Q: Ray great job all year on Pitt basketball coverage in the Post-Gazette.

A couple post-mortem questions concerning the season, in particular the NCAA tournament:

1) What happened to Jermaine Dixon and Tyrell Biggs the latter half of the Season? Their flame-outs in the NCAA tournament were obvious (24 combined points in four games, inconsistent defensive and rebounding presence), but both seemed to fade from mid-February on. Was this a case of these two being outside of their comfort zone when Pitt got to crunch time, or were they weak links that were finally exposed when the bench did not pick up the slack?

2) Speaking of the bench, Ashton Gibbs, Brad Wanamaker, and Gilbert Brown combined for 65 points in the NCAA tournament, which is not bad (average of 15 per game collectively). However, given the amount of minutes Wanamaker and Brown played (each averaged 21 minutes per game), their combined output of 46 points (less than 12 per game combined) is almost as poor as that of Dixon and Biggs. More importantly, both looked tenative, not going strong for the ball, passing up open shots that they were taking (and making) six weeks ago, and giving each other perplexed looks after defensive assignments were missed. Should we have expected more of them, or did they fail Pitt at crunch time too?

H. Robert Spicher, Pittsburgh

FITTIPALDO: A couple of good questions, Robert. I think Dixon and his staff lost some confidence in Biggs and they were not afraid to sit him for long periods once he got into foul trouble. He only played 26 minutes combined in the two games in Boston and did not score. Having watched Biggs for four years I can't say that I was all that surprised that he faded the way he did. I was surprised at how Jermaine Dixon played to close out the season. He had been such a strong component to the team's dynamic all season, but he fell apart offensively and defensively at the end, especially in the loss to Villanova. Maybe the pressure of the situation got to him. He was, after all, in his first season of Division I basketball.

Pitt's trio of Sam Young, Levance Fields and DeJuan Blair were referred to as The Big Three all season, but in the end Pitt needed more than their usual, consistent production to get to the Final Four.

I thought Brown and Wanamaker were OK in the two games in Boston. Brown scored eight points against Villanova and seven against Xavier when he picked up most of Biggs' minutes. Wanamaker scored five against Villanova and four against Xavier. I did not think Wanamaker played great defense against the Villanova guards. He was called for some fouls and got beat going to the hoop on a few occasions. Villanova shot 58 percent from the field in the second half.

In the end, Pitt needed more from the role players, and they did not get nearly enough.