Pitt Guard Jermaine Dixon

[Dr Z]

For Miami of Ohio head coach Charlie Coles, the first half of Monday night's game against Pitt could not have gone any better if it had been scripted. Pitt's DeJuan Blair got into early foul trouble and was benched for the final nine minutes of the half. The RedHawks also forced Sam Young to be a distributor and Levance Fields to be a shooter, role reversals that put Pitt's offense out of sync.Coles had accounted for Pitt's big three and was thinking his team had a shot for an upset, being down by only five at halftime. One player Coles did not account for in the second half was Jermaine Dixon, Pitt's new starter at shooting guard. And it ended up costing the RedHawks.Dixon scored eight of his 14 points in the first 4:22 of the second half, leading the charge during a 16-2 run that was the difference in Pitt's 82-53 victory."Dixon killed us tonight," Coles said. "Boy, did he have a game. We weren't counting on that. That hurt us."If opposing coaches are going to force Dixon into making big shots, they might want to rethink their game plan. It appears as if he is more than up to the task of being a capable replacement for Ronald Ramon and Keith Benjamin.Dixon has proved to be a well-rounded player. In addition to demonstrating scoring ability, he has been a good distributor with six assists and only two turnovers in the first two games.Pitt coach Jamie Dixon also has given him the responsibility of playing defense against the other team's top scoring guard."He's a quiet kid," the coach said. "He doesn't say much. At the end of the game, he always seems to have more assists than I anticipate. We weren't sure what kind of defender he would be. You're not sure until you see it out there on the floor. I think he has the physical toughness and mental toughness to be a good defender for us."And he's taking good shots. All of those plays [against Miami], he was a secondary option and we hit him. And he got wide open 3s. It's tough for a junior-college kid, but he's a very physically and mentally mature young man. He's a very good addition to our team."Jermaine Dixon came to Pitt ready-made for major-college basketball. He played at Tallahassee (Fla.) Community College in the Panhandle Conference, which is universally regarded as the most competitive junior-college league in the country.At 6 feet 3 and 195 pounds, Dixon developed the physical traits and mental acuity to compete in the Big East."It was a good conference," he said. "We sent four or five guys to Division I last season."For the past four seasons, Ramon and Benjamin were stationary shooters who, for the most part, could not create their own shot. Dixon, the brother of NBA player Juan Dixon, is a different kind of player. A left-hander, he is more in the mold of Julius Page, a slashing guard who can take his man off the dribble and create shots for himself.It's an offensive asset the Panthers have not enjoyed since Page graduated in 2004.Outside shooting has not been a hallmark for Dixon throughout his career, but he demonstrated Monday that he is not a liability on the perimeter. On Pitt's first possession of the second half, Dixon nailed a 3-pointer to give the Panthers an eight-point lead. A few minutes later, he made another to make it a 12-point bulge.Dixon was 2 for 4 from 3-point range for the game and 6 for 9 from the field overall."Early in my career, before I came here, I was used to having the ball in my hands and creating for other people and not myself," Dixon said. "Now Levance [Fields] has the ball and I have to knock down open shots. I'm in the gym every night working on my shot and it's starting to come around. Hopefully, I'll keep hitting them."Jamie Dixon believes Jermaine can develop into an outside threat in time."That's something we've really worked on," the coach said of Jermaine Dixon's shooting. "We've been happy with everything he does. I just think he can become more of a consistent shooter. I think he has a good stroke. It's just not consistent."We're trying to get him to take a lot of shots. He's coming in before practice and taking them after practice. He's coming in late at night. I think he can be a real good shooter. And we're going to get him open shots because that's what we do. I think he's beginning to understand that, too."•NOTE -- An MRI on Gilbert Brown's injured left foot yesterday revealed that his stress fracture is improving as expected. Team trainer Tony Salesi said Brown will continue to do cardiovascular conditioning on the stationary bike and in the pool. Brown is being listed as questionable for Friday's game against Akron.Source