March Madness: Dixon continuing to climb coaching ranks

Everyone has to start somewhere.

For Pitt men’s basketball head coach Jamie Dixon, that… Everyone has to start somewhere.

For Pitt men’s basketball head coach Jamie Dixon, that somewhere was the basketball courts of New York.

Years after spending summer vacations playing ball in his parents’ home state, Dixon now has the most wins of any NCAA Division I coach in his first eight seasons as a head coach. He now leads the Panthers into the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed.

There is no argument that his 215 wins in eight seasons will give Dixon a case for being one of the best of all time, but he isn’t quick to praise himself.

“I don’t feel that at all,” Dixon said. “You just keep it in perspective. Players win the game — that will never change.”

Dixon grew up in Los Angeles, where baseball was the dominant sport. Yet when it came to basketball, which he had grown to love during his summers in New York, he always knew he felt something stronger about the sport.

“I always enjoyed playing, but I think I may have been a little bit different from all the other guys who were playing,” Dixon said. “I really enjoyed all aspects of the game, whatever it was, organizing leagues and teams or coaching in kids’ leagues.”

After a successful college basketball career at Texas Christian University, Dixon began his coaching career in a New Zealand high school league and then spent some time at UC Santa Barbara, Hawaii and Northern Arizona before landing a spot at Pitt as an associate coach and recruiting coordinator in 1999.

His move from assistant to head coach was not a decision that came without some close calculation on Dixon’s part as he was set to take over for longtime mentor and friend Ben Howland.

“I was at the crossroads in figuring out what I had to do and what I wanted to do,” Dixon said. “I really felt I wanted to be a head coach but I wasn’t in a rush to do it by a certain time. I wanted it to be at the right time in the right place with the right people around me.”

Dixon’s 215-59 career record should be enough to declare his decision a success,, but Dixon’s definition of success isn’t like most people’s.

“If you continue to improve any day, that’s where you’ll reach any goal you could think of,” Dixon said. “We don’t put it into games, wins and losses or selling tickets. It’s about these guys getting better individually and as a team.”

Because of his style of coaching that relies on discipline, defense and rebounding, Dixon recruits players with a strong work ethic. His model for recruitment is one that has been imitated by many assistant coaches who have worked with Dixon.

One characteristic of Dixon’s style of recruiting is having confidence in the recruit.

“If you believe a kid is good enough, is a quality kid who will get better and wants to get better and has the hunger, then you take that kid,” Dixon said. “You don’t question yourself because somebody ranked him lower who hasn’t even seen him play.

“I think you also have to envision where they’re going to be,” Dixon said. “Where a kid is at 16 is not where he is going to be at 20 or 21 and I think that is something that is very important to us.”

In his 2008 recruiting class, only one of Pitt’s recruits — Nasir Robinson — ranked in Rivals top 150 players. Other previously under-the-radar players in that class, like Ashton Gibbs and Travon Woodall, have flourished since arriving at Pitt.

Now, with the program thriving and having earned plenty of success throughout the past decade, the team has become involved in more than just the sport.

For Coach Dixon, his players and staff are a representation of the city of Pittsburgh and the University they attend. The added exposure that came with Pitt’s success has also taught Dixon about how to handle losing staff and players who move on to the next level. In fact, he got some advice from another Pittsburgh coaching legend.

“We had a couple assistants looking to be head coaches, and I remember talking to coach [Bill] Cowher when he was here about it,” Dixon said. “He said, ‘with your success, you’ve got to be ready for coaches to move and be moving on.’ He said that was something he really had to deal with on the Steelers.”

Even with assistants and players coming and going, two things remain constant in Dixon’s system — hard work and accountability.

“Aw man,” senior guard Brad Wanamaker said with a laugh. “That first year was tough, man. Coach was always on my head about things that I wasn’t doing right. But looking back on it, he was just worrying about me getting the best out of it and improving to be the best player that I could be.”

Now Wanamaker gets to watch Dixon break in players from the sidelines.

“It’s actually funny because Gilbert [Brown], Gary [McGhee] and I, we constantly laugh about it,” Wanamaker said. “We tell them, ‘We were in your shoes at one point too in our careers. Whatever he is saying, just listen to him.’ We constantly tell them each and every day, if you listen to coach and obey what he says, you’ll be good.”