A sure-fire way of getting into the NCAA Tournament is by beating fellow NCAA Tournament teams in the regular season.
Pitt has done that, but games against No. 20 Miami on Saturday and at North Carolina on Wednesday can really bolt the Panthers into the good graces of the selection committee come Selection Sunday.
Prior to Saturday's 4 p.m. tip-off against the Hurricanes at the Petersen Events Center, Pitt is still in a good position in that regard, but every game is looked at in real time thanks to the NCAA NET Rankings. As of this posting, Pitt (14-7, 7-3 ACC) rests at 62nd, while Miami (16-4, 7-3) is 37th, just outside of the threshold of 30th for this to qualify as a "Quadrant 1" game for the Panthers.
The Panthers got back into the good graces of Bracketologists with their 81-79 holding off of Wake Forest on Wednesday -- in a must-win game following a loss to Quadrant 4's Florida State.
Wins over Miami and North Carolina can place the Panthers in a prime spot heading into the final month of the regular season.
"I've been asked this a lot," Greg Elliott said on Friday at the Petersen Events Center, "'When did I know our team was going to be special?' I say it every time: When we came back from Brooklyn. We were 1-3 and based on the past of Pitt basketball, it would have been easy for us to just crawl up and say, 'well, it's another that goes down the drain.' But, to see every one of these guys come in that next day ready to work, it told me everything I needed to know about this team. We were going to fight no matter what was going on, good, bad, ugly. We were going to be ready. Our coaches have put us in positions to be ready for every game we play, and it just came down to us having our willingness to fight, and we showed it."
That bounce-back win after the loss to Florida State will be a key two-game stretch longterm. The win over Wake Forest doesn't erase what happened against the Seminoles, but it at least showed the Panthers can again fight back from something which, as Elliott hinted at, might have destroyed past Pitt teams under Jeff Capel.
"It was just, we felt like we let one slip away," Elliott added. "That's human nature. It happens sometimes. You can't dwell on that. At the end of the day if we were to dwell on that we probably wouldn't have beaten Wake Forest, and that game probably wouldn't have even been close because we would have been thinking about the Florida State game."
In his latest Bracketology, ESPN's Joe Lunardi views Pitt among his "last four in" with a play-in game against Wisconsin as a 12-seed.
CBS Sports' Jerry Palm has Pitt in the same position, though as an 11-seed and playing as a play-in team against -- gasp! -- Penn State.
NCAA.com's Andy Katz believes Pitt has greater potential than just being a play-in team. Earlier this week, he tabbed the Panthers as an 11-seed in the West region, with a second-round bout against 6-seed Indiana.
Pitt will surely move up in those rankings and within Bracketology with a win on Saturday. Wednesday's matchup against NET No. 31 North Carolina will be a Quad 1 game which could rocket Pitt ahead, regardless of what happens Saturday, but a win over Miami would be ideal in every sense of the word going forward.
MORE FROM OAKLAND
• The 2002-'03 Big East championship team will be honored during Saturday's game for the 20th anniversary of its win over Connecticut at Madison Square Garden on March 15, 2003. Many alumni are expected to appear, including coach Ben Howland, assistant coach Barry Rohrssen, Julius Page, Chevon Troutman, Carl Krauser, Ontario Lett, Mark McCarroll, Levon Kendall, Donatas Zavackas, Yuri Demetris, Carlo Dorazio, and Gino Federico.
Celebrating an important group in the Foundation of Pitt Basketball this weekend.
— Pitt Basketball (@Pitt_MBB) January 26, 2023
🔗 https://t.co/FMXwdXKPgT#H2P pic.twitter.com/Pg6txJV7QI
"All I knew is that it was prided on toughness," Elliott said. "Toughness, being grittier than your opponent, and every night was a smash-mouth fight. Every night you're fighting against the team you're going against, and I heard that every crowd was all hectic."
Elliott experienced five seasons of Big East basketball at Marquette. Though, it will never be as "hectic" as the "old" Big East ...
"It was definitely smash-mouth basketball," Elliott said. "Come in, try and take -- whatever you do -- try and take it away from them. It was definitely like that. It probably wasn't as big because there wasn't as many teams like there was back then."
• Miami is playing solid basketball heading into Saturday's game at the Petersen Events Center. Led by longtime coach Jim Larrañaga, Miami steamrolled Florida State 86-63 in Tallahassee, Fla., on Tuesday. That came off of a 68-66 loss at Duke the Saturday prior.
The Hurricanes have the third-best offense in the ACC at 78.2 points per game. They are led by All-ACC guard Isaiah Wong, who is eighth in the league in scoring at 16.3 points per game. Norchad Omier is one of four ACC players to average at least 10 rebounds per game (10.5), and he leads the conference in field goal percentage at .597.
"It's a tough conference with tough players," Federiko Federiko said. "... When we went through the (scouting report,) they've got good guards. So, stopping them from getting into the paint and shooting, getting off of ball screens (are keys)."
Added Elliott: "Making sure we contain them in transition. Like (Federiko) said they've got good guards, and at the same time we've got to be focused. Just because they've got good guards, that does not mean a good player is not ready to go score. Everybody on their team, it feels like they can go at any given moment. We've just got to be ready to play defense, rebound the basketball, and the rest will take care of itself."
• Wong might be the toughest guard Pitt has seen this season. He has scored 18 or more points in three of his last five games, including a 25-point outing Jan. 14 at NC State. He is shooting career-highs from the field (45%) and from 3-point range (37%) this season while making 83% of his free throws.
"There's no such thing as a bad shot for him," Elliott said. "... He doesn't think a shot he's going to take is bad. You've got to make him take contested shots. Twos, 3s, whatever it is, and you've got to live with the result from there. You can't let him get no easy baskets. He loves to get to the free-throw line. We've got to do our work early, keep him away from the free-throw line. If he hits contested shots then you've got to live with it."
• Larrañaga has taken note of Pitt's rise within the ACC.
"They're very much in the thick of things for the regular season championship," Larrañaga said this week. "They're playing very good defense, they're sharing the ball. I saw them go into Raleigh and defeat NC State, and I thought their defense was tremendous. Guarding those terrific guards and controlling the backboard. Jeff's done a great job."
