Collier: Hey, hey, hey, Gary McGhee
Share with others:
An evident cascade of emotional moments will splash over Pitt's seniors before the season finale today against Villanova, but even in another of those robustly successful winters where the best moments are still only imagined, not all of basketball's little moments should be weighed with the same scale.
Where does a moment like the one inside the Pitt locker room the other night in Tampa, Fla., belong in the soul of this team, in the long-term memory of coach Jamie Dixon and that of his senior center? Can there be a better moment than the one that flared from nothing between the record-breaking coach and the 22-year-old he has called the best Pitt defender ever at his position, between he and his Gary McGhee?
Dixon had just won his 214th career game, more than any coach in the first eight seasons of any career, anywhere, but his unplanned, unabashed burst of spontaneous praise for the post man left both men misty.
"I just spoke from the heart," Dixon said after a middle-of-the-night plane ride and very little sleep. "Gary has just epitomized this program and the long way it has come, and he may have taken it to another step with his passion. I'm starting to hear from a lot of friends who doubted him coming out of high school. It's not so much the results with him, the production, the numbers, it's the effort he plays with.
"Things weren't going too well for him in the first half, but, in the second, he was all over the floor. All over the floor."
In 14 second-half minutes that night, McGhee threw his 6-foot-11 and no-fat 250-pound self into every little crisis that can arise from a halftime deficit on the road. He scored nine points, raked four rebounds, stole the ball, blocked the ball, distributed the ball. If he could have helped by eating the ball, they'd be pumping his stomach today.
First Published March 5, 2011 12:00 am
