No Shortage of Contenders for Beast of the Big East

Pittsburgh had more fun in Coach Jamie Dixon’s rookie season, though don’t blame its problems on a “sophomore jinx.”

The competition in the Big East Conference, not superstition, has made things difficult for the Panthers, the second-year coach said.

Pittsburgh has struggled again recently in Big East play after a strong stretch, but such is life in the nation’s deepest conference. Dixon, a North Hollywood native and graduate of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High, said he expects better things in the NCAA tournament, because the Big East has prepared Pittsburgh to face the best.

“This is the best our conference has been in my six years here, and it’s probably the best conference in the country,” he said. “From the beginning of the year, I said this is as balanced as the conference has been in a long time, and that’s what a lot of people are saying now. The numbers speak for themselves.”

The Atlantic Coast Conference tops the Ratings Percentage Index chart, the Pacific 10 is second and the Big East third. RPI, however, doesn’t reveal the whole story.

The Big East is widely considered stronger overall than the ACC and Pac-10. Although RPI is among the criteria the NCAA uses in selecting the tournament field, it’s not the only one, which explains why some projections have the Big East receiving as many as seven tournament bids.

“That’s the number that you hear everyone talking about now, seven, and I really have a hard time trying to figure out how one of those seven could be left out,” Dixon said. “Right now, it really is that clear cut.”

The Panthers, 18-6 overall and 8-5 in the Big East after consecutive losses, are expected to join league-leading Boston College, defending national champion Connecticut, Georgetown, Notre Dame, 2002-03 national champion Syracuse and Villanova in receiving bids.

In basketball, the conference is doing just fine, despite the defections of Miami and Virginia Tech to the ACC after the 2003-04 season. Boston College also will join the ACC to start the 2005-06 athletic seasons, and the Big East will add Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette and South Florida.

“Things change when you have change in a conference, and sometimes it can make you a stronger conference, as far as balance and depth,” Dixon said. “And every conference probably feels it’s a little better than everybody thinks, but you can see what our conference has done this year.

“We’re also the same conference that has the two last national champions. The team that won the championship last season [Connecticut] didn’t win the regular-season conference title, and the team that won before that [Syracuse] didn’t win the conference tournament. That speaks to how good the conference has been.”

The Panthers became good again shortly after UCLA Coach Ben Howland, who spent four years at Pittsburgh before turning the team over to his former assistant, and Dixon arrived in 1999.

Dixon joined Howland’s first staff as associate head coach and recruiting coordinator after having worked under his longtime friend and mentor at Northern Arizona. They also briefly worked together as assistants at UC Santa Barbara.

Dixon’s recruiting efforts helped Pittsburgh become a national power.

The 2001-02 team set a Pittsburgh record for victories at 29-6, received the school’s first NCAA tournament berth since the 1992-93 season and advanced to the Sweet 16. In 2002-03, the Panthers were 28-5 and advanced to their second consecutive Sweet 16.

Dixon succeeded Howland, who left for UCLA after the season, and had a sensational rookie year.

He was selected the 2003-04 Big East coach of the year for leading the Panthers to a school-record 31 victories and their third successive Sweet 16 appearance. The Panthers, who won 18 in succession to start last season, opened 10-0 this season and appeared headed for another smooth ride.

Then the road got bumpy.

On Jan. 2, Bucknell handed Pittsburgh its first loss, 69-66, in a nonconference game. Pittsburgh also was upset by Georgetown and St. John’s in its first four Big East games. Then after a 6-1 stretch, the Panthers have lost their last two games to Villanova and West Virginia, which swept the season series.

Dixon’s optimism has not waned despite the team’s poor play. After three Sweet 16s, he said the Panthers could take another step in the NCAA tournament.

Said Dixon: “We can play better.”

Improved Formula?

In its effort to improve the RPI as a selection tool, the selection committee for the first time will use a weighted version that puts greater emphasis on road victories.

“Relative to the RPI, it was a refinement that all of the committee felt reflected the current circumstance in college basketball,” Bob Bowlsby, Iowa athletic director and chairman of the Division I men’s basketball committee, said Wednesday. “If you take all 328 teams and throw them in a pot, look at all the games they play during the course of a year, approximately two-thirds are decided in favor of the home team.

“That being the case, we wanted the RPI to be minimally adjusted so that it reflected the difficulty of winning on the road, and gave appropriate rewards when teams do achieve wins on the road. Conversely, it also represents a bigger penalty for home teams that don’t defend their home floor. If they’re among that third that actually loses on their home floor, then it’s a bigger black mark than it was before.”

The new formula, however, won’t carry greater weight than other factors in selecting the teams for the 65-team field, Bowlsby said.

“So far, we haven’t gone through a selection process using this RPI,” he said. “It’s one of many tools we use. We consider it a blunt object more than anything we would use to discriminate among four or five closely grouped teams.

“But it certainly is a good way to numerically compare among those that are possibilities for inclusion in the tournament.”

Chasing Hoosiers

Top-ranked and undefeated Illinois (28-0, 14-0 in the Big Ten) has the third-longest overall winning streak to start a season in Big Ten history.

Only Indiana, twice, had better starting records. The Hoosiers won their first 31 games in 1974-75 and went 32-0 in 1975-76 -- the last time a team completed a season undefeated.

The Fighting Illini have two games remaining before the Big Ten tournament in Chicago. Illinois, the lone undefeated team, has been ranked first for 12 consecutive weeks, and received every first-place vote in the last four polls.

Breaks in their schedule have contributed to the Illini’s success, Coach Bruce Weber said.

“The way the schedule has worked out has been good,” he said. “The kids come back [from trips] and everyone around campus tells them how great they are.

“Then we have a chance to kind of get them back down to earth. We’ve also had a chance to get their legs back, especially the guys who play a lot of minutes, so the schedule has worked out as far as the recovery time.”