Ashton Gibbs leads Pitt’s ascent in the rankings

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Some players find their shooting stroke on a playground, others during endless hours in the school gym.

Ashton Gibbs traveled 8,500 miles from Pittsburgh to New Zealand to locate his.

Gibbs is one of college basketball’s most improved players on one of its most surprising teams. A key reason why is the extra time he put in last summer playing for Panthers coach Jamie Dixon’s United States under-19 team.

Gibbs, not one of the more heralded players, averaged a team-high 22.4 for the United States’ first world championship team in that tournament since 1991. Playing on a balanced team, he scored 13 points during an 88-80 victory over Greece in the gold-medal game.

Before the tournament began, Dixon told Gibbs he needed to upgrade his defense, and he did. While putting so much emphasis on becoming a better defender, the 6-foot-2 Gibbs didn’t worry as much about his shooting, and his shots began falling.

“It was big on a confidence level,” said Gibbs, who is averaging 17.5 points and is one of the nation’s leading free throw shooters. “If I can play against some of the best players in the international level, all over the world, I can play against some of the best players in the country.”

He’s doing exactly that for Pitt (15-2, 5-0 Big East), which leaped to No. 9 in The Associated Press poll Monday after not being ranked until two weeks ago. The Panthers lost NBA draft picks DeJuan Blair and Sam Young plus two other starters off their 31-5 team of last season and, with no big-name players to take their place, this was expected to be Dixon’s first rebuilding season since he was hired in 2003.

It hasn’t been.

Pitt beat No. 5 Syracuse and once-ranked Connecticut and Cincinnati during a difficult three-game road trip, then came back from five points down in the final minute to beat Louisville 82-77 in overtime on Saturday. The Panthers are at home against No. 13 Georgetown on Wednesday as they try to start 6-0 in the Big East for the first time.

Instead of wondering if they would reach the NCAA tournament for a ninth consecutive season, the Panthers are a few more wins away from a possible high seeding — thanks greatly to Gibbs’ emergence as one of the Big East’s top players.

“I told them [in October] this can be like my junior year (in 2001-02) when nobody was expecting anything,” said former Pitt coach Brandin Knight, an assistant coach who played at the same New Jersey high school as Gibbs. “We had lost our two leading scorers. Nobody had any idea we were going to be as good as we were.”