The Window Closes

People are always wondering why I am such a big fan of the Pittsburgh Panthers basketball team. My senior year in high school they made a wild run to the Big East Championship game and I started falling for the team. They had tough players, guys who weren’t quite top recruits but were usually experienced and smart. Ben Howland oversaw their rise from the depths of the Big East to the conference’s heights, and his style favored defense and rebounding above all else. They’ve always had likable players, from Brandin Knight and Julius Page to Carl Krauser and Aaron Gray to Levance Fields and DeJuan Blair. They don’t quite get the grade-A Derrick Rose/Kevin Durant type talent but they develop their players as well as any school in the country. Sam Young started two games and played 17 minutes a game his sophomore season, and now he is a Wooden All-American and will likely be a lottery pick in the upcoming NBA draft. Aaron Gray hardly had an impact his first two years, but suddenly became All-Big East his junior year and now plays in the NBA.

Pitt stunned the college basketball world in 2002 by winning the Big East West Division and finishing with a 27-5 record. That storybook season ended with a gutwrenching loss in the Sweet Sixteen to Cinderella Kent State. The next year they brought back just about everyone and spent the entire season ranked in the top ten. They won the Big East Tournament and cruised through the first weekend of the NCAAs with two blowout victories.

One of my best friends at Macalester was a girl from Pittsburgh named Jess. Her mom was a season-ticket holder for the Panthers which meant she had tickets for the Midwest Regional games held in the Minneapolis Metrodome during that 2003 NCAA tournament. Jess’s mom was busy or something and couldn’t come out to Minnesota for the games, and somehow four tickets wound up in my hands. These were the broke college student days when I would split textbook costs with friends and dumpster-dive for discarded bread, so getting a hold of premium (near midcourt) lower-level seats to watch the Pitt Panthers play in the NCAA tournament was a special experience. They also gave us pretty cool Pitt t-shirts, and I wore mine for years after even though it was yellow.

2-seed Pitt played 3-seed Marquette. Pitt had to deal with a mostly-hostile crowd (Marquette’s campus is in Milwaukee), Dwyane Wade, and a 10-point deficit with four minutes left. The Panthers came roaring back and spent the last ninety seconds trailing by 1-3 points before Brandin Knight’s three-pointer at the buzzer rimmed out. It was one of the most exciting games I have ever seen (as was the regional final where Wade put up a triple-double and singlehandedly destroyed one of the best college basketball teams of the last fifteen years), and it was devastating.

Howland moved on to UCLA after that game and assistant Jamie Dixon took over. Dixon has proven to be an excellent coach, and has continued to build on what Howland started. Pitt has easily made the NCAA tournament every year of his tenure and has consistently been ranked in the top 25. In 2004 they lost in the Sweet 16 to a badass Oklahoma State team. In 2005, their worst season out of the last eight, they lost in the first round to Pacific. 2006 they were a 5-seed for the Dance but lost to 13-seed Bradley in round two. The 2007 squad lost to Howland and UCLA in a Sweet Sixteen game, and the 2008 team expired against Michigan State in a second round game in Denver which I attended.

There is little doubt that this season’s team was the best they have ever had. The Panthers had three of the best players in college basketball – the manliest man in the land, center DeJuan Blair, the aforementioned Sam Young, and the best-passing point guard in the NCAA, Levance Fields. Pitt also had capable role-players like Brad Wanamaker, transfer Jermaine Dixon, senior Tyrell Biggs, the high-flying Gilbert Brown and freshman Ashton Gibbs. Pittsburgh lost just three games during the regular season, twice beat UConn when the Huskies were ranked #1, spent the entire season ranked in the top six, hit #1 in the polls for the first time in school history, and received a #1 seed for the NCAA tournament.

It is never easy being a Pitt fan. They tend to grind it out, playing mostly close games. They often seem to lack emotion and struggle to get easy baskets. Their perimeter shooting is always an adventure. The Panthers flirted with disaster for 36 minutes against 16th seeded East Tennessee State in round one before emerging with a disquieting victory. They fell behind Oklahoma State by ten early in the first half, eventually carved out an eleven point lead of their own, and then watched the Cowboys tie the game with 2:42 left before finally putting that game away. In round three they trailed Xavier by eight at the half and still trailed with two minutes left before Fields came up with a spectacular 3-pointer, steal, and layup combo to ice the game. Watching those three games may have taken a year off my life – three different nervewracking two hour sessions spent on a couch seemingly made of pins and needles.

Pitt played Villanova in the regional final in the most exciting game of this year’s NCAA tournament. Again they got down by double digits in the opening minutes, and again they clawed back before halftime. The second half was tight throughout with neither team able to carve out a lead of more than five points. After an unbelievable Villanova turnover with thirteen seconds lift, Fields hit two nail-biting free throws to tie it with five seconds left. Then this happened:



Pitt lost to Villanova because they were rather unlucky (Villanova shot 22 of 23 on free throws) but also because they did not play their best. Everyone except Blair and Young shot poorly against Villanova, and Blair missed four critical free throws. If the Panthers had played their best game, they would be at the Final Four in Detroit right now.

It is hard for Pitt to attract the kind of talent that wins national championships. Howland and Dixon have done a fantastic job finding and developing second-tier players over the last decade, transforming Pitt into an NCAA tournament fixture and Big East contender. But Pittsburgh is not the type of program that can just reload with future NBA players every season. This was the chance, the great opportunity at a Final Four and NCAA Championship. And now it is gone. The window has closed. They will be solid again next season, they should be a top 25 program as long as Jamie Dixon is around, but I doubt if they will have a team as good as this one was anytime soon.

Near the end of the 2008 World Series of Poker, I wrote a post called “The Window.” Reading it now chills my blood. I fear my great fear was accurate, that the Window closed for me in 2008 and I will never have that opportunity again. The worst part of it is I know I had my chances, and I didn’t play well enough to get it done. I think about that every day.