FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Jamie Dixon didn't want to play West Virginia.
When the app alert buzzed my phone inside the Minnesota Twins' springtime stadium Monday afternoon, the news that Pitt's winningest basketball coach was leaving for TCU, no matter how much I might have braced for it, no matter how much I'd finally begun believing it could actually happen ... man, it still shot all the way through.
Jamie was gone.
He was here for 13 mostly wonderful winters, which saw all of this piled onto the mantle alongside the Panthers' climb to a nationally respected program. And then, with a momentary buzz to the palm, he was gone.
Jamie was gone. That was my first thought.
My second thought, for reasons I'm still navigating, was that he wouldn't play West Virginia.
And my third, in rapid-fire succession, was that Scott Barnes needs to beat down every piece of pavement in the land to unearth the next Pat Narduzzi.
Hm. Maybe they were all related.
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Dixon controlled every element of the basketball program, controlled his team's schedule, controlled his players' working environs from court to classroom, controlled every screw on every hinge on every door to every corridor of the Petersen Events Center, and that wasn't about to change even when Steve Pederson, the man who signed Dixon to one of NCAA basketball's richer contracts through 2023, was fired early last year. There was a new chancellor in Patrick Gallagher, a new AD in Scott Barnes, soon a new football coach in Narduzzi, but nothing was about to change atop Cardiac Hill.
Jamie Dixon's 2015-16 in images. -- DKPS____________________
