This past week has been difficult for those who support the Pitt men’s basketball team after the Panthers were barely left out of the 68-team field in the NCAA Tournament.
It has hit even harder for those that would have taken the court for the Panthers and their head coach Jeff Capel, who admits he’s watched very little of March Madness in an interview with the PM Team on 93.7 the Fan.
“This is the first time in my life that I have not watched the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament,” Capel said.
The only game that Capel tuned in for so far was the Northwestern-FAU first-round matchup to watch his friend Chris Collins lead the Wildcats, but even that was tough to digest.
“My best friend is the head coach at Northwestern,” Capel said. “I watched a little bit of their game against Florida Atlantic to try and support him, but I had to turn it off. I’m looking at it and I’m thinking to myself, and it’s no disrespect to Chris, but we are better than both of these teams. It’s been really frustrating.”
Leading up to Selection Sunday, Pitt was often penalized for a weak non-conference schedule – ranked No. 340 according to Kenpom.com.
With today’s environment of college basketball, Capel believes that there should not be as much emphasis place on games in November and December.
“You will not know your team in today’s climate of college athletics, especially college basketball because you have so much transferring,” Capel said. “You don’t know your roster. Last Monday opened up the transfer portal. Why was it opened the day after Selection Sunday, I have no idea? It’s another thing that doesn’t make sense. By the end of the week there were over 900 kids in the transfer portal. You don’t know your team, and so people are working out the kinks earlier and people are getting to know your team.”
There was a reason Pitt designed its non-conference schedule a certain way with an overhauled roster.
“This year, I knew we were going to have a young backcourt. I knew we were going to be playing two freshmen in the rotation,” Capel said. “We staggered our schedule. We didn’t play the West Virginia game as early as we have since I’ve been here. We had those four games early and we wanted to get our feet wet. I thought it was smart, in the end it wasn’t.”
Capel felt that Pitt situated itself well with joining the NIT Season Tip-Off multi-team event in Brooklyn, NY. It set up a date with Florida, who went on to make March Madness. However, the consolation matchup with Oregon State did not bolster their schedule with the Beavers finishing last in the Pac-12.
Pitt also couldn’t prepare themselves for how West Virginia and Missouri’s last-place finish in their respective conference would impact the Panthers.
“We were given Missouri in the SEC Challenge – they were a top four team in the SEC last year with three starters back. West Virginia probably had the best recruiting class in the portal. Their season was turned upside down in the summer,” Capel said.
After a slow start to ACC play, Pitt flipped a switch and became one of the hottest teams in the nation, putting themselves in prime position to earn a bid to the Big Dance.
“If you look at us, going into the last game against [North] Carolina, we were 12-3. North Carolina was 12-3 in the conference during that time. I thought we were the two best teams. We had road wins, we had beaten quality opponents and I thought we were playing our best basketball, that’s why it hurt so much,” Capel said about being left out of the tournament.
In Capel’s eyes, he feels the selection committee needs to tweak the way they look at the non-conference slate.
“I don’t like the way the process is going. Sometimes, too much emphasis is put on what you do in non-conference and especially in today’s environment with the non-conference strength of schedule, that was a big thing and especially with us, ours wasn’t good this year,” Capel said.
Moving forward, Capel understands that Pitt and the ACC need to do a better job positioning their non-conference schedule to benefit their overall resume.
“We have to look at what is going to be the best things for us to position ourselves to be able to participate in the postseason,” he said. “We also as a league have to be more together and figure out how to get more teams in. It’s ridiculous for the ACC to only get five teams in.”
Even with five teams earning a bid to the NCAA Tournament, the ACC has exceeded expectations with four teams residing in the Sweet 16.
“I’m not surprised,” Capel said. “Every year during the NCAA Tournament, ACC teams produce at a very high level. There’s a narrative that’s been out there for the past few years about the ACC being down. Not exactly sure where that comes from, how it’s gotten started, how its continued to be on the forefront of the talking heads’ mind, but it’s not true.”
North Carolina, Duke, Clemson and NC State will look to continue the ACC’s march through the tournament starting on Thursday.
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