Perhaps a bit of an overstatement, but the players see it correctly.
Senior guard Levance Fields added: “It is a compliment to us, but I think this time around it is not as big as it was the first time. We had it already. It is a good thing, but we’re over that part of it because we went through that phase already, so now it is about finishing strong and getting ready for March.”
In part because they already had confidnce in how they were playing.
“I think in our minds,” Sam Young said, “we were already No. 1 before yesterday.”
Added senior Tyrell Biggs: “We know that we’re No. 1.”
Not that Coach Dixon isn’t proud of his team and what being #1 at this point means.
“I think later in the year it reflects more of a long-term accomplishment, more on what you have done almost the entire season because there’s not too many more polls left,” Panthers coach Jamie Dixon said.
Consider this. UNC held the top spot the longest, then it has been Wake Forest, Duke, UConn and Pitt all taking turns. Pitt is the only one to reclaim the #1 spot this year. The rest have all been or gotten to the top but not back at this point.
Some of that is obviously timing. Winning at the right time with teams in front losing. Still, it speaks to just how well Pitt has played all season.
That said, it is about getting that #1 seed for the NCAA Tournament. Aside from that, the only other time it really matters about having #1 next to the team name is after the Tournament ends.
Why is a top seed so important? Last season, all four No. 1 seeds made the Final Four for the first time since the bracket expanded to 64 teams in 1985, but even before that No. 1 seeds advanced to the national semifinals with greater frequency than any other seed.
But the top overall seed will help Pitt geographically. The Panthers will be the most protected team, meaning the NCAA Tournament selection committee will keep them as close to Pittsburgh as possible. That equals first- and second-round games in Dayton, Ohio, and regional games in Indianapolis. If Pitt isn’t the overall No. 1, they could be placed in any of the other three regionals — Boston, Memphis or Glendale, Ariz. — because of the other teams vying for No. 1 seeds, namely Michigan State and Memphis.
The Final Four, of course, is in Detroit, meaning the Panthers could play all their Tournament games within a six-hour drive of Pittsburgh.
I realize that more Pitt fans would show up in Philly and Boston, rather than Dayton and Indy. The flip side is that there will be less family and friend distractions. The philly kids wouldn’t be coming home. The NYC kids would not be dealing with as many making the trip down and up the Northeast (and ticket demands). Only Gary McGhee, as a Indiana native, would have the distractions.
In the end, the goal is clear from the head man down to the players.
“We need to win a national championship,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said last week. “That puts you on a different level. That separates you. We need to win one to put ourselves on the same level with those schools that have.”
It’s where we want to see Pitt.
1) Pitt wins out their regular season, including UConn.
2) Pitt loses to UConn in the regular season, but wins all other games.
3) Pitt slips and loses two more regular season games (conceivably UConn and Marquette).
Given each sceanrio, what would Pitt minimally have to do in the BE Tourney to keep #1 overall?
Also, UConn’s foul numbers are crazy low because what’s the point of fouling inside when you know Thabeet’s going to intimidate and/or block the shot anyway. Doesn’t mean UConn plays any softer, just means they don’t need to hack guys because there’s another line of defense.
I’m more interested in designing a study to see what would distract Gary McGhee. I think there’s dissertation potential in that subject.
On the other hand, the conventional wisdom about Pitt being a poor free-throw shooting team is probably correct overall (currently 11th in the BE). Fields and Wanamaker usually do quite well in the clutch, though.
On the topic of the state of college basketball, I’ve been wondering, just how “rough” does Pitt actually play? There just seems to be an element of the national media that is portraying us as slightly thuggish. They take the Blair-Thabeet flip and combine it with the Steelers defensive reputation, and all of a sudden we’re “not playing basketball”. It got me to wondering. Obviously, there’s no objective measurement. But I became curious in foul calls- reasoning, that rough teams are called for more fouls. Makes sense, right? Even if a team has a reputation for rough play, you would think they are still caught in the act enough times.
I ran a check of us versus several other teams tracking fouls per game. Obviously, these stats need to be taken with a grain of salt as there is probably a standard deviation or some other accountable effects of what conference you are in. Nevertheless, I find the results interesting. The teams I compare us to are: conference rival UConn, media darling UNC, do no wrong Duke, Okalahoma, old school Princeton, Mormon mid-major Weber State.
Below is the cumbersome link (scroll to bottom of that page), but the results show UConn with the lowest fouls/ game of the group and 343rd lowest nationally. We are next at 312th nationally (we are 12th lowest in the BE). Weber St. commits 3.5 fouls per game more than we do and Princeton commits 4 fouls more per game. The differences among the others are 1-2 fouls per game. The conclusion is we are just not getting called for committing all that many fouls. A cynic might say, well, you’ve got a reputation that intimidates referees or lets you slide or whatever. But unless there is some sort of empirical support, this is just water cooler conspiracy theory gibberish.
link to statsheet.com
In other stats, Pitt ranks 301st nationally in disqualifications (14th in the BE). The number of opponents who are disqualified against us ranks 203rd nationally. Wow, that’s pretty low. I wonder what games are like with the #1 or top 10 MOST disqualified teams are like.
It’s interesting that at the same time that some pundits are whining about the physicality of play, you often hear commentators lamenting the lack of true centers and solid down-low fundamentals. How the game is too dependent on the 3-pointer. Hmm, go figure…