A Familiar Face Returns to the Coliseum

A familiar face will be coming to Morgantown on Saturday afternoon when West Virginia takes on 12-2 TCU.

That familiar face, of course, is Horned Frogs’ first-year coach Jamie Dixon, who spent the last 17 years working for our old friends up in Pittsburgh, the first four as an assistant coach for Ben Howland and the last 13 as Pitt’s lead maestro.

My fading memory can recall Pitt coaches dating back to Tim Grgurich in the late 1970s, and while Grgurich and his successor, Roy Chipman, were usually waving matches near sticks of dynamite, Pitt’s latter coaches Paul Evans, Ralph Willard, Howland and Dixon were a little more subdued with their antics.

But that didn’t mean their Pitt teams lacked toughness and the games were less physical, particularly Howland’s and Dixon’s squads. Far from it.

Howland deserves a lot of credit for changing the trajectory of Pitt’s program from being a bottom-rung Big East team excited to stick around for a second day in New York City at the end of Willard’s tenure, to an annual conference title contender by the time Dixon took over in 2004.

In 13 years under Dixon, Pitt won Big East regular season championships in 2004 and 2011 and a Big East tournament crown in 2008. His run of seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2004-11 is the most sustained period of excellence in the modern era of Pitt basketball.

And his Pitt teams performed well against West Virginia, too.

Dixon had a 5-3 record against John Beilein’s Mountaineer teams, including a couple of impressive victories in the Coliseum in 2004 and 2007.

His success continued against Bob Huggins following Huggs’ return to WVU in 2007. Dixon was 7-4 against Huggins while at Pitt, including big wins in Morgantown in 2009, 2011 and 2012.

Except for a triple-overtime game in Pittsburgh in 2010 when West Virginia tallied 95 points, and an 83-point overtime outburst in 2005, the scores for most of the Pitt-WVU games were usually in the 60s and 70s.

They were tough, physical, bring-your-hard-hat affairs where every shot was contested, even the uncontested ones.

“They do a great job defensively,” Huggins said earlier today. “I think he’s spreading things a little bit more offensively, but defensively they just do a great job. They do a great job of limiting your transition and they do a great job of gapping things in the half court.”

Dixon isn’t the guy you want emceeing your banquet, and I doubt he’s ever been the life of the party - if he's ever thrown one, but his teams always play hard, they play together and they force you to play the way they want you to play.

Those traits are already becoming evident with TCU, which used to be an automatic win for Big 12 teams.

Not anymore. Not with Dixon there.

The Frogs battled Kansas down to the wire in their Big 12 opener, and then four days later, beat Oklahoma by three at home. One loss didn’t turn into two - they usually don’t with Dixon.

His non-conference schedule doesn’t knock you over, but Dixon never played strong out-of-conference schedules at Pitt, either. Yet his Panther teams were always prepared and ready to go when league play rolled around.

They were usually prepared to play the Mountaineers, too.

In the past, the West Virginia-Pitt basketball rivalry was frequently fueled by colorful personalities.

Pitt coach H.C. "Doc" Carlson hamming it up with the West Virginia crowd before a game at the old Field House in the late 1940s. WVU Athletic Communications photo.

There was Doc Carlson bringing a raincoat, an umbrella or a gas mask to the old Field House to keep dry, or Gale Catlett slugging it out with other Pitt players and verbally sparring with Pittsburgh media when he became West Virginia’s coach, or Buzz Ridl grabbing a microphone to tell those nutty Pitt students to stop throwing dead fish onto the floor during games, or gap-toothed Roy Chipman chasing referee Jack Prettyman into the locker room at the conclusion of another controversial finish - passionate, colorful personalities who wanted to win the games badly.

Not only did they want to win, but they didn’t mind twisting the knife in a little bit deeper while doing so. Oftentimes that carried over into the press room, much to the delight of local reporters.

But not so much with Dixon.

Sure, he was intense and demonstrative on the court. By the end of games, Dixon’s tailored suits were usually full of wrinkles, his starched shirts covered in sweat and the slick-backed hair concealing his balding spot in the back a little out of place, but by the time he made it to the media room his composure was restored.

His postgame remarks were almost always monotone and measured - not too high when they won and not too low when they lost. Getting an eyebrow-raising quote out of Jamie Dixon is a lot like pulling water out of a rock, although he almost took the bait yesterday when Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sportswriter Ron Cook asked him about the cancellation of the West Virginia-Pitt basketball series, which will resume once again next season. Cook’s implication was that Dixon was the reason the 106-year, 184-game series ended.

“That’s amusing to me,” he told Cook. “Simply put, that’s incorrect.”

Nevertheless, when Jamie Dixon coached at Pitt it was more about performance rather than personality anyway. Whenever you beat his Panther teams there was always a sense of achievement.

That is what he is bringing to TCU.

“My plan here is to set the bar high once again and create expectations that our fans never thought were possible,” Dixon told Cook.

And that’s why the West Virginia-TCU game will become a rivalry, not because Jamie Dixon is there, and not because he once coached at Pitt, but because his Horned Frog teams will be good.

When both teams are good the games are going to be meaningful, which is always the best formula for a rivalry anyway.

Schedule

Footer

Upcoming Events

A Familiar Face Returns to the Coliseum

Related News

Related Videos

Promotional Background Photo

Footer