Pitt Beats Its Rap This Season, Emerges as a Power in Big East

When Georgetown Coach John Thompson said in November he believed Pittsburgh would be the Big East team to beat by February, Paul Evans said he thought “it was a case of one of the older guys on the block trying to take advantage of the newest guy.”

Evans, Pitt’s first-year coach, knows better now. The newest guy is in first place in the Big East. He has the best rebounder in the nation in Jerome Lane, maybe the second-best center in the nation in Charles Smith, a team that has lost only two games all season on the road, and a group of players who have gone from being perceived as a bunch of selfish, underachievers to solid contenders for the Final Four.

No. 8-ranked Pitt is a team completely rejuvenated from last season’s version. Pitt had won eight straight games before Wednesday’s loss to Georgetown, and has lost just one Big East road game--perhaps proving Thompson a reluctant prophet.

You know the Panthers have arrived because one of the Pitt players, irrepressible junior swing man Demetreus Gore, has made a rap video, called “Pitt on the Rise.”

“Listen everybody to what I am sayin’

Pitt is on the rise and there’s no delayin’

Excitin’ the crowds with the style we’re playin’

And all our adversaries we’ll be slayin’ ”

A year ago, while Roy Chipman was struggling as a lame-duck coach (he resigned in December, effective at the end of the season), there was more moanin’ than rappin’ on The Hill. Lane, who leads the nation with 13.4 rebounds per game, said he would rather be benched than play power forward. Smith simply refused to play center, as Chipman had ordered. Gore and Curtis Aiken did too much shooting from outside, and the Panthers lost nine of their last 11 games. The joke on campus was that discipline was an elective.

“We just wanted the season to be over,” Lane said. “We didn’t even want to play any more games. Nobody was really into it. They came, they really didn’t care. Show up for practice, nobody really wanted to practice. Come in and do what you want to do, people were fighting each other.”

So why have the Panthers changed so dramatically?

Evans is the primary reason. Or just the threat of Evans, the former Naval Academy coach whose success in six seasons at Annapolis led the Pitt decision-makers to believe he might just be another Bob Knight or Mike Krzyzewski, two other disciplinarians who coached at service academies.

Evans considered going to Northwestern, but he wanted a job “where the cupboard wasn’t bare,” and Pitt certainly had players. But the Panthers were so scared Evans would bring a lot of spit-shine-Mess Hall-atten-HUT discipline to Pittsburgh, they decided among themselves to straighten up before Evans even got to campus.

Freshman Rod Brookin already had signed with Chipman when he turned on the TV in March and saw Evans taking Navy to the final eight of the NCAA tournament. “I saw this coach really losing his mind on the sideline. I turned to my brother and and said, ‘I hope I don’t ever have to be coached by a guy like that.’ Then, (Pitt) hired him. I didn’t know what to think.”

Lane knew. “You just expected, that coming from Navy, he’d be a hard-nosed dude. He changed Navy around and we figured the same thing could happen with us.”

Exactly. The Panthers of last season (15-14, 6-10 in the Big East) are 21-5, 10-3 in the Big East. Evans came in and said, “Last year you did it your way and you saw the results; this year we are going to do it my way.”

Asked if there was any talk of players transferring when he took the job, Evans said, “Yeah, from me. I told them if anybody didn’t want to do it my way, you’re welcome to hit the door.”

Players didn’t dare pout about what positions they were assigned. No one even dared to throw that old Panthers favorite, the behind-the-back pass.

“The fourth week of practice, somebody tried a behind-the-back,” Lane said. “No need for me to tell you his reaction ‘cause you can’t print it, anyway.”

This week in practice, Smith, a 6-10 center who plays sometimes too much like the gentleman he is, threw up a finesse shot when Evans wanted a dunk. “Join the damn ballet,” Evans screamed. When Evans heard that Lane used to go from the coach’s best pal to the doghouse under Chipman, the new coach explained there would be no further inconsistencies “because for the next three years, Jerome, I’m going to be a complete SOB to you every day.”

The players have responded even better than Evans expected. And he also found their unruly and uncoachable reputation was exaggerated. “The perception from a lot of people is that they were just a bunch of thugs,” Evans said. “When I got here, I discovered that they’re good kids. I met with Curtis Aiken when I first took the job and he said to me, ‘We’ve got good guys here. Jerome is a little immature, but that’s about it.’ ”

To change the public’s perception of his team, Evans had several players appear at banquets and community functions, at which they were exceedingly charming. To change the way they played, Evans altered just about everything.

Evans found that Smith, his all-America candidate, didn’t even know how to shoot a left-handed layup properly. Smith, whom Evans moved to the high post two weeks ago, has averaged 17 points and nine rebounds a game and has won three recent games with last-second heroics.

Evans does not talk publicly about what happened with Pitt under Chipman. He would rather his players not say much about Chipman, either, but that never stopped Lane, whose statements sometimes are as strong as his rebounds.

“This proves it was just the coaching; it wasn’t the players,” Lane said. “Coach Evans just came in and turned everybody’s tactics around. He turned Demetreus from being wild, as they said, into a controlled player. Curtis is not shooting as much as he was last year and everything is under control. Mike Woodson (the sophomore point guard) is not thinking about scoring as much as he is running the team. And Charles is doing the same old thing.”

Lane is doing it as a rebounder, not the dribbling, jump-shooting, perimeter player he’d prefer. If he holds off Yale’s Chris Dudley and Navy’s David Robinson (both 7-footers), the 6-6 Lane will become the shortest player to lead the nation in rebounding since 6-5 Elgin Baylor 30 years ago.

All season, he has stayed in the low post with bigger players and hit double figures in scoring and rebounding in 21 of Pitt’s 25 games. In nine games against teams that have been ranked in the top 20 at some time this season, Lane has averaged 21 points and 15 rebounds.

Earlier, Lane had said, “Everybody on our team was greedy for points last year. I figured if everybody was greedy and tried to score (again this season), we’d lose again. That’s why I’m greedy for rebounds. Coach can’t fuss at me for being greedy for rebounds, can he?”

Gore’s rap line on Lane in the video:

“Getting all the boards like he is insane

Is a board-crashin’ brother -- Jerome Lane.”

Evans has thrown Lane out of practice three times this season, but not lately. Lane had 22 points and 18 rebounds against Arkansas, 24 and 12 in the first game against Georgetown, 26 and 15 against Syracuse.

“I figured I could get maybe 10 rebounds a game,” he said, “but, yeah, 13 a game kinda surprises me, because it’s not like I’ve got a big butt and can move people out. A guy compared me to Wes Unseld and Charles Barkley, but those guys went 250 and more. So being No. 1 (in rebounding), at first, was a big shock to me. If I had another 20 pounds, that would be one thing.”

It also would be frightening to opposing teams. As it is, Aiken and Gore are in shooting slumps and Pitt has won eight straight, anyway. Lane’s play has been a surprise, but Evans says he is pleased most with winning on the road, something the Panthers rarely did in past seasons. Evans isn’t about to try and explain how Pitt, in Big East games, has shot 45 percent at home but 53 percent on the road.

The fact that the Pitt players are talking about wanting to do anything “real bad” in itself shows the Panthers have a new passion. Every seat has been sold out for every home game this season at Pitt, and scalpers were getting $35 for $8 tickets to the Syracuse game.

Aiken, the only senior who plays a lot, may be enjoying the ride more than any other Pitt player.

“I can’t speak for the other players,” he said. “But I know I appreciate the chance, a second chance, at being able to do this the right way. We’ve been through a lot here. Sometimes it seemed like hell. But we feel good about each other now, we feel really good about Coach Evans bringing so much out of us. Last year was a long time ago.”