Brackets get announced at roughly 6pm on CBS. ESPN gets to take control of the conversation at 7pm.

It seems like there are two deserving #1 seeds (Florida and Wichita State) and then flawed #2 (and #3) seeds that will see  two of them in 1 seed spot to be prime targets for derision (Virginia, Michigan, Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Villanova, Wisconsin, Louisville, Iowa State and Syracuse).

Still don’t see the ACC getting more than 5 bids. T.J. Warren is the best player in the conference, and I look forward to him going pro. But I don’t see his NC State squad making the field when they took that long to realize they needed to let Warren score while the rest of the team does everything else.

Pitt will be a 9 or 10 seed by just about any projection. But then again, we know how those things have worked for Pitt before.

I’m kind of hoping Pitt is a 10 seed rather than a 9. I just think this group will respond a lot better with more of a sense of disrespect.

I’m not fixated on the no-call on James Robinson’s score with 11 seconds left. Really. I am merely interested in how the moment is viewed.

Pittsburgh media:

Robinson scored despite drawing contact from Virginia forward Akil Mitchell that knocked Robinson to the floor to cut the Cavaliers’ lead to one point with 10 seconds left. To the protest of Pitt fans, whose chorus of boos echoed in Greensboro Coliseum, officials didn’t call a foul.

“What can you do? What can you do?” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “Everybody saw it.”

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Pitt didn’t win its first Big East Tournament game until 1987 (their fifth year in the conference). The Panthers didn’t win more than one BET game until 2001. So, from that standpoint, Pitt is light years ahead of where they were when starting in the Big East. And man is that a reminder of just how badly those Paul Evans teams underachieved. The failures of the late-80s Pitt team, with the talent they had… Yeesh. Still boggles my mind when I look back on them.

Intellectually, I know better.

I understand that nothing I do has any real impact on what Pitt does. Most of the time I try to be very, very rational. Sometimes to the point of taking all emotion out of things. But there are moments. Times when I give in to the whims of superstition and the idea of streaks.

So, when I found myself so locked up with work I couldn’t even get a chance to throw up a weak open thread effort at the Wake-Pitt game in the ACC Tournament, I kind of talked myself into being too busy on Friday not to do the same with Pitt-UNC. (Did I sneak out of work and find myself in a bar for the second half of both games? No comment.) Next thing I know, Pitt is in the Semis of the ACC Tournament and faced with the heart and mind conflict.

It’s what made that damn Bud Light “Superstition” ad campaign during NFL games so effective. It may have been annoying and a little much — as most ads are — but there was just that element of truth to it. Where we all have those little quirks, habits and rituals we feel must be done we don’t want to mess with a streak.

I opted to keep the silence. Not to post. Not to go on Twitter during the games. Basically, being an internet mute.

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