Would Jamie Dixon's 2017 Pitt Panthers have made the NCAA tournament?

… upset number 1 Kansas last night 

Jamie Dixon's basketball team knocked off the number 1 team in the country yesterday, the Kansas Jayhawks.

Unfortunately, Jamie was coaching the TCU Horned Frogs instead of the Pitt Panthers. Dixon inherited a team that had trouble competing in the Big 12, but in the quarterfinals of his first tournament, he and his team pulled off the upset of the conference tournaments thus far.

TCU had been considered to be off the bubble before that win, but now, they may actually make the tournament.

Pitt fans forget

What some people do not realize is that Jamie Dixon's tenure as head coach at Pitt was the best in Panther's history. He compiled a 328-123 record and earned 11 trips to the NCAA tournament in his 13 seasons. He won 73 percent of his games, and they included two Big East regular-season titles and one Big East tournament title.

No previous basketball coach has done that at Pitt. No one, including Ben Howland. He took a program that Howland rebuilt and took it to a higher level.

And now to 2017

Which is why the Panthers' performance this season, just a year after Dixon left, was so disappointing. Certainly, Dixon should share some of the blame since these were his recruits. They did not have a true point guard, and there was little depth on the team.

However, the Panthers finished with a losing record for the first time in the 21st Century (16-17, 4-14) with just four conference wins in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They ended up tied for 13th place in the ACC this year, just two games out of the cellar, a huge disappointment for the team, which had one of the top scorers in the ACC in Michael Young (19.6 ppg 2nd).

Coach Kevin Stallings obviously gets much of the blame for the collapse of this year's squad -- though PG columnist Paul Zeise gave him a pass … saying that the clock starts ticking now since he never recruited any of these players. "Kevin Stallings isn’t blameless for this disaster of a Pitt season. But it was his first season with the Panthers, so he should mostly receive a pass from fans and media alike."

That is a cop-out. Every coach has a responsibility for a team when he is hired regardless of who recruited the players.

A blogger on Cardiac Hill was not as complimentary: "One thing that was really tough to watch this year was that head coach Kevin Stallings completely lost this team."

Perhaps he had head cases on his team and perhaps these players were not team-oriented. Nevertheless, he had some talent, and he was not able to bring that out of them. That is a tough challenge for any new coach, but he failed in this category.

Better next year?

Zeise said that Stallings will have to face the music if the team does not do better next year since he has recruited seven new players. It will be his team.

Really? They are going to struggle big-time next year. While some fans appear to be saying that this is a good recruiting class, 247 has the class at 41 nationally, eighth in the ACC. Not horrible, but certainly not earth-shattering either.

What happened to Dixon?

Dixon was forced out last year by short-term A.D. Scott Barnes, who then hired his bud, Stallings. That offended many Pitt fans who wanted a young, mid-level coach who resembled a younger Ben Howlings from Northern Arizona. I remember seeing a hashtag #neverstallings the night before he was hired.

Barnes then bailed out when he realized how bad things were at Pitt and raced home to the West Coast. He said that it was a dream come true, but why do you take a major job and stay less than two years? He saw the handwriting on the wall re: Stallings.

Dixon's problems with Pitt fans reflected the fact that his teams just underperformed in the NCAA tournament. He did reach the Elite Eight in 2008-09 and made the third round twice, but so many times, his teams were just knocked off by inferior teams.

Problem with assistant coaches

Still, Dixon performed well enough until the last few years. My theory on that has to do with assistant coaches, who are the primary recruiters. Remember Barry "Slice" Rohrssen? He was the assistant from New York City who had a line to the high schools there, bringing in players like Levance Fields and Carl Krauser.

The problem may not have been that the talent was not up to ACC standards. After all, they played in the Big East for all of those years, which was just as good -- arguably. They were just not bringing in the quality of players that they were when Rohrssen was an assistant. That often goes to the assistants. The players have to like and respect the head coach, but the assistants are the one who really sell the school and the program.

That is what I believe happened to Dixon the last few years.

Pitt would have been better with Dixon

Would they have won more games this year with him than with Stallings? I would hope so. They could hardly do any worse. But, whether or not they could have made the NCAA tournament is another, tougher question to answer.

From a person who enjoys watching Pitt basketball, I hate to think of what direction the Panther program is headed right now. I could be wrong -- and hope so -- but the trajectory just does not seem to be positive right now.

What I do know is that Jamie Dixon was an outstanding coach overall for the Panthers -- except for the postseason.