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Bilas on Pitt


Pitt's SOS was better than UVa because their ACC SOS was SIGNIFICANTLY better than UVa's. Pitt/UVa was so close, I dont get the brownie points that UVa got for their superior non-con SOS when Pitt had the better overall SOS and beat them and "looked" better recently.

UVa's ACC SOS was terrible. They only played 7 games vs UNC, Duke, Clem, Wake, NC St, and Syr. Pitt played 13. That's why we passed them on overall SOS.
 
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Pitt's SOS was better than UVa because their ACC SOS was SIGNIFICANTLY better than UVa's. Pitt/UVa was so close, I dont get the brownie points that UVa got for their superior non-con SOS when Pitt had the better overall SOS and beat them and "looked" better recently.

UVa's ACC SOS was terrible. They only played 8 games vs UNC, Duke, Clem, Wake, NC St, and Syr. Pitt played 13. That's why we passed them on overall SOS.
Bilas hit the nail on the head - who cares about 1/3 of your schedule ? The quad system will penalize you anyway if you don’t have enough Q1/Q2 wins. Wins and NET aren’t enough already. This entire argument has been BS.

You can look at all the metrics on a team sheet in that room and depending what you focus on, you will select teams differently. If the focus was on quality road wins, then Pitt is in and a team like NW (0-5 Q1 road) is out. It’s almost like the jury goes where the foreperson takes them and this year the committee was led down the red herring path of NC SOS.

I would pay to see Bilas debate some of these committee frauds.
 
I know the P6 teams we played non-conference ended up not being good, but did we play less P6 teams in the non-conference than most other P6 schools? It does seem unfair to punish if we played the same number of P6 as most everyone else, but I don't know if that is true or not.
 
huge difference between intentional weak strength of schedule and circumstantial weak strength of schedule...Totally out of Pitt's hands that Missouri decided to crap the bed post November and Huggy cannot download the Uber app for a ride home...Pitt could have scheduled 6 MAC wins instead of WVU, Missouri and Oregon State and would be in by a mile right now...but alas, it is what it is...
 
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Pitt's SOS was better than UVa because their ACC SOS was SIGNIFICANTLY better than UVa's. Pitt/UVa was so close, I dont get the brownie points that UVa got for their superior non-con SOS when Pitt had the better overall SOS and beat them and "looked" better recently.

UVa's ACC SOS was terrible. They only played 8 games vs UNC, Duke, Clem, Wake, NC St, and Syr. Pitt played 13. That's why we passed them on overall SOS.
Not sure why you're still comparing Pitt/UVA. The committee also had OU, Seton Hall, and Indians State ahead of Pitt in the selection order. Pitt was the last of the first four out.

Not to mention, if you had you're way, you would give North Texas a free spot ahead of Pitt.
 
Agree with him 100% as I usually do, he's a really knowledgeable, intelligent and logical analyst. This current selection system needs some significant tweaks, simple and easy to implement, that would have prevented what happened to Pitt this year.
 
Agree with him 100% as I usually do, he's a really knowledgeable, intelligent and logical analyst. This current selection system needs some significant tweaks, simple and easy to implement, that would have prevented what happened to Pitt this year.
I don't have any sympathy for bubble teams. Especially for teams from power conferences that get multiple mulligans. They just need to perform better.

The champion isn't going to be crowned from the list of bubble teams, regardless of which side they fell on.
 
Not sure why you're still comparing Pitt/UVA. The committee also had OU, Seton Hall, and Indians State ahead of Pitt in the selection order. Pitt was the last of the first four out.

Not to mention, if you had you're way, you would give North Texas a free spot ahead of Pitt.

Because it was Pitt or UVa. A Top 4 NET league wasnt sending only 26% of its teams.
 
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I don't have any sympathy for bubble teams. Especially for teams from power conferences that get multiple mulligans. They just need to perform better.

The champion isn't going to be crowned from the list of bubble teams, regardless of which side they fell on.
I agree with that in part. But--I do think when a team finishes strong as Pitt did that deserves consideration, and it used to get that consideration in the old days.

Comparing Pitt to just UVA for example--starting with their loss to Pitt on 2/13, they are 4-5 and just barely eked out a couple of their 4 wins over non-tournament opponents. Mixed in there is a blowout loss to VT.

I think the "body of work" clearly favors Pitt more than UVA regardless of the OOC schedule. One of those teams has clearly been better than the other over the last 10-12 games of the season. UVA making it and Pitt getting left out is the one scenario that just doesn't make logical sense. If they're both in, great. If they're both out, that makes sense. if Pitt gets in over UVA, that makes sense given the context--where the two teams are at respecitvely on selection Sunday. UVA limping into selection Sunday while Pitt rolls in gassed up and ready to race, only to get left out while UVA goes is not a good look for the way the at-large field is currently chosen.
 
Bilas hit the nail on the head - who cares about 1/3 of your schedule ? The quad system will penalize you anyway if you don’t have enough Q1/Q2 wins. Wins and NET aren’t enough already. This entire argument has been BS.

You can look at all the metrics on a team sheet in that room and depending what you focus on, you will select teams differently. If the focus was on quality road wins, then Pitt is in and a team like NW (0-5 Q1 road) is out. It’s almost like the jury goes where the foreperson takes them and this year the committee was led down the red herring path of NC SOS.

I would pay to see Bilas debate some of these committee frauds.

OU and Indiana State had terrible non-cons also. Not sure about SHU. Came down to Pitt or UVa for ACC 5. I truly believe that. And instead of going game for game since they played similar schedules or looking at head to head, they gave it to UVa for their non-con when Pitt's ACC SOS was substantially harder.
 
I agree with that in part. But--I do think when a team finishes strong as Pitt did that deserves consideration, and it used to get that consideration in the old days.

Comparing Pitt to just UVA for example--starting with their loss to Pitt on 2/13, they are 4-5 and just barely eked out a couple of their 4 wins over non-tournament opponents. Mixed in there is a blowout loss to VT.

I think the "body of work" clearly favors Pitt more than UVA regardless of the OOC schedule. One of those teams has clearly been better than the other over the last 10-12 games of the season. UVA making it and Pitt getting left out is the one scenario that just doesn't make logical sense. If they're both in, great. If they're both out, that makes sense. if Pitt gets in over UVA, that makes sense given the context--where the two teams are at respecitvely on selection Sunday. UVA limping into selection Sunday while Pitt rolls in gassed up and ready to race, only to get left out while UVA goes is not a good look for the way the at-large field is currently chosen.
Some of that is just the way the schedule happened to fall. Wake and Clemson were Pitt's only quality opponents down the stretch, while UVA played Wake, UNC, Duke and at VaTech down the stretch. Regardless of how good/bad either team is, VaTech in Blacksburg is almost always going to be a UVA loss.

If you go back further, UVA won 12 of their last 17.
 
Or maybe they gave it to UVA for finishing third in the league during the regular season

No. There's plenty of examples of them skipping over teams in conference standings. They got it simply because their non-con was better than ours even though our overall SOS was better. Same with FAU and Dayton. Some people had FAU out and Dayton much lower because their SOS wasnt good. But they only look at non-con SOS.

Like if I had a really good MEAC team, I'd schedule 10 P6 road games and 3 winnable home games. Maybe you upset someone on the road, go 17-1 in your league and lose in the conference championship, you probably get in at 23-11 with a bad SOS but the #1 non-con SOS
 
I honestly don't think we got royally screwed or anything. Like someone else said, they're just going to name something random after the fact to justify why they left you out.

No one is stupid enough to think 11 games against all walks out competition is more important than 22 games against P6 competition within a top 4 league. It would be impossible to be that stupid. Especially when they claim that everything (e.g. when a game is played) is weighted equally.
 
Some of the best teams in the country didn't make the NCAA's. Pitt is a top 30 team and they're not in. All because some bids were stolen by a bunch of lesser teams and the committee uses idiotic metrics to choose teams instead of using their heads. Frankly, I doubt the best team in the country will be the NC this year, just because of the flawed selection process.
 
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I honestly don't think we got royally screwed or anything. Like someone else said, they're just going to name something random after the fact to justify why they left you out.

No one is stupid enough to think 11 games against all walks out competition is more important than 22 games against P6 competition within a top 4 league. It would be impossible to be that stupid. Especially when they claim that everything (e.g. when a game is played) is weighted equally.

Do they really say everything is weighted equally? They seem to be saying your non-con is weighted heavier.
 
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Pitt's SOS was better than UVa because their ACC SOS was SIGNIFICANTLY better than UVa's. Pitt/UVa was so close, I dont get the brownie points that UVa got for their superior non-con SOS when Pitt had the better overall SOS and beat them and "looked" better recently.

UVa's ACC SOS was terrible. They only played 7 games vs UNC, Duke, Clem, Wake, NC St, and Syr. Pitt played 13. That's why we passed them on overall SOS.

You get a years pass to make other outlandish points. Because this is the single most important point of all of this.

People assume that “conference records” are an even playing field. They assumes UVa was a “game better” and then played a “better OOC”

Does this committee even know it was imbalanced? It’s a travesty.
 
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Conference SOS isn’t on the team sheet for some reason but it’s simple math that if Team A has a worse NcSOS than Team B but an equal or better overall SoS then Team A had a better conference SoS.

Consider Pitt at 10-7/1-5. At the point, the season was more than half over and they had ZERO Q1/Q2 wins. So they had already dearly paid the price associated with their schedule and performance to date. They had less than half of a season to compile a tourney eligible Quad & NET resume. But because they then went 12-4 beating 9 Top 95 teams which translated to a 9 Q1/2 wins including 4Q1 wins away from home, they did it in only 16 games. They basically started a race when it was half over and still made it to the finish line with a qualifying time.

Starting the race for Q1/Q2 wins with game 18 was already a huge disadvantage so why then penalize them again after they win the race?
 
Does this committee even know it was imbalanced?


Of course they do. Which is why they say, year after year after year, that where you finish in your conference standings is NOT a criteria for selection.

For example, Clemson getting in ahead of us, or Dayton getting in ahead of Richmond and LaSalle, or Florida Atlantic getting in over South Florida, or Mississippi State getting in over LSU, or, well, you get the idea.
 
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