Pittsburgh News, Ray Mernagh

LET THE RECORD SHOW

by RAY MERNAGH

There’s always negativity in sports towns because it’s natural, comes with the territory of being a fan. You naturally want to dissect all the flaws… but it really gets tough when you couple that natural negativity with ignorance. I became so accustomed to hearing how terrible Pitt was going to be this year, and the years previous, that it just kind of rolls off my back. There’s a group of people I see on a regular basis that like hoops (some are family/In-laws), have Pitt ties and know that I cover the Big East. They’ve been pestering me since November with questions. Since the season started, and the Holidays came, the questions had more intensity behind them.

One even said he was “disappointed” by the Panthers showing against Indiana. As if any Pittsburgh hoops fan has a right, before they actually have a non-tournament season, to be disappointed about anything. But the questions came hard and heavy at Christmas.

“Why isn’t Dante Taylor playing better — he’s a Mickey D’s guy after all? What about Woodall, didn’t he play for that Hurley guy? Why can’t Dixon get the John Wall’s/Beasley’s/Evans of the world (they’re always shocked by my answer but that doesn’t stop them from asking it again the following year)? How’s Gary McGhee going to compete? Who’s going to play the point? How do you not have someone to replace Young, Blair and Fields? Why aren’t they more athletic?”

I’m now happy to have a standard answer for every single variation of those questions, well except the Wall one and the questions about NBA prospects (they laughed when I told them last year both Blair and Young would step right in and produce at the next level). The answer will be, from this point forward, the following: “Chill out, eat my wife’s turkey and let me watch this NFL/NBA game. Jamie Dixon’s your coach, he’ll figure it out.” Or maybe I’ll say “read my freaking stuff jagoffs, as you can see I’m not exactly dressed in Armani over here, we can use the hits!”

So I’m glad I can just go to that answer from now on. Then, if they question it, I can just dismiss them — politely — out of hand.

Of course this morning I’m sure a lot of those folks were saying, “damn, how did Pitt win that game?” after Pitt handled UConn last night in Hartford. I’m not. I was convinced, baptized and converted after the Cincinnati game. I now willingly serve at the altar of Dixonism. So I can handle the doubters and I’m making a promise to myself not to judge any team before January — seems like I make that promise every year but always break it (see Georgetown Hoyas 2008-09).

But yesterday, while taking care of some morning business, I read a Ron Cook column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that made me think I needed to research my “stuff” if you will.

Cook’s piece was a mea culpa of sorts. Just a week or two earlier he’d written how Pitt would really struggle to win 9 Big East games after their initial contest with DePaul. It was a view that many shared. I’d written after that game, and previous ones, that Pitt would struggle — especially offensively. So let me preface all this by saying Cook wasn’t writing anything unique, it’s how a ton of people felt.

But I read the following excerpt about the surprise this Pitt team has been and thought, hey, I’m not a liar: I wish I could say I saw it coming after everyone Pitt lost from that great team last season. DeJuan Blair and Sam Young to the NBA. Levance Fields to a Russian pro league. Tyrell Biggs to the pros in Greece.Then again, no one can say they saw this early season Pitt success coming. If they do, they’re lying.

So I looked for something I had written back in September and sure enough, found the following thoughts from my Around the Big East post on 9/1/09: One national columnist — the excellent Jeff Goodman at Fox — recently opined that this was a rebuilding year for Pitt no matter what…Maybe. I know Jamie Dixon hasn’t experienced a rebuilding year yet (read NIT berth). Check back in mid-January. Before then is way too soon to count out Dixon and the kids he targets to play for him. It would not shock me to see Pitt in the hunt once again come the third or fourth week of the conference season. It’s what they do.

So there you go. Let the record show that I had some initial faith in this Pitt group — especially Jamie Dixon (and Nas Robinson, who isn’t putting up the numbers I thought he would but is still way more integral to the core-being of this group than folks realize). And while some of our good friends in the newspaper media might see us here at NBE as just “some Internet bloggers” we like to think we know a little bit. I wrote a few weeks ago that Pitt should build a statue out front if Dixon and his squad get to the NCAA’s this year.

Well, start building that thing folks, and make sure you include the players who are executing everything Dixon throws at them.

It’s mid-January.

Pitt’s on top, along with Villanova, at 4-0 in the Big East (with road wins at Syracuse, Cincinnati and UConn).

As we told you on September 1, 2009 — It’s what they do.

And that’s no lie.

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Ray Mernagh is the College Basketball Editor for the Pittsburgh Sports Report and is a frequent contributor for the Basketball Times as well as his partnership with the NBE Basketball Report. Ray’s first book, 1 Chance 2 Dance: A Season Inside Mid-Major Hoops in Mid-America, focuses on 18 months of MAC basketball.

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