From NCAA Sweet 16 to 'dumpster fire,' Pitt basketball coaches inherited vastly different programs
The day Ben Howland left Pitt for UCLA, Julius Page figured he had two choices: The NBA or transfer.
He chose neither.
Why did the 17th-most prolific scorer in Pitt history decide to stay for his senior year when the coach who recruited and developed him was now on the West Coast?
That’s an easy one: Jamie Dixon, who was Howland’s top assistant, got the job.
So began one of the most seamless and ultimately successful coaching transitions in Pitt sports history, perhaps third only to football coach Jackie Sherrill replacing Johnny Majors in 1977 and Jock Sutherland replacing Pop Warner 53 years earlier.
Dixon, who won 328 games and went to 11 NCAA Tournaments in 13 seasons at Pitt, left for TCU after the 2015-16 season. Friday, he spoke to the Tribune-Review in between preparations for Saturday’s Big 12 game against West Virginia.
Dixon was far from new to the Pitt program — he had been Howland’s top assistant for four year — but said it’s important for anyone taking charge of a program to have an “open mind.”
“It’s important to come in with not having all the answers,” he said. “Sometimes, you don’t get it right right away.”
Jeff Capel is not as fortunate as Dixon.
Capel, whose team meets Virginia on Saturday at Petersen Events Center in the final stages of what will be Pitt’s sixth consecutive season without a winning ACC record, said Tuesday night after an 82-67 loss at Florida State he inherited “a dumpster fire.”
There’s no arguing the use of that phrase, especially after the NCAA sanctioned Pitt’s athletics department and placed it on three years probation for — among other items — coaching-related violations during the tenure of former basketball coach Kevin Stallings.
Pitt has had six coaching changes in the Big East/ACC eras and three first-year coaches — Dixon, Capel and Paul Evans — managed to win more games than his predecessor.
In 1986, Evans replaced Dr. Roy Chipman and took a team that was 15-14 and ended up with a 25-8 record, the Big East regular season co-championship and a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Howland’s record in his first season in 1999-2000 (13-15) was almost identical to Ralph Willard’s (14-16) from the season before. But Howland was 19-14 and in the NIT his second year and 29-6 and No. 9 in the final Associated Press poll his third.
In his second season, Capel is trying to create a similar turnaround, but asking him to do it so soon is not realistic. Pitt has lost six of its past eight and must win all four of its remaining games to finish 10-10 in the ACC.
Circumstances were dramatically different for Dixon, who replaced Howland for the 2003-04 season. He immediately led Pitt to a school-record 31 victories, a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament and a Sweet 16 berth for the third consecutive year.
That team included Carl Krauser, Page, Chevon Troutman and Jaron Brown.
“He inherited a well-oiled machine,” Page said. “Not to take anything away from Jamie, but I think anybody that came in and pretty much kept everything the same would have had success with that team.”
But what shouldn’t go unnoticed is Pitt lost what Dixon called its “three best players” from the previous season — Brandin Knight, Donatas Zavackas and Ontario Lett — and still won the Big East regular-season championship.
“Those guys set the tone (for Pitt’s basketball resurgence),” Dixon said.
Meanwhile, Dixon had recruited and helped develop replacements while working for Howland, and in 2003 he brought in a freshman class of his own that included Antonio Graves, Chris Taft and Aaron Gray.
Dixon knew what to expect from his players in his first year, ignoring preseason predictions that placed Pitt in the middle of the Big East.
“We were losing a lot of guys, but I knew what we had, what we needed and what we had to go get,” Dixon said.
That’s an advantage Dixon had over Stallings and Capel, who came from other programs.
Before news of the sanctions became public Thursday, Page, who analyzes the current Pitt team for 93.7 FM on its pregame show, said he “absolutely” agrees with Capel’s “dumpster fire” remark.
Capel is starting to reverse the program’s downward spiral. Capel’s six ACC victories this season are two more than Stallings totaled in 36 games. In fact, Dixon remains the only Pitt coach with a winning ACC record (11-7 in 2013-14, the inaugural season).
Then-athletic director Scott Barnes hired Stallings to replace Dixon before leaving for Oregon State in 2016. The hiring was criticized at the introductory news conference after Barnes’ controversial use of a search firm headed by a former colleague who was Vanderbilt athletic director when Stallings was hired there.
“From a recruiting standpoint, I think after coach Dixon everybody was expecting Pitt to make a big splash (hire),” Page said. “I don’t think a lot of people anticipated or were really rooting for Kevin Stallings (to get the job).”
“In so many ways, Kevin was fighting an uphill battle. It wasn’t something that had the players thrilled. I don’t want to disrespect his name like he was a nobody, but it wasn’t anything that would make the players or the fans really excited.”
Even with the return of seniors Jamel Artis, Michael Young, Sheldon Jeter and Chris Jones, Pitt managed to finish 16-17 (4-14 in the ACC) in the first post-Dixon season. Pitt lost all 18 conference games in 2018 and Stallings was fired days later.
It didn’t help anyone at Pitt when Cameron Johnson and Ryan Luther transferred to North Carolina and Arizona, respectively.
“(Capel) got the job relatively late (March 27, 2018), so getting recruits in here wasn’t going to be the easiest thing to do,” Page said, noting Pitt’s alumni base was still angry over Stallings. “It probably was the worst-case scenario that anybody could take over.”
Capel recruited three talented freshmen in the months before the start of the 2018-19 season and one of them, point guard Xavier Johnson, earned ACC All-Freshman honors while leading the team in scoring (15.5 points per game). But there isn’t enough experience or talent to support Johnson.
“Since Xavier arrived, he had to take some of the burden of scoring the basketball,” Page said. “It wasn’t about him just getting in where he fit in. He was our leading scorer last year.”
Page said when Knight played as a freshman in 1999-2000 (Howland’s first season), he started 25 games, but was not asked to carry the scoring load until his junior and senior seasons. “He had time to grow.”
“That’s really rare for a guy to have to come in and not only run the show, but also be the leading scorer,” Page said of Johnson. “It’s a lot to ask a 17-, 18-year-old kid to do.”
“He has to learn and get better on the run. We can’t really hide his weaknesses, because he’s a guy who is in a spotlight. Every little thing we’re going to nitpick at him with.
“(Knight) struggled also (as a freshman), but we weren’t looking and dissecting him the way we’re doing with Xavier for obvious reasons.”
Page said he likes how Capel has taken charge of the program.
“We become impatient, including myself,” he said. “Every time they show those flashes, I want it to stay consistent. Inconsistency is part of young team that’s growing. We’re on this roller-coaster ride. You get high, ‘we’re back,’ and they hit the low, and it’s ‘Oh, my God, it’s the end of the world.’ We start to lose our minds.”
Ronald Ramon enrolled at Pitt in time for Dixon’s second season and scored 1,096 points in four years. He’s now Pitt’s assistant director of basketball operations.
Reminded of those good times, Ramon said, “It was then, and it is now. We’re making progress.
“We look at that era and where the program was and we want to get back to that.”
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Jerry DiPaola is a TribLive reporter covering Pitt athletics since 2011. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in 1993, first as a copy editor and page designer in the sports department and later as the Pittsburgh Steelers reporter from 1994-2004. He can be reached at jdipaola@triblive.com.
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