Why do players stick so long with Pittsburgh?
In an era when talented players rarely stay in college longer than they have to and the NCAA tournament becomes an annual referendum on the value of so-called one-and-dones, No. 9 seed Pittsburgh is the ultimate anomaly.
Though Pitt coach Jamie Dixon has had players talented enough to leave early for the NBA — just last year, center Steven Adams parlayed one year at Pitt into becoming a lottery pick — the program’s long-term success has largely been built on four-year players. That often makes it difficult for freshmen to crack the rotation, especially playing the physical style that has become Pitt’s trademark.
Among the Panthers’ 10 rotation players are two fifth-year seniors and three others who started their Pitt careers with a redshirt season, a tactic common in college football but almost unheard of in hoops.
“Guys want to play right away,” said third-year sophomore forward Durand Johnson, who was scoring nearly nine points a game before suffering a season-ending knee injury in January. “It kind of hurts when you come in and your family wants to see you play, everyone’s excited and you’ve got to answer phone calls and text messages: Why you on the bench? Why aren’t you playing? That’s the hardest part to deal with. But once that year goes by, it can help a lot.”
Instead of transferring, though, Johnson looked at the track record of players such as Levon Kendall, Tray Woodall and Gilbert Brown, who used redshirt years to get stronger and develop their skills while doing everything else with the team, including regular practice time and going to road games.
While it isn’t the most fun year, they said, it was a smart longterm investment.
“(I didn’t like it) at first, but you just look at the track record of guys at Pitt and you understand maybe you weren’t as ready as you thought you were,” said reserve wing Chris Jones, who redshirted as a freshman last season. “Coming in like any other recruit, you expect to play. But you have to do what Coach thinks is best. We had a conversation about it, and there’s a lot of guys before me that have done the same thing and turned out to be great players.”