Men’s basketball: In first meeting since Elite Eight last year, Dixon finds redemption

Everyone remembers the shot. It sent Villanova to the Final Four in Detroit and ended the season… Everyone remembers the shot. It sent Villanova to the Final Four in Detroit and ended the season for Pitt.

With five seconds remaining, Villanova guard Scottie Reynolds raced down the court, absorbed contact from Pitt forward Gilbert Brown under the basket and scored the winning basket with a 10th of a second left on the clock.

Pitt guard Levance Fields watched a possible Final Four berth vanish before his eyes.

“Reynolds made a great play going to the basket,” Fields said. “It went from having a chance of going to overtime and possibly winning the game, to, you know, the season being over.”

Pitt sophomore forward DeJuan Blair was hunched over in the corner of the locker room after the loss.

“I was getting ready for overtime,” Blair said.

There would be no overtime. And the season that saw Pitt earn its first ever No. 1 ranking — and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament — was over.

When the 2009-10 schedule was released, Pitt players and fans circled the Feb. 21 primetime game against the Wildcats.

On Sunday, in front of the largest on-campus crowd in Pitt history, the Panthers got their revenge, dropping No. 3 Villanova, 70-65.

Pitt guard Jermaine Dixon, the only starter the Panthers returned from last season, was anointed with the task of stopping Scottie Reynolds on the last play of the Elite Eight game a year ago.

Dixon immediately took the blame for allowing Reynolds to beat him down the floor in the final seconds. While Sunday’s victory doesn’t erase the hurt of the last year’s defeat, it offers a source of consolation for Dixon.

“I wanted to win this game for the players that left last year,” Dixon said. “I felt bad for losing that game, I kind of felt responsible, I wanted to win that game for them.”

But Dixon isn’t looking for condolences. While revenge is sweet, the senior knows the win against the No. 3 Wildcats is substantial for other reasons.

“Last year is the past for us,” Dixon said. “The win just gets us one step closer to winning the regular season Big East championship this year.”

The Panthers, picked to finish ninth in the preseason Big East coaches’ poll, now have a legitimate shot to conquer a regular season Big East crown.

At 10-4 in Big East play, Pitt currently sits tied for third place in the conference with West Virginia. The Panthers are two games behind Syracuse and one game behind Villanova, but own the head-to-head tiebreaker against both teams.

Now, a team that was written off to finish in the bottom half of the best conference in America has a chance to shock the nation.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon thinks it starts with the leader of the team.

“Our guys believe in Jermaine Dixon,” Dixon said. “He gives us confidence, and he’s our toughest guy. This is his team.”

In three of Pitt’s six loses, Jermaine Dixon didn’t play. In a three-point loss at Seton Hall, the senior sat a portion of the game with a hand injury.

The Baltimore native didn’t turn in his best offensive performance on Sunday, shooting just 3-of-15 from the field. But Jamie Dixon thinks that stats are an inconsequential aspect of his game.

“Numbers aren’t so important to me,” coach Dixon said when asked about the senior’s output against Villanova. “You can look at our record when [Jermaine Dixon] has played and when he hasn’t played. He’s the leader of this team, and we just follow him.”

Dixon displayed his leadership on the defensive side of the ball, however, shutting down Reynolds for most of Sunday’s game. The senior tallied three steals, three blocks and forced Reynolds into six turnovers — his second most in a game this year.

When Jermaine Dixon faced such harsh criticism for his performance in last year’s tournament game, he took it personally. Dixon blamed himself for the loss, even though none of his teammates or coaches angled the criticism his way.

Now he’s taking the initiative in commanding a much greater responsibility: leading his team.

Jamie Dixon acknowledges the senior as the central figure of this team in every aspect.

“When he wants to leave from a pregame meal, that’s when we leave,” coach Dixon said of Jermaine.