RE: SU basketball suffering for abandoning the BE?
I can’t speak to the others but switching conferences definitely had an impact on Pitt basketball.
In fact, Jamie Dixon left because Pitt joined the ACC. Had that never happened, I have no doubt whatsoever that Dixon would still be the coach at Pitt.
Don’t get me wrong, Pitt still obviously made the right move. Dixon just has to get over it or move on to another school. He clearly chose the latter and I sincerely wish him well. He was always a class act here and I have nothing but nice things to say about him and the job he and Howland did in building this program.
However, Pitt basketball had become too dependent on New York City area kids to survive. Literally 75% of our roster were kids from Northern New Jersey or New York City. It honestly made our program what it was, which was a really good Big East basketball program during their time at Pitt. However, playing in the Garden multiple times per year was a really big draw to those kids. Playing in Greensboro, North Carolina is not. That is why Dixson left. He didn’t think he could recruit anywhere else on the eastern seaboard and he didn’t think kids from New York City had any interest in playing in a Southern-based conference.
Obviously, I strongly disagree with that assumption. I think lots of New York City area kids and really kids from all over the country would have interest in playing and what is generally considered the best league in college basketball. Also, and more importantly, there are lots of good basketball players everywhere – not just in New York City. Set up some recruiting bases in Atlanta and Washington DC and Philadelphia and Charlotte and you’ll be fine.
Still, that’s definitely what drove him out of Pitt. I have no doubt about that because we have mutual acquaintances and he has told them that directly several times. He was bitterly disappointed that Pitt left the Big East — which he thought was perfect for Pitt basketball — for the ACC. Again, that’s just how it goes. Football runs the show and we had to do that to save our football program no matter what.
As for the overall quality of the Big East versus the ACC, I would say they were pretty comparable. The Big East was really, really good and deep. However, the ACC is probably better because of North Carolina and Duke. I don’t know that the mid-level teams are quite as good as they were in the Big East, but the top teams are truly outstanding.
Still, and I know this ruffles people’s fathers, so I will only say it once, the tournament is no contest. As someone who has attended multiple of each, I can confidently tell you that the Big East tournament blows away the ACC tournament 10 out of 10 times. I do like that the ACC tournament is much cheaper to attend. That’s definitely a feather in its cap. Also, it’s a totally different vibe and it’s nice walking around sleepy Greensboro having waffles and what not. However, it’s only cheaper to attend because it’s inferior in literally every single way.
The ACC tournament is older, so you would think that would give it a tradition advantage. However, that’s even that is mitigated by the fact that Madison Square Garden is such a famously historic facility that you really feel like you are someplace very special while you are there. It’s just not even a contest between that experience and the Greensboro Coliseum.
As I said, that’s all water over the dam now. We are in the ACC now and we are never going back. However, you can still tell the truth about things and no fan who has experienced both tournaments is going to tell you that they prefer the ACC tournament to the Big East tournament. If they tell you that, they are lying to you or they hate things like electricity, excitement and fun.
|
/
SU basketball suffering for abandoning the BE?
