Jamie Dixon on the loss to Rutgers: ‘Problems are ‘across the board.’

Saturday, 05 January 2013 16:08

Written by Ray Fittipaldo

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon replaced James Robinson in the starting lineup with sophomore Cameron Wright because Wright is the team’s best perimeter defender and wanted him to guard Rutgers’ leading scorer Eli Carter. But Dixon’s plan went awry when Rutgers coach Mike Rice did not start leading scorer Carter for a violation of teams.

Carter came into the game when Wright exited and scored 14 of his 23 points in the first half as the Scarlet Knights jumped out to a 39-25 lead at halftime.

“We started Cameron to try to get him going,” Dixon said. “I don’t know that that worked to our advantage.”

Not only did Wright not defend Carter well when he had an opportunity, but Wright was the only starter that did not score. Wright was coming off a 10-point effort off the bench in the Big East opener against Cincinnati.

Robinson had been identified as Pitt’s top perimeter defender early in the season. He helped shut down Lehigh’s C.J. McCollum, but he has apparently regressed in that area. Either that, or Dixon did not want to open up a can of worms by benching Woodall, his only senior starter.

Whatever the case, none of Pitts guards are defending well as Rutgers’ 51 percent shooting performance will attest.     

When asked if more changes were coming following Saturday’s loss, Dixon seemed to indicate that more changes might not fix the problems.

“We tried that with Cameron,” Dixon said. “We look at Cameron as one of our better defenders. He did a good job in some regards. It’s not one guy. It’s across the board. We have young guards other than Tray that need to understand. But it’s not just them. It’s across the board. You have to guard. To win on the road you have to hold a team under 40 percent. That’s all we talked about and we didn’t get it done.”