Just like the national view of some that Pittsburgh is still dominated by smokey mills, the announcers claim that the Pete is a place of horrors for opponents is wrong. The last three years has shown Pitt to be quite vulnerable on their home court unless the opponents were non-conference pushovers. Two years ago Pitt seemed to have bad luck in some close home losses, especially versus Virginia and Syracuse. Last year the Pete often saw Pitt perform at a less than stellar level. The key reason for the home ineptitude seems to be the drastic decline in defense and rebounding, which is a by product of poor recruiting and settling on adding players who have a limited skill set versus top opponents. The day where Pitt wins against better teams at home is gone, and will continue until better players are recruited. The city was able to make hard decisions to change their image, can this once proud basketball school do the same to get their aura back in a building they were once feared.
The Pete is no longer a tough place to play
- Thread starter wolf0717
- Start date
The Pete, itself was never tough to play in, the team playing there was. The last 4 years, when we have been down, we are 20-16 there in conference games. That's not good at all.
The good news is that teams won't be so scares to play us home and home OOC.
The good news is that teams won't be so scares to play us home and home OOC.
The 4+ years starting with the dreadful 2012 season include 20 home losses. There were 12 total losses in the 9 years before that.
I noticed yesterday in my records that Pitt lost their final 2 home games last year, and 4 of their final 5 the year before that.
You can say that it was the teams that were good and not the building, which is obvious, but there's something to be said about those earlier teams having pride in winning at home. The 07-08 team only finished 10-8 in the BE, but was 16-2 at home. The 13-14 team was 11-7 but was 13-5 at home. Think about some of the games that 09-10 team won at home, when they had pretty much no right to.
I think more than complaints about recruiting talent or anything else, the issue has been toughness. Since McGhee graduated, we haven't really had any tough players. Maybe Woodall had guard toughness. It used to be hard to play in the Pete, not because Pitt was so talented, but because they were tough and made you work. I think it's a lot more plausible to elevate your game to be tougher at home than it is to elevate yourself to be more talented.
What? The team has not been near the level it was when we were annually a top ten team and winning 90% of our games. The Zoo was still rocking last night, Pitt just played terribly. The quality of the team does not necessarily mean the Pete itself is not a tough venue.
When Coach K retires if Duke has some down years and falls apart, it will still be Cameron Indoor. The Pete is incredibly tough to play at in big games. Pitt falls behind 17 to Purdue in a NCAA tourney game, there's no way on Earth they even come close to coming back from that.
When Coach K retires if Duke has some down years and falls apart, it will still be Cameron Indoor. The Pete is incredibly tough to play at in big games. Pitt falls behind 17 to Purdue in a NCAA tourney game, there's no way on Earth they even come close to coming back from that.
Truf. Every team has a home court advantage at home. If you also frequently field very good teams, that gives you a lot of home wins. We haven't been all that great recently, hence the increases in losses at home. The Pete is a nice venue and the Zoo is a good student section, but they aren't magic.
Great or really good exciting teams attract lots of fans who should get loud making groups like the Zoo more animated making the arena a bad place to play. Its the team and the fans that are the 6th man or not the 6th man on the court. Pitt fans tend to be a bit subdued unless something crazy good is going on.
Its been a good test lately to see if the Pete really is an advantage. To me its more if an avg team still plays above its head more so at home or pulls off some upsets more so at home still even rarely loses to a clearly inferior program at home. I haven't seen that.
Well attendance is low. For all practical purposes the entire upper level on the closed in side was empty. I can remember when it was nearly impossible to even get a ticket for a game...
Mediocre Team=Mediocre Attendance
(yet the price of my ticket package goes up?)
I'm of the opinion there will be some changes with recruiting and the staff in the off season. AD/President wanted to get the ship righted in football first because it's a bigger revenue and publicity sport. Now i believe they'll turn their attention to making Pitt at least a perennial top 25 again, which at this point would be plenty for me. I dont need Final Fours, I'd just like them to compete and win a share of their games against the Duke/UNC/UVA's
Mediocre Team=Mediocre Attendance
(yet the price of my ticket package goes up?)
I'm of the opinion there will be some changes with recruiting and the staff in the off season. AD/President wanted to get the ship righted in football first because it's a bigger revenue and publicity sport. Now i believe they'll turn their attention to making Pitt at least a perennial top 25 again, which at this point would be plenty for me. I dont need Final Fours, I'd just like them to compete and win a share of their games against the Duke/UNC/UVA's
There is more to judging a venue than just winning percentage. I know that TeamRankings site used (might still) post home court advantage stats based on how a team performed at home as opposed to on the road. Notre Dame is a prime example. They had a ridiculous run at home for a number of years and were quite bad on the road. Chalk it up however you want, but there was a clear differentiation between how they performed in different places.
Take Pitt's football season. They won a bunch of road games, but lost a bunch of games at home that "should have" been close. You can go back and say, maybe those opponents were better than they appeared to be at the time, maybe. I'm not on the "on-campus stadium" bandwagon, but there's a definite argument to be made that Heinz offered little to no home field advantage this season.
The real question is how might Pitt have performed if they'd played Purdue at an empty Barclays Center last night, or how would they have performed in Indiana? I honestly wouldn't predict they'd do much worse than a 13-pt loss in either of those places.
The only court that I can recall being a tough place to play was the court in Okinawa on which Pitt and Gonzaga tried to play last month. Otherwise, they are all the same.
Home crowd advantage is solely due to referee bias. 2 in-depth studies have shown that. Refs are human and they subconsciously make an extra couple calls in favor of the home team due to the hostile environment. Now, this doesn't happen every game, but on the average. Maybe Pitt got some extra calls against Purdue they wouldnt have gotten in Brooklyn or W. Lafayette. Or maybe it would have been perfectly officiated everywhere.
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