Is This Even News?

You know, because news has to fit into the category of something new? Another overachieving Pitt basketball team claws their way through the regular season (including some impressive wins over Big East powers) only to get dumped within the first three round. Yep, it happens all the time.

Last year's team was supposed to be the one who really changed the tune, but they managed to lose despite having the most talent for a Pitt B-ball team in the Howland/Dixon era. And now Pitt again loses to a team they should have beat in the first weekend of the Tourney (ahem, Bradley).

I'm sure there will be plenty of talk about how Pitt teams can only go so far without impact talent (fairly accurate) and also the limitations of the program that Ben Howland echoed right after he left (Pitt will never jump into the upper echelon of programs). But really, I don't need to reiterate all that garbage.

Yeah, it's a bummer, but considering Pitt gets pretty much everyone back from this year's team (Jermaine Dixon, I love your toughness/defense/rebounding, but you had clearly hit a wall in your shooting skills; unfortunately, just another ugly final performance from a senior), it's not the apocalypse. This season was most definitely a success; I really shouldn't have to go into why this is so.

But I'm just as excited for next year's team because of: a solid recruiting class, Tre Woodall becoming much wiser, Dante Taylor spending the entire summer watching tapes of this year and realizing he needs to get stronger and much much tougher... and then hopefully doing something about it, Gil Brown getting stronger which will make him even more dangerous going to the hoop, Ash Gibbs shaking off a tough second half of the season (and being in crazy shape for next season), and Wanny legitimately putting up a 16/7/6 average next season (I'm not kidding, he's been so much better than I could have ever imagined). Oh yeah, and Gary McGhee getting even scarier (if that's possible).

There's much to celebrate, let's not let this most recent loss tarnish an enormously successful season for Jamie Dixon's team.