Pittsburgh ? Jamie Dixon was certain he would be Pitt’s coach even when Skip Prosser clearly was the first choice. Dixon, never a head coach, emerged from a two-week search Tuesday as the new coach of a team he helped transform from a Big East also-ran to a Top 10 power in only four seasons.

“I wanted to keep working for this job because I felt I was the best coach for this program,” said Dixon, who previously was Pitt’s associate head coach under Ben Howland. “People kept asking me how I was doing, but I never got uptight. The players kept encouraging me. I never had a doubt this would happen.”

Howland left Pitt to become UCLA’s coach less than a week after the Panthers’ NCAA Tournament loss March 27 to Marquette. Pitt then targeted Prosser, the Wake Forest coach, but he turned down the job Friday after nearly accepting it several days earlier.

Dixon’s hiring was quickly embraced by Pitt’s players, all of whom — even the departing seniors — gathered at his news conference as a show of support. The former UC-Santa Barbara, Hawaii and Northern Arizona assistant is the first Pitt coach since Tim Grgurich in the 1970s to be promoted without first being a head coach.

Several players made it known to the administration they preferred Dixon even to a proven coach such as Prosser, the Atlantic Coast Conference coach of the year and a Pittsburgh native.

“I saw the chancellor (Mark Nordenberg) walking across the campus and I told him I really trusted coach Dixon and I would appreciate it if he got the job,” point guard Carl Krauser said.