TCU director of intercollegiate athletics Chris Del Conte has announced the hiring of Jamie Dixon as head men’s basketball coach.
Dixon, a 2007 TCU Hall of Fame Inductee, becomes the 22nd head coach in the history of the Horned Frogs men’s basketball program. He returns to his alma mater after serving 13 seasons as head coach at the University of Pittsburgh. Dixon, who has earned four college basketball National Coach of the Year honors, including the 2009 Naismith Coach of the Year, previously served as an assistant at Pitt, Northern Arizona, Hawaii and UC Santa Barbara.
Dixon’s 13-year head coaching tenure at Pitt saw the Panthers compile a 328-123 record and earn 11 NCAA Tournament berths, including three Sweet Sixteen appearances and one NCAA Regional Final. He is one of only eight coaches nationally to guide their program to 11 NCAA Tournament appearances in the last 13 seasons and led Pitt to its first two NCAA Tournament No. 1 seeds in 2009 and 2011. Only two coaches (Mark Few and Roy Williams) in NCAA history have taken their school to the NCAA Tournament more times in their first 13 seasons as a head coach than Dixon. He ranks No. 9 among winningest active Division I coaches, as well as winningest coaches all-time through 13 seasons.
Dixon guided Pitt to three Big East Championships, including two outright regular-season titles and one tournament championship. He set an NCAA Division I all-time record for best start to a coaching career after eight seasons with 216 victories and his .727 career winning percentage currently ranks in the top-25 nationally. In addition, his .658 career Big East win percentage ranks as the best all-time mark in league play, surpassing the likes of Georgetown’s John Thompson, Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, Louisville’s Rick Pitino and St. John’s Lou Carnesseca. He is one of only nine coaches in NCAA Division I history to win over 100 games during his first four seasons of a coaching career and helped Pitt capture the program’s first No. 1 national ranking in 2008-09.
Dixon’s players at Pitt excelled as well with Steven Adams (Oklahoma City Thunder), DeJuan Blair (Washington Wizards) and Lamar Patterson (Atlanta Hawks) currently playing in the NBA. In all, he has had six selected in the NBA Draft. Four of his players have earned consensus All-America honors, 16 were All-Region honorees, 10 earned major conference awards, including four league Most Improved Player honorees, and 19 have been named all-conference.
Over the past 17 seasons, Dixon helped the Panthers rise to national prominence. The three-year span from 2001-04 produced the winningest period in school history as Pitt won three consecutive Big East regular-season titles, advanced to three straight NCAA Sweet Sixteen appearances, captured the program’s first Big East Tournament title in 2003, while compiling one of the nation’s three best winning percentages (.846 with an 88-16 record) from 2001-04, including a 51-2 home record.
Dixon has over 20 years of major NCAA Division I coaching experience, including stints at Pitt (17 years), Northern Arizona (four years), Hawaii (three years) and UC Santa Barbara (one year). Additionally, as an assistant coach, he served under a school’s winningest coach in four different stints. His teams have won a combined 10 conference titles, advanced to the postseason during 19 different seasons and his student-athletes have earned five league player of the year awards.
He led USA Basketball U-19 Team to the 2009 FIBA World Championship Gold Medal and a 9-0 record after assuming head coaching duties a month prior to competition.
Dixon returns home to TCU where he played for Jim Killingsworth and led the Horned Frogs to Southwest Conference titles as a junior and senior. He earned All-SWC honors in 1987 and was an All-SWC Academic honoree. In addition, he led the SWC in assists as a senior and was voted TCU’s Senior Male Scholar-Athlete Award recipient. He was inducted into the TCU Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007 and received a bachelor’s degree in finance in 1987. Dixon earned a master’s degree in economics from UC Santa Barbara in 1992.
Dixon was selected in the 1987 NBA draft by the Washington Bullets. He went on to play professionally with the Lacrosse Catbirds of the Continental Basketball Association and also in New Zealand.
Dixon is married to the former Jacqueline Corteway. The couple has one son, Jack , and a daughter, Shannon. The son of New York City natives Jim and Marge, Dixon spent much of his childhood in the Bronx. He has two sisters: the late Maggie Dixon, who served as head women’s basketball coach at the United States Military Academy, and Julie Dixon, who is a Los Angeles attorney.
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