No City Game, Again
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Not a whole lot of backlash so far so looks like really not a lot care.
Still dumb though. Pitt needs a home game, they offered cheap. So ironic.
Still dumb though. Pitt needs a home game, they offered cheap. So ironic.
Well Duquesne obviously holds one big disadvantage for Pitt, because sure seems like HCJC doesn’t like the idea of playing them. Wonder why??
Great minds think alike. I have been saying for years that Duquesne was not a good enough program to be given a joint home game every year. I have said many times that it should be 2 for 1. 2 games at the Pete, 1 game at PPG as their home game. RMU should be 4 or 5 for 1. I don't want to hear that this is a rivalry. No it isn't. We've won some insane number over the last 3 decades. Duquesne simply isn't good enough of a program to get preferential treatment.
All this said, its still a very bad look for Capel and Pitt. I DO think they should have taken up Duquesne on their offer to play for free next year at the Pete. And I really dont understand why the WVU series is going away. The 2 programs should be equal starting this year and THAT IS a real rivalry.
Where I disagree with Capel is that his scheduling philosophy seems to include ALL cupcakes outside of the exempt tournament and ACC/B10 Challenge.
So:
2-3 tournament games
Big 10
7-8 Cupcakes
I would have eliminated 1-2 cupcakes for WVU and another P6.
Its also interesting that from a pure fan interest standpoint, the 20 game ACC schedule will be less interesting and exciting than an 18 game one + WVU and Duquesne. I know what I said about Duquesne but a game vs Duquesne gets more people to show up and generates more interest than over half the ACC teams. Not that we have that choice, just saying. The 20 game thing probably hurts ticket sales a bit without WVU and Duq eventually.
All this said, its still a very bad look for Capel and Pitt. I DO think they should have taken up Duquesne on their offer to play for free next year at the Pete. And I really dont understand why the WVU series is going away. The 2 programs should be equal starting this year and THAT IS a real rivalry.
Where I disagree with Capel is that his scheduling philosophy seems to include ALL cupcakes outside of the exempt tournament and ACC/B10 Challenge.
So:
2-3 tournament games
Big 10
7-8 Cupcakes
I would have eliminated 1-2 cupcakes for WVU and another P6.
Its also interesting that from a pure fan interest standpoint, the 20 game ACC schedule will be less interesting and exciting than an 18 game one + WVU and Duquesne. I know what I said about Duquesne but a game vs Duquesne gets more people to show up and generates more interest than over half the ACC teams. Not that we have that choice, just saying. The 20 game thing probably hurts ticket sales a bit without WVU and Duq eventually.
I don't know what Pitt's angle on this is. Why they are doing this. Christ, they are right down the street from each other. It's a bad look for an athletic program that already seems to be despised by most local media. So another PR hit. Luckily, it means nothing for recruiting.
That being said, with all of this media whining and teeth gnashing, if they were such fans of Duquesne basketball and actually attend games, maybe they would sell out occasionally.
On a positive note......it also could be a brilliant marketing ploy by Pitt. Because when they bring this back there will be such interest in it, they can sell out the PPG Paints Center. So......maybe this is the long term plan.
That being said, with all of this media whining and teeth gnashing, if they were such fans of Duquesne basketball and actually attend games, maybe they would sell out occasionally.
On a positive note......it also could be a brilliant marketing ploy by Pitt. Because when they bring this back there will be such interest in it, they can sell out the PPG Paints Center. So......maybe this is the long term plan.
In case we didn’t know playing Duquesne had to be done, SMF agreed with Capel and Lyke. I guess all the people who thought this was no big deal and begin freaking out now.
And it’s not a joint home game. It’s a neutral site easy win which boosts every metric. Or it was a straight home game. For zero dollars. We’ll play Niagara or Nichols State instead.
Hasn’t helped metrics in a long time
Dozens of Duquesne fans are upset about this
If they win 20 games next year like they did this year... it will...
It doesn’t really matter who Pitt will play in the OOC , Duquesne should be one of those games .
They aren’t a “rival” and won’t be if we are what we should be. But it’s still a fun spectacle, especially at PPG. Hoops are under appreciated in this area, and Yinzers LOVE events. So it can never be a bad thing to play this game. You get more people talking about basketball which only helps both programs.
Also, it’s preparation for what you see in CBB if you desire to make NCAA tourney runs (a fired up opponent, a neutral site, dealing with adversity as a “favorite”, and so on).
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Depends on who you consider “we”. I agree that we are doing it as a program - but I don’t think as many of our fans feel indifferent (or pretend to) like PSU fans do. Not scientific, but I think most of us want to play
No one is going to lose sleep over this, but it just makes no sense on so many levels. Why drop a school two miles away, a rival that played you close to 90 times, especially given the annual OOC shit sandwich we endure.
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Play Duquesne. It's that simple because
1) Looks like we're ducking them.
2) Pete is no longer selling out and I promise you the Dukes will draw more than Niagra. Plus don't have to pay for them to play us.
3) What will create more buzz for the local basketball community? Pitt v Niagra or Pitt v Duquesne
4) Should be easy to negotiate 3 - 4K tickets for Consol that Pitt can keep the revenue
5) With the old NET. Beating a 100-120 ranked Duquesne on the road is better than beating 150+ buy game at home
6) Other schools are doing it
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nc...-state-to-meet-in-mens-basketball/ar-BB142zaC
7) In the age of Covid, Teams will restrict air travel so that leaves St. Francis, Marshall, Cleve St. Akron, Kent maybe Ohio U, Niagra as possible buy games. Rather see Duquesne
8) It may not be a rivalry to many of us but it is to them. Nice to face a team who is pumped to play us and will give us their best prior to conference starting. A non conf road game in a hostile environment is a good thing.
1) Looks like we're ducking them.
2) Pete is no longer selling out and I promise you the Dukes will draw more than Niagra. Plus don't have to pay for them to play us.
3) What will create more buzz for the local basketball community? Pitt v Niagra or Pitt v Duquesne
4) Should be easy to negotiate 3 - 4K tickets for Consol that Pitt can keep the revenue
5) With the old NET. Beating a 100-120 ranked Duquesne on the road is better than beating 150+ buy game at home
6) Other schools are doing it
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nc...-state-to-meet-in-mens-basketball/ar-BB142zaC
7) In the age of Covid, Teams will restrict air travel so that leaves St. Francis, Marshall, Cleve St. Akron, Kent maybe Ohio U, Niagra as possible buy games. Rather see Duquesne
8) It may not be a rivalry to many of us but it is to them. Nice to face a team who is pumped to play us and will give us their best prior to conference starting. A non conf road game in a hostile environment is a good thing.
Irrelevant. We lost a lot of FB games to psu at one point. Should we have kept playing? Villanova plays their Philly rivals. The only question here is do we blame Heather or Jeff. Nobody's perfect.
So Nicholls State and Bunga Munga Tech are more attractive? And if you play the age card, I'll play the ugly card!!But that's the thing, it WAS a heated rivalry. And old people like me and really old people like you () know that. Kids who are in college today don't think of Duquesne as anything more than Robert Morris. There are people in their 30s who can't remember Duquesne beating us more than once. There are people in their 40s who might remember them beating us three times.
It isn't really a rivalry any more, and it hasn't been in a long, long time. We should play them, just like we should play Robert Morris, but not playing them is no big deal to almost everyone.
Isn't it better for Pitt hoops if the City gets more interested in hoops?
Everyone made fun of Jamie for his schedule. Every single year. Yet he was smart enough to realize duquesne was a free neutral win.
Maybe Jeff isn't confident of winning??
As did Paul Evans, whose schedules were always ranked among the toughest in the nation. Evans also played Robert Morris and St. Francis every year. When you are playing cupcakes anyway, regional schools make much more sense for fan interest, media attention, revenue, and general support of the local basketball ecosystem.
Evans also kept WVU on the schedule every year as a home-and-home when they were in the A10 and there was absolutely no benefit to be going down there at that time.
Pitt should have Duquesne, RMU, and WVU on the schedule every year.
Hell, Syracuse still plays Colgate every year and Cornell almost every year.
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Julius Page just did his spot on the Cook and Starkey show. To his credit, he honestly said this is indeed just like Pitt-PSU in football.
Well--depends on your point of view. I will agree to disagree.
Coaches rightly do not want to have the OOC too difficult--need to have enough true cupcakes to help the W-L record. Unless you are a team with top ten talent you probably need about half your OOC games to be vs cupcakes or you may lose your opportunity to get to the post-season. Regardless of what mathematical/computer system the NCAA is supposed to be using--the W-L record remains critically important. You could have a computer ranking in the top 30 and not make the post season due to failing the W vs L eye-test because you finish the regular season around 0.500 due to an extremely tough OOC schedule.
If we are, probably/perhaps, already at 7 non--cupcakes out of 11 games without Duquesne having 4 cupcakes is about the minimum we need to have to have a shot at winning at least 8-9 of the 11 OOC games which we need because there is no way we can win more than 9-11 ACC games this coming season, IMHO.
Yes, it is tough for Duquesne and its fans, and for the local area Pitt fans as well; but, it is still best for Pitt overall until Pitt regularly has a top 25 team again.
I agree that it is just like PItt vs PSU in football and that is completely okay with me. The game will sometimes be played but it will no longer be an annual event--mainly because the ACC went to 20 games from 18 and the OOC slots dropped from 13 to 11. Just the way things are and are going to be.
We are not going to draw a top B1G team in that challenge and the Myrtle Beach Classic has no powers in it. Looks to me like Duquesne would be an upgrade to a worse than Jamie type OOC schedule. Regardless, there are enough games where you can tailor the OOC schedule to get a nice balance.
I agree to a certain point but my whole thing was you got these people that's crying about it an don't ever pay there money to go see the games. I compared it those people that complain about what the government's doing and what the president's doing and all that stuff but they don't ever vote but always have a lot to say.
Cmon, Lyke’s BS statement & the fact Pitt has a few non conference openings shows they’re stiffing Duquesne. Duquesne even offered to play @ the Pete for free! Smh.
The City game brought lots of fans that couldn't get good seats at the Pete, enjoyed having a beverage, and had a nice night in town. Pitt needs to improve its hoops image.....this doesn't help. The Paint can is a decent venue for hoops.
You said that more than once, but when was the last time we actually played Duquesne on the road? I'll save you the time to look it up, it was 2007. Games at Consol are not road games, and the NCAA does not count them as road games. And when has Consol/Mellon ever been a hostile environment for Pitt in the game against Duquesne, seeing as to how there are always probably four or five Pitt fans for every Duquesne fan in the building?
So Nicholls State and Bunga Munga Tech are more attractive? And if you play the age card, I'll play the ugly card!!
Isn't it better for Pitt hoops if the City gets more interested in hoops?
Well I have said, more than once, that we should play both them and Robert Morris. But come on, when was the last time that anyone was interested in the Pitt - Duquesne game for longer than a day or at most two? When was the last time that some Pitt fan sat there in February thinking, damn, we just lost to Notre Dame but hey, at least we beat Duquesne a couple months ago? 30 years? 40? The fact of the matter is that the reason it's so easy for Pitt to do this is precisely because almost no one cares, because it doesn't actually get people more interested in college basketball in the long run.
Yeah, you'd have to think that we're going to draw from Penn State, Minnesota or Northwestern for the ACC/B1G Challenge since I doubt that we'll draw Rutgers again and we could play Nebraska in Myrtle and all three of those teams are going to be pretty lousy.
The Myrtle field itself is...okay? Dayton should be solid again, Nebraska and Missouri are going to be improved from last year, Loyola is going to be really good, Charlotte should compete for the title in a tough Conference USA, Utah State isn't going to be as good but they're always a tough out, and Penn will be tough if Michael Wang is healthy. So while there are no top teams in the field I'm guessing that every team will finish in the top 150 in Pomeroy with most, if not all, in the top 120...it's a really well balanced tournament and should be fun. I really have to give whoever picks the field for Myrtle Beach credit, they have put together an interesting field every year that they've been doing it so far.
That said, this Duquesne nonsense is a terrible look. I get why Capel is agitated about the whole thing and I get why he's looking for an easier game than a top 100 team for next year but just play the darned team already.
When was anyone ever interested in Nicholls state. How interested are people in playing a game vs. Wake Forest?? Mayberry Tech?? Lehigh??
You've posted this a couple times, and it is clearly, obviously not true. The only P6 games that we know we have right now are the game at West Virginia and the Big Ten challenge game. At most we can only get two P6 games in the Myrtle Beach tournament, and it's surely more likely we'll get one or zero than we will get two. There is no other tournament that we will play in that we will get P6 games in. You aren't even allowed to play in two exempt events in the same season.
Last season we played four non-conference games against P6 teams. Unless something completely unexpected happens (and hey, who knows) that appears to be the MAXIMUM number of P6s we will play next season.
People aren't interested in Nicholls State. People are marginally interested in Duquesne. Personally I'd rather watch Pitt play Wake Forest or any other ACC team than Duquesne.
It's not 1980, it's 2020. Almost no one cares about Duquesne basketball in any sense of the word, as is evidenced by them averaging 2300 fans per game in their greatest season in a long time last year. They've been under 2000 fans per game (and as low as 1200) several times in recent years. Because no one cares about Duquesne basketball.
It's the kind of tournament that people who are really into college basketball will look at and see some good matchups, but for the casual basketball fan there isn't going to be a whole lot of interest there. I mean a game like Dayton - Utah State could be a really good one, but the average fan is going to see that matchup and think, meh, who cares about that?
Yeah, I definitely get that, I'm personally really looking forward to it but it doesn't have much sizzle. That said, I think that there's at least two Quad 1 wins on the board in this tournament in Dayton (assuming Crutcher and Watson come back, doubly so if Chase Johnson can come back) and Loyola so that's pretty valuable even if they aren't big names.
As long as Duquesne plays D1 ball Pitt should play them . Period !
Most of the OOC games Pitt plays no one gives a rats ass about .
If JC is really concerned about the Dukes beating him then he has no business coaching in the ACC against the real Duke’s of the world !
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