who's responsible for that if not the coach?
When did coaches stop having any responsibility for the development of the players that they recruit? The player has to be motivated to improve, but if the player had all the answers as to how to improve coaches wouldn't be necessary.
I understand that he has been an incredibly successful regular season coach, but maybe he's just coasting on the system that Ben Howland put in place.
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Coasting on Howland's system?
That seems a little bit of a reach. If that were true, this season would’ve occurred once the system was full of Jamie’s own players, around the 05-06 or 06-07 seasons. Pitt was still doing fine then. It’s just one of those seasons where Pitt is bad.
Does Dixon deserve blame? Absolutely. But some of the things during the game can’t be on him. Dixon is not the one throwing a poor pass that results in a turnover. Dixon is not the one taking (and missing) the shots. The defensive lapses are mostly on him, he just could not get this team to play defense for whatever reason.
I think a part of struggles is also the players’ mentality. Pitt has become one of the top programs and players just assumed for the beginning half of the season that they could just show up and they’d win. Obviously, that hasn’t been the case and I think that’s what Khem Birch was alluding to when he left. That players would start sulking if shots weren’t falling their way or if they were playing poorly. But in the end, that rests on Dixon to get them out of it and start playing and for whatever reason, it just hasn’t worked this year.
Pitt’s tournament struggles are an interesting one. I think it is the result of a few things. One, Pitt’s physical play can get them in quick foul trouble if they run across the wrong referees. That’s just how Pitt plays. Two, Pitt has not been a very good free throw shooting team. That has hurt them multiple times in recent NCAA Tournaments. Three, bad match-ups. The tournament can help or hurt a team based on the draw and Pitt just has gotten some bad match-ups.
It’s worked every other year though. Every major program has years like this and this just happens to be Pitt’s turn. Look at North Carolina after they won the national title. They struggled making the NIT. UConn’s having their fair share of troubles. Syracuse, Kentucky, Michigan State, UCLA, some of the elites in college basketball have all had down seasons within the past 5 seasons and, outside of UCLA, all are currently some of the best teams in the country. Pitt’ll be back. Hopefully, it’s next season.
Cardiac Hill contributor
by oaklandzoo12 on Feb 26, 2026 12:28 AM EST reply actions
agreed
The idea that Coach Dixon is coasting on Ben Howland’s system is absurd. Yes, he should shoulder some blame for this season and he hasn’t shied away from that spotlight.
Quoting one panel as somehow conclusive evidence that the local media haven’t critcized Dixon isn’t right either. Cook, Smizik, the hosts on the Fan have all taken their shots (deserved and undeserved) at Dixon. But just as we occasionally give mulligans to other successful coaches, so to should we give Dixon the same courtesy.
by ajollybengali on Feb 26, 2026 4:18 PM EST up reply actions
i dont think anyone feels that dixon is completely blameless here
it’s just that given what the man has accomplished over his career as our head coach it would be totally unreasonable to write him off due to his first bad season. this team is sloppy and undisciplined in their play on the court (offensively and defensively) and absolutely the finger should be pointed at the coach for this but to ignore all of the great things coach dixon has done at pitt and to suggest he’s still riding big ben’s coat tails is ubsurd. he’s a great coach and we are lucky to have him. i am confident that he’ll get things back to where we were and learn from this. go pitt.
by panthro on Feb 27, 2026 7:28 AM EST reply actions
Yes Dixon does desere most of the Blame
He’s Why:
1) Pitt defensive effecency is 249th, this means that Pitt is giving up an extra 7-8 points per game more than last season. (Pitt lost many many close games this season and than goes back to lack of intensity, which falls on the coach.)
2) Lack of a quality backup PG, once again falls on the coach, you had to develop another PG just in case Woodall got hurt, so why didn’t you get Epps in last season, what difference does one year in eligibility make? We learned that he was not ready this year, so at least if he had received some PT last year, perhaps he could have stepped in. The PG position was a complete disaster after Woodall got hurt. Coaching.
3) Aston Gibbs cannot get his own shot, so what do you give him the green light to shoot? You have to get the other players involved, this would mean running plays and maximizin possessions, insted, you allowed a limited player to be the focal point of you offense. At some point you need to slow down the game and get other players invloved but insted you made the Aston Gibbs show.
4) Birch - He transfered because he was alienated on the team, at some point you needs to sit him down before he decided to bounce and try to get him to stay, If that means benching a Robinson so be it, at least he can shoot better than 38% from the Ft and does not have a surgically repaired Knee. But hey you’ve set yourself back a year or two just to make 3 star player happy. Good Job.
by hmudd on Mar 10, 2026 11:40 PM EST reply actions
Dixon
I don’t mind giving Dixon some of the blame, but to address a few of your points:
- Regarding Epps, the fact is (and we saw this this year) that he wasn’t as good as advertised. He contributed little this year and I shudder to think what he would have looked like last year. Plus with a team with a #1 seed, that wasn’t exactly the time to start finding minutes for players to plan ahead. If anything, I think you can fault Dixon more for recruiting.
- While it’s true that Gibbs can’t create his own shot, Dixon couldn’t possibly know if he would be able to carry a team. In my mind, with such a young team, Gibbs almost had to be the focal point by default. And I think Dixon tried to get other players involved, but he can’t be held responsible for J.J. Moore not playing well most of the year and for much of the team being comprised of underclassmen.
- About Birch, I remain in awe that some people will virtually attribute all of the blame to Dixon to his departure. That’s preposterous. Birch’s nature came out when he decided to quit a team in the middle of the season TEN GAMES into it. That’s just flat out immaturity and there’s not much Dixon can do to make a kid grow up. Dixon also said afterwards that he probably wouldn’t have done much differently because he didn’t even know that Birch was that unhappy. In addition, Birch fully admitted that he didn’t seek Dixon out even though he knew the door was open.
I don’t mind giving Dixon a bit of blame on this since a relationship goes two ways, but to pretend as if Birch is blameless through all of this is short sighted.
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by CardiacHill on Mar 11, 2026 3:47 PM EDT up reply actions
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