Men’s Basketball: Pitt enjoys off-court success in academics

Another Final Four has passed, and Pitt was left out once again.

After Pitt’s loss in the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament, contributing players felt dejected and torn as they slouched in locker room chairs. Some hung their heads, and others untied their shoes for the final time as Panthers.

But many probably attempted to prematurely solve the question, “Was it a successful season?”

More than two weeks have passed since the stinging loss, and the answer seems to be clearing up.

On the court, 2013-2014 was just the third 10-plus loss season in the Jamie Dixon-era. A second-round loss to a team that hadn’t lost since September is nothing to be ashamed of.

It seems like a pedestrian year, but a lack of off-the-court issues and unprecedented team discipline helped the program reach a new level of respect, which is a legitimate reason for players to lift their chins.

Cameron Wright said that clean record can be attributed to the players the coaching staff wants on its team.

“[They don’t] just target guys who want to be really great at basketball,” Wright, a redshirt junior guard and business major, said. “They target guys who really want to be great at life.”

Before Pitt’s opening-round game in the ACC Tournament, ACC Commissioner John Swofford honored Wright with the new-look conference’s Skip Prosser Award. Swofford annually presents it to an ACC player who best combines 60 percent of classroom achievements with 40 percent of on-court performance.

In addition, four Panthers — Wright and three players enrolled in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, including Jamel Artis, Josh Newkirk, Michael Young — were selected to the All-ACC Academic Team.

Seven players — half of the team’s 14-man roster — were nominated. Freshman Joshua Ko and sophomore Joseph Uchebo, both enrolled in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and junior Aron Nwankwo, who is majoring in neuroscience, made the cut. Wright had also made the Big East All-Academic team three previous times.

Virginia Tech was the only other school with four selections.

While recruiting his freshman class, which received four nominations, Dixon not only saw big-time prospects, but big-time minds.

“Character in kids,” Dixon said. “There’s a lot of good players out there who we’d like to recruit, but there are things that come with them, and we have to make those decisions, and obviously how they represent the conference, the team and the University has been very clear to me by my administration.”

In the words of Dixon, Talib Zanna “didn’t do the right thing” before Pitt’s season-opener and served a one-game suspension. But aside from that, the team has resisted issues with rule-breaking.

Pitt players — and coaches, for that matter — have steered free of local crime reports, and the Panthers hope to make it through the school year without recording an arrest.

“I think we all come from pretty good families, so I think we just don’t really have any past instances where we’ve been in trouble prior to coming to college,” sophomore guard James Robinson said. “Once we got here, our coaches held us to really high standards, which is a really good thing for us. And also, we’ve spent a lot of time together off the court as a team, so we hold each other accountable, too.”

“That just plays a factor in everybody just staying out of the way off the court,” Robinson added.

Perhaps the most stunning of Pitt’s behavioral triumphs appeared in nightly box scores.

Pitt’s players did not pick up any technical fouls in their 36 games. The team beat its coach in that regard, since Dixon was whistled for one after arguing a call at Syracuse.

According to Dixon, most people don’t realize that these are some of the reasons that led Swofford and his band of ACC commissioners to Pitt’s door in 2011, knocking with an invitation to join the conference.

“When conferences went to look to expand, those are the things that factored in as well, how you do things, and the types of kids you have and the decisions you make. I think we made that decision long ago in this program at this University that those things matter,” Dixon said.

A decade ago, the NCAA developed a statistic known as Academic Progress Rate to measure the overall eligibility of a team and to project each team’s graduation rate.

NCAA-member programs that fail to piece together consecutive seasons above the 900-mark — graduating about45 percent of players — in APR could be subjected to postseason and scholarship penalties.

This past season, Pitt ranked highly at 19th with a 975 APR out of 68 teams that made the NCAA Tournament. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida released the results.

What’s more, Dixon’s players have posted an incredible 80-plus percent graduation rate since 2002.

All of this will allow Dixon to cross his legs and get comfortable after some of this summer’s recruiting trips, since academics are a thought he will not have to address.

“APR matters, GPA matters,” Dixon said. “I think that once again will show where our program is both well-rounded and respected throughout the country and the conference.”

But when evaluating his squad’s overall discipline, Dixon said there’s room to grow.

“We have had some guys who’ve done some great things. I would not say it [was] our most defensive-disciplined team,” he said.