Tim Benz: Atop ACC — yet unranked — perception of Pitt raises questions about NCAA hoops evaluations
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It’s the week of Valentine’s Day in Pittsburgh. It’s been well above 60 degrees the last few days. And the Pitt men’s basketball team is tied for the ACC lead.
What’s next? Snow on the Fourth of July and the Pirates leading the National League Central?
Honestly, back in early November, if you had asked me to predict which one of those two things was more likely to happen, I may have gone with the second option.
After all, the Panthers haven’t finished above .500 since Jaime Dixon’s last season coaching the team (2015-16) when they were 21-12. But now the Panthers are 19-7 overall and 12-3 in ACC play. That’s good enough for a first-place tie with the University of Virginia.
However, that’s apparently not good enough to be ranked in the Top 25. In fact, in both the coaches’ poll and the Associated Press’, Pitt is only 29th. That’s something I don’t understand.
Teams such as Iowa State (16 wins), Creighton (17 wins), TCU (17 wins) and Providence (18 wins) are all in the Top 25 of both polls. Pitt’s ACC co-leader, Virginia, is seventh in the AP and sixth in the coaches .
That’s why I had to laugh when the Pitt Athletics account subtweeted this photo of guard Nelly Cummings from the ACC Network.
???????????? https://t.co/7YwBEpDcbB
— Pitt Panthers (@Pitt_ATHLETICS) February 15, 2023
No. Don’t do that. No ssshhhh-ing. Enough sneaking up on people. The Panthers should be doing everything in their power to get people talking about this club. They are deep, versatile, dangerous and fun to watch.
Not only that, but for as much as we may want to dismiss the old-school rankings as outdated measuring sticks compared to the computer models that more directly impact tournament inclusion, at some point, human beings slot teams where they end up in the NCAA tournament.
Let them hear it from Oakland.
Pitt may not be ranked in the Top 25. But it’s tough to find an NCAA Tournament prediction that leaves the Panthers out of the postseason mix. Most seem to have Pitt as an eighth or ninth seed, comfortably off the bubble at this point.
But it would be nice for Jeff Capel’s crew to get some national buzz or hype coming down the home stretch, so maybe that eight or nine seed turns into a six or seven by “Selection Sunday.”
Who wants to see a No. 1 seed in the second round unless you have to, right?
Even though the regular-season rankings mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, they are evidence of a weird dichotomy that exists in college athletics. It’s the never-ending quest to find a comfortable process that assigns objective numbers to justify our subjective opinions over which teams are the best in the country.
Whether that’s four teams for the college football playoff (until it becomes 12 soon), or whether that’s 68 teams in the NCAA Basketball Tournament (until it eventually becomes 72, 90 or 96).
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Pro sports have wins, losses and built-in mathematical tiebreakers. Unfortunately, college sports only have interpretive analytics and committees.
It appears that the subjective coach and media polls don’t appreciate Pitt all that much because the objective, stat-nerd numbers aren’t really fond of them either. And such is the circle of life.
KenPom
ESPN’s BPI has them 53rd behind the likes of Big Ten schools such as Northwestern (45), who lost to Pitt 87-58, and 15-11 Penn State. Then there are the smaller-to-mid-major-conference schools beyond FAU, such as Sam Houston, out of the WAC (46), UCF from the AAC (48) and Yale, out of the Ivy (50).
All that said, Pitt has six wins against top 50 BPI teams. Only 15 teams have more. Pitt is 7-2 on the road; 5-2 when it comes to NET Quad 1 results.
So do numbers matter, or don’t they?
Furthermore, according to ESPN.com’s Bracketology, Pitt is in first place of the ACC, which is a seven-bid league. Something doesn’t add up there. Either Pitt isn’t getting enough credit for its season, or the ACC is going to get too many teams into the tournament during what is often referred to as “a down year for the conference.”
It’s one or the other.
Come to think of it, maybe it’s both.
Regardless, once Pitt gets into the tournament — and barring a 2012 Pittsburgh Pirates kind of collapse — they will, then it’s just about winning.
Maybe that’s when all the “ssshhhh” memes can be better utilized.
Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News and Big Ten Network joins the “Breakfast With Benz” podcast to discuss Pitt’s strong season, Duquesne’s bounce-back year and the notion of NCAA Tournament expansion.