Pitt is dancing for the first time in seven years.
The Panthers are set for the NCAA First Four round in Dayton, Ohio, and will oppose Mississippi State Tuesday for a No. 11 seed in the Midwest Region of the 2023 NCAA Tournament. The winner will advance to play No. 6 seed Iowa State Friday in Greensboro, N.C. in the Round of 64.
Pitt was the third-to-last team to make the field of 68. The game will tip off at 9 p.m. Tuesday and will be broadcast on truTV.
After losing to eventual ACC Tournament champion Duke in the quarterfinal round Thursday, the three-day sweating-out process on the NCAA Tournament bubble resulted in the Panthers needing some help from the outside. Bid stealers ran across the nation, with nearly every favorable outcome in the Panthers' NCAA Tournament scope coming to fruition.
"It's awesome, man, and I'm really just happy for these guys because they've worked, they've fought, we've won, and I think it's something that's earned," Jeff Capel said after the televised selection show at the Petersen Events Center. "For this group to be the group to get back to the big dance is a pretty cool doggone thing.
"... I'm excited and honored that our name was called. There are a lot of coaches and players right now that would give anything to have heard their name, and so I'm definitely excited about that."
THE BRACKET 🙌#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/HZYnwD3s3x
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 12, 2023
Teams like Florida Atlantic, Ohio State, Cincinnati, Tulane, Vanderbilt, and many others which contended for conference tournament championships could have outright jumped Pitt as a team to qualify for the Tournament and an at-large bid, but the NCAA Tournament selection committee deemed the Panthers worthy enough based on the resume which they built.
"We're just blessed to be in the dance and have an opportunity to play," Jamarius Burton said. "It doesn't matter where we're sitting at. It just matters about having an opportunity. ... (The team's reaction) was joy with a mixture of hunger, if you can imagine that."
Pitt finished the season with a 22-11 overall record and a 14-6 record within the ACC, giving the ACC Coach of the Year Capel his first 20-win season and his best overall season out of five on Pitt's bench.
It is the first postseason appearance for Pitt in Capel's tenure.
"That's great. That's awesome," Blake Hinson said. "When I was sitting home last year I feel like I manifested this in my own head for me to join a team that accepted me. ... It's worked out like that. This team has accepted me, and then we've won, and now we're in the postseason. It's a dream come true for me, honestly."
The Panthers entered Sunday with an NCAA NET Ranking of No. 67, thus placing them on the virtual cut line with some conference tournaments still to wrap throughout the afternoon (though, more than likely, none of those from Sunday had an exact impact on Pitt).
"You're just excited about the opportunity to continue to have a season and play," Capel said. "You embrace the opportunity that you have to continue to play, and you just go and get ready."
Mississippi State finished with a 21-12 overall record and an 8-10 mark in the SEC. The Bulldogs have signature wins over Marquette, TCU, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas A&M. They lost to top overall seed Alabama in the SEC Tournament semifinals Friday.
Pitt is looking to rebound after a 27-point loss to Duke in the ACC Tournament Thursday.
"After that loss we just had to take it day-by-day," Greg Elliott said. "It's something that happened, something we've got to learn from at the end of the day going into this tournament. It's just a lesson, and we've got to take it as that."
The Panthers earned a 4-4 record in Quadrant 1 games, but the 3-5 record within Quadrant 2 combined with the bookended 1-3 records to start and finish the season made what appeared to be a strong resume throughout the middle parts of the season crumble in the final week.
But, the quality of the wins which Pitt stacked was deemed enough.
"I think everybody's super excited, for sure," Nelly Cummings said. "This was the mission we set out for when we firs got here. Being here now, it's definitely a blessing for all of us."
Pitt has signature wins over Northwestern, NC State, Virginia, North Carolina (twice), and Miami which strengthened its resume in the middle parts of the season. Though, losses to West Virginia, Michigan, VCU, Notre Dame, and the blowout result to Duke in the ACC Tournament made the selection committee's decision to consider Pitt for the Tournament a much more difficult one.
"They say margin of victory or defeat is not supposed to be a part of the criteria. Maybe it is," Capel said. "I wish they would've weighed the Northwestern win a little bit more because of that, or if that's part of the metric. At least for me, when I look at us, and I think we had four Quad 1 wins, I think we were 7-8 against Quad 1 and Quad 2, I think we had the fourth-most road wins or tied for fourth-most road wins of any team in the Power (Six). So I thought our resume was good.
"We had 15 wins in the ACC. I thought we showed that we can play away from home and win away from home. We beat some really good teams here. Obviously what we did in the nonconference after getting over a rough spot, our only loss after that was to Vanderbilt, I think it was by one or two, and I think they're a pretty good team. I think we did enough -- obviously we did enough to be included in this tournament. Could we have been seeded higher? Possibly, but, again, you'll have to talk to the people in the committee about that."
