Pitt Defended ACC Pride with Blowout of Iowa State
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PITTSBURGH -- The relative strength of this conference and that conference have has underscored every debate about NCAA Tournament resumes for years and with more tools to measure the relative quality of teams who haven't played each other, the debates have only gotten louder and more consequential. The Pitt Panthers suffered because of these conversations, as the ACC was derided as underperforming while the Big 12 was heralded as the best league in college basketball.
Two times over the course of the regular season can conferences be pitted head-to-head and evaluated by their results on the court instead of on laptops and sports talk radio - the non-conference schedule played in November and December and the NCAA Tournament played right now. Pitt faltered in December and November, bur roared to life in March, proving that they are just as battle-tested and capable as any of their high major peers.
That label of "best conference in America" wasn't assigned randomly to the Big 12, which put seven teams in the NCAA Tournament and made up 20% of the final AP top 25 rankings of the season and KenPom's conclusion that the SEC was likewise a stronger and deeper league than the ACC this season wasn't misguided either.
Some, like West Virginia's Erick Stevenson, think that anyone from the Big 12, even its eighth-place team, could walk into the ACC and win it "by five games". Maybe that's true - no one will ever know for sure, although that the Mountaineers' run stopped short of the Panthers' doesn't help his argument - it is in March Madness that the ACC has historically played its best ball and the Panthers are proving to be another data point in that trend.
Panther players and coaches know this impression exists and they are as confused as they are frustrated by it. Head coach Jeff Capel spent an outsized portion of his in-season media availabilities railing against media coverage of the league and stumping for its quality. But his most convincing argument have been his two wins in the NCAA Tournament over Mississippi State and Iowa State. Those grinding and unattractive but tough and impressive victories are a product of the lumps taken in ACC play, according to starting guard Greg Elliot.
"Honestly, we've been doing this night in and night out in the ACC," Elliot said "We were prepared for any type of game. We've been playing every type of game in the ACC and the nonconference we had. We were prepared for any type of game.
After scoring eight points on 2-3 shooting and grabbing five rebounds, Nike Sibande took to Twitter to revel in an ACC victory over the vaunted Big 12.
Capel said prior to this game that it's not Pitt's primary job to defend the ACC but to win for themselves. Still, when criticism of the league extends back to yourself, it's hard not to take it personally. The Panthers were an underdog to a team that earned three fewer wins but still finished 50 spots ahead in KenPom and NET ratings.
While what they see as disrespect has irritated them, it's also fueled them and the Panthers will ride it as far as it carries them.
"First they said we couldn't shoot. I remember that. Then we got shooters. Then we couldn't play defense. Then we locked a team up," Elliot said in the locker room after beating Iowa State. "Before Xavier, they're going say something new that we can't do. It's all good. We're here to prove ourselves right."
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