Pitt students gear up for March Madness game against Iowa State with cautious optimism

So, maybe it’s not full-on madness — at least not yet.

But with the University of Pittsburgh’s men’s basketball team set to face Iowa State University on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, Panthers fans who haven’t had a tournament win to celebrate since 2014 are starting to talk with cautious optimism about what their team might pull off.

A heart-stopping, one-point win over Mississippi State on Tuesday night earned the Panthers a trip to Greensboro, N.C., for the first-round game. Watching Tuesday’s nail-biter, depending on which Pitt student you talked with, was exhilarating, painful or both.

The game came down to a three-point shot attempt from Mississippi State that could have ended Pitt’s season, but instead wound up clanging off the rim and giving the Panthers a 60-59 win.

Freshman Jullian Lorenzo, 18, watched it with friends in a dorm room.

“In the final seconds, when they dished it out to the corner and he had a wide open three (pointer), we all started screaming,” said the business major from Morristown, N.J. “Then, afterward, when they could have tipped it in but didn’t, we started screaming for a different reason: We won.”

The roller-coaster ride was similar for Sissi Hai, 18, a freshman from Wexford, who watched in another part of the same dorm with a group of friends crowded around a flat-screen TV.

“It was pretty loud. You could hear all the other rooms screaming right up until the last moment,” the marketing supply-chain major said.

Most students were cautious in predicting how far they thought Pitt could advance in the 64-team tourney.

By at least one unusual metric, the Panthers are already a Sweet Sixteen team.

Every year since 2006, Inside Higher Ed has published its own version of March Madness brackets that has focused more on items like retention rates than rebounds in predicting what teams will go far.

“Who would win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament if academic performance trumped athletic skill?” a headline above its bracket asks.

Pitt made it to Inside Higher Ed’s Sweet 16 this year, only to be upended by Colgate University, which already would have sent the Penn State University Nittany Lions home based on Inside Higher Ed’s metrics.

Friday’s game pitting No. 11 seed Pitt against the No. 6 seed Iowa State Cyclones is scheduled to start at 3:10 p.m.

Many students are expected to watch in their campus residences, at watch parties or wherever else they can find a TV.

The student newspaper, The Pitt News, published a “March Madness Edition,” with predictions and campus reaction, and a column headlined, “Pitt Fans Owe Jeff Capel an Apology,” alluding to pressure the coach faced after a disappointing 2021-22 season.

Inside the Pitt Shop on Forbes Avenue, Hai and freshman Lauren Redican, 19, talked about the optimism engendered this season as they stood among displays of blue-and-yellow shirts, caps and other apparel for sale.

No banners were hanging from buildings this week. But a buzz was evident.

“Definitely, people are excited, at least the ones I’ve talked to,” said Redican, an accounting major from Philadelphia.

Christian Waronsky, 20, a sophomore from Sarver majoring in computational biology, said, “as we get deeper into the tournament, hopefully, it will start to pick up.”

But for now, some such as Javon Key, 19, a math education major from East Stroudsburg, were savoring the fact Pitt survived a last-second threat to the season Tuesday night in Dayton, Ohio.

“It was a tough shot,” he said of the three-pointer. “I’m just happy he missed.”