I admit I’m wrong.
Every year when Pitt plays an OOC game, it usually feels “smaller” to me than a conference game. Exception might be if it were WVU or a true blue blood program.
But win or lose, I always say “well, everything is still in front of them in Conference play”.
That clearly is not the right way to look at it.
Think about a typical mid major conference. We would want to know that they aren’t just operating in a silo. It matters how they do outside of it. That’s why they emphasize it.
I thought the ACC wouldn’t have that type of scrutiny. Even though some programs might take turns being good, you would think there is a nice list of very good teams every year. So OOC gets diminished.
But today there is no guarantee of that. I think the conference did beat up each other a little bit, and some of those middling teams could go win the A10. And the committee clearly didn’t understand that not all teams played the same in conference schedule. But still…
I think our part of this is to get to non conference games, especially against Power conference teams. Get to neutral site games if they are in your area. Get good energy around these games. They could wind up meaning the most.
Every year when Pitt plays an OOC game, it usually feels “smaller” to me than a conference game. Exception might be if it were WVU or a true blue blood program.
But win or lose, I always say “well, everything is still in front of them in Conference play”.
That clearly is not the right way to look at it.
Think about a typical mid major conference. We would want to know that they aren’t just operating in a silo. It matters how they do outside of it. That’s why they emphasize it.
I thought the ACC wouldn’t have that type of scrutiny. Even though some programs might take turns being good, you would think there is a nice list of very good teams every year. So OOC gets diminished.
But today there is no guarantee of that. I think the conference did beat up each other a little bit, and some of those middling teams could go win the A10. And the committee clearly didn’t understand that not all teams played the same in conference schedule. But still…
I think our part of this is to get to non conference games, especially against Power conference teams. Get to neutral site games if they are in your area. Get good energy around these games. They could wind up meaning the most.