Pittsburgh Panthers at Petersen Events Center
Pitt plays basketball at the Petersen Events Center, known as The Pete, which opened in 2002 on the site of the old Pitt Stadium in the city's Oakland neighborhood. The arena seats more than 12,000 fans for basketball games, a great many of whom are gold-clad members of the notorious Oakland Zoo student section. The bewigged and body-painted rowdies of the Zoo make it one of the top fan sections in all of college hoops — a major source of homecourt advantage for the Panthers.
Pittsburgh Panthers Men's Basketball History
Born in 1905, the Pitt men's basketball program is credited with winning two national championships — in 1928 and 1930 — in the pre–NCAA tournament era. Both of those teams were coached by "Doc" Carlson and led by national scoring champ Chuck Hyatt. The 1927–28 team went 21-0 and the 1929–30 team went 23-2. In the 1930 title game against Montana State, Hyatt poured in 27 of Pitt's 37 points, including the winning basket. Hyatt was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1959.
Carlson is the school's winningest coach, with 366 victories over a 31-year span, but the best era of Pitt basketball came under Jamie Dixon, coach from 2004 to 2016. Dixon won 328 games in that time, making the tournament 11 times in 13 seasons. The only certified star of the Dixon years was the rugged forward DeJuan Blair, a consensus first-team All-American in 2009. That season, Blair put up 15.7 points and 12.3 rebounds per game on a team that went 31-5, falling to Villanova in the Elite Eight.
Panthers greats include the sweet-shooting Don Hennon, who scored 24.2 points per game for his career; Jerome "Send it in, Jerome!" Lane, author of maybe the most famous dunk in college hoops history; and Charles Smith, the versatile big man who started every game from 1984 to 1988 and whose place in Pitt history was so secure that the school retired his jersey before his final home game.
