Recovering from losses won’t be easy

After an incredible buildup to the 2006-07, Pitt again stumbled in the Sweet 16 with what… After an incredible buildup to the 2006-07, Pitt again stumbled in the Sweet 16 with what was supposed to be its best team yet. Three starters departed and three impact newcomers came aboard. The newcomers – freshmen DeJuan Blair, Brad Wanamaker and redshirt freshman Gilbert Brown – appear ready to play right away, but the expectations are not nearly as high for this year’s team.

There are plenty of positives and arguably more negatives, so let’s handle some of the questions Pitt fans are asking.

Q: How good can Blair be this year?

A: The key to that question is the phrase, “this year.” Saint Louis coach Rick Majerus compared Blair to one of the greatest power forwards in basketball history, Karl Malone, after Pitt’s 69-58 win over Majerus’ club. He also mentioned Tim Duncan in his critique of Blair.

Those guys are both power forwards, but the 6-foot-7-inch Blair is playing center for Pitt. While he does have a 7-3 wingspan, Blair will rely on his hands and his quickness, which is astonishing for a 270-pound kid, to combat his height deficits.

This is one of the few cases where someone having a Napoleon complex is good. It looks like Blair plays with a chip on his shoulder and, more importantly, like he loves to play the game. The fact that he can scream down the lane, two-hand slam a put-back dunk and land with a smile just makes it that much more fun.

So for this year, Blair will just keep soaking up the fun. He should be somewhere in the 12 points, 10 rebounds a game area, with the potential to do more. There isn’t a whole lot of downside for this kid, but expect some trouble against some Big East 7-footers.

Q: Will Pitt coach Jamie Dixon be willing to run more with a guard-heavy roster?

A: College basketball is a strange sport. Unlike any other game, the coach is really the focal point of the entire program. It’s his style that wins games, and the players seemingly just fit into the coach’s plan.

If that’s the case at Pitt, and we saw something similar to that Sunday night against Saint Louis, I’d err on the side of the same-old style. Levance Fields said Saturday that the team loves to run, but I think Dixon might be afraid to run his team with the supposed big boys of the Big East.

This is where Pitt will start to struggle. Unless Dixon realizes what he has in terms of personnel and team strengths, I just don’t see the Panthers straying from their halfcourt man-to-man defense that doesn’t create turnovers and the motion offense that ends quite regularly with an awkward 3-pointer.

Q: What kinds of rotations will Pitt use to combat its size problems?

A: I’ve asked Dixon on several occasions already this year if he’d be willing to play a three- or four-guard rotation at any point, similar to Villanova two seasons ago. He seemed uneasy with the idea, and I’d say that’s because Dixon doesn’t like to press. To use a multiple-guard rotation regularly would require constant, full-court ball pressure and forcing turnovers, both of which Dixon rarely includes in his plans.

Instead, we’ll see a lot of Brown, Wanamaker, Keith Benjamin and Tyrell Biggs off the bench. Benjamin, Brown and Wanamaker can provide physical presence on the wing and Biggs might be better than people think. In fact, a starting lineup fit for the Big East would be different than the one currently employed by Dixon.

Slide Biggs into the lineup and have Ramon come off the bench. Wanamaker should not be playing point guard – he’s a wing – and Ramon is too small to play the 2. Put Biggs with Blair and Sam Young and put Mike Cook at the 2 with Levance Fields handling the ball.

That’s not a dig on Ramon or Wanamaker, but that duo, paired with Benjamin and Brown, could really provide some scoring bursts off the bench while Pitt’s starting lineup would be a little bigger and better at rebounding.

Q: After three games, what is your early assessment of Pitt and how do you see the Panthers finishing?

A: Seeing that everyone looked great this weekend against Houston Baptist and North Carolina A’T, I paid more attention to how the team played against Saint Louis on Sunday.

In that game, Fields stood out as a gutsy leader capable of taking over a game offensively. He looks like he wants the ball. Not in a Carl Krauser kind of way, but in a “I’m going to make this shot and win this game” kind of way.

Blair and Young will need to keep scoring in bunches, but the keys will be Cook and Ramon. The lineup is probably set in stone, and it goes without saying that Benjamin, Biggs, Brown and Wanamaker have to score off the bench, so Ramon has to be consistent from 3 and Cook needs to use his physical style of play to bully perimeter defenders.

I can’t see Dixon pressing. I can’t see Pitt running after the schedule’s difficulty increases. I can see, however, a 12-6 or 11-7 Big East finish, a 21-10 overall record, a semifinals appearance in the Big East tournament and a first- or second-round exit from the NCAA Tournament.