Pittsburgh Sports N'at

[Art2Gecko]

No. 1 ranking huge boost to Pitt's basketball image
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
By Ron Cook, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
They gave Pitt men's basketball coach Jamie Dixon the finger yesterday when he dropped his kids off at school.

The index finger.

"It doesn't feel any differently to me, but I do understand that it's great for our school and our fans and for the city," Dixon said moments after learning Pitt had climbed to No. 1 in The Associated Press men's basketball poll for the first time.

"But I think our guys understand that this isn't going to help us beat St. John's on Sunday."

Dixon is right. They're not going to give Pitt a trophy or national championship rings for being No. 1 on Jan. 6. We're not talking about college football here. No. 1 will be determined at the NCAA tournament in March and April, as it should be.

But to try to minimize the importance of the ranking to Pitt, its fans and the city in any way is flat wrong. This is a big deal. Everybody loves being No. 1 in anything, especially for the first time. Everybody loves holding that right index finger high and wagging it for their favorite team. The teachers and parents at the Dixon kids' school are not alone in their joy this morning.

The ranking is huge for Pitt because of where its program was when Ben Howland and Dixon, his top lieutenant, took over in 1999. Pitt might have been worst in the Big East Conference. Now -- at least this week -- it's best in America.

Remarkable.

What a job Howland did.

What a job Dixon continues to do.

"My first day here, when I started recruiting, I was thinking, 'We've got to get better than what we are,' " Dixon said. "You can't think about being No. 1 or winning a national championship on the first day. You just think about getting better. That's where we're still at. We've got to keep getting better. We've got to get better than we were on Saturday [in a 70-54 road blowout of then-No. 11 Georgetown]."

That's why Pitt has a real shot of being No. 1 on April 7, the morning after the confetti falls and "One Shining Moment" is played at the Final Four in Detroit.

That and Sam Young, Levance Fields and DeJuan Blair, of course.

And Dixon.

I remember writing the man was a terrible hire when Howland left for UCLA in 2003. Pitt first offered the job to the late Skip Prosser, then the Atlantic Coast Conference coach of the year at Wake Forest and a Carnegie man, who turned it down. It seemed like university officials settled for Dixon, who had no head coaching experience.

I'm guessing I've been dead wrong at least six million times over the years, but I've never made a worse call than that one.

I've also never been so happy to be so wrong.

What a pleasure it is to watch a Dixon team. It's not just because no one comes closer to guaranteeing a home win every night; Pitt is 105-10 at Petersen Events Center. Dixon's teams always play hard, always play defense and always play unselfish basketball.

What's not to like?

It will be interesting to see how Pitt handles the burden of being No. 1. "It can either be a distraction or motivation," Dixon said. "I think we'll use it as motivation. Our seniors have done a real good job of not allowing distractions to creep up on us."

It also will be fun to see if Pitt can get past the NCAA tournament's Round of 16, something it didn't do under Howland and hasn't done under Dixon. "I don't hide from that fact," Dixon said. "As consistent as we've been over the past eight years -- and we've been as good as any program in the country in a lot of ways -- we haven't won a national championship. That's what separates you. That puts you on a different level."

With the three stars, strong supporting role players and this coach, this could be the year for Pitt.

Are we pretty lucky or what?

The Steelers went 12-4 against a brutal schedule, won the AFC North Division and have as much chance as any team of winning the Super Bowl.

The Penguins, though in something of a deep funk, still have Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury. Remember two things: Hardly anyone looked at them as a Stanley Cup favorite at this time last season, and invaluable defenseman Sergei Gonchar will be back for the playoffs.

Pitt is No. 1 in the country and could get to the Final Four.

We really are lucky.

What a great time to be a Pittsburgh sports fan.

Ron Cook can be reached at [e-mail]. More articles by this author
First published on January 6, 2009 at 12:00 am