Season hinges on ACC slate
Pitt welcomes Wake Forest Saturday
It’s a sentiment so commonly expressed inside Petersen Events Center and elsewhere that coaches, be it a Duke graduate who grew up in North Carolina or someone from across the country with no ties to the region, sometimes feel the need to preface it with an “obviously.”
The ACC is the best conference in college basketball.
It’s not always stated exactly that way — sometimes, it is referred to as the ‘gold standard’ or slapped with various other complimentary labels — but the gist remains the same. At one time, particularly when Pitt, Syracuse and others were in the Big East, it would have been a much more debatable belief. But when six of the 26 winningest programs in the sport’s history are in a single league, and that doesn’t even include the reigning national champion, the difficulty of life in that conference will never be questioned.
At 10-3 with 18 regular-season games remaining, the story of Pitt’s 2019-20 season will be determined by how it fares against ACC competition, beginning with a game at noon Saturday against Wake Forest. For the Panthers, it’s not nearly as horrifying a proposition as it has been the past two seasons. In 2017-18, the questions were whether they would win even a single conference game (they didn’t). Last season, it was how many programs they could surpass to avoid a second consecutive lastplace finish (they finished 14th, ahead of Notre Dame).
Now, the discussion is more auspicious. It’s not over whether Pitt can escape a horrific fate, but how high up it might be able to rise in the league standings. It’s a product of an improved program, but also a conference that appears much less daunting than it has in years. But for those largely removed from that talk — namely, the coaches tasked with competing in it on a nightly basis — it remains an imposing undertaking.
“It’s still incredibly competitive from top to bottom,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “Maybe you have some teams that are maybe taking a little bit longer or didn’t get off to as strong of a start as possible. I still think it’s a really good league. Obviously,
we have very good players, very good coaches. It’s going to be a dog fight every night.”
Taxing as it may still be for coaches, the perception of the ACC as being wide open isn’t unfounded. Only three teams in the top 30 of KenPom.com’s rankings are from the ACC after ending last season with six teams in that position. The conference accounts for just four of the 39 teams with the most points in the most recent Associated Press poll.
To be clear, there are still elite teams in the conference. Behind another top-five recruiting class and a standout sophomore point guard in Tre Jones, Duke is No. 2 in the AP poll and might very well be the best team in Division I. Louisville, at No. 7 in the AP poll, spent two weeks as the No. 1 team in the sport.
That top tier, however, isn’t as expansive or staggering as it was the past several years. Florida State is a top-20 team, but Pitt already has beaten it. Virginia is ranked, as well, but it had to replace the top three scorers from its national championship team and lost by 11 at home against a South Carolina squad that has been defeated by, among others, Boston University and Stetson. North Carolina, a preseason top-10 team, is shockingly vulnerable at 8-5 after a barrage of injuries to key
players such as freshman phenom Cole Anthony.
Beyond those teams, the conference becomes that much more unpredictable, a mixture of teams that seemingly have overachieved at this point in the season and others who, while impotent on the surface, have the potential to be dangerous to Pitt and many others.
N.C. State, at 10-3, has an experienced team that plays well within its system. Picked to finish 14th in the league’s preseason poll, Virginia Tech has surprised many by starting 10-3 under first-year coach Mike Young, something Capel said can be attributed some to a “culture of winning” that has been established there. After starting 43, Miami has won five in a row.
Near the bottom, the ACC has what looks to be weaker group of teams the Panthers can leapfrog, from Georgia Tech and Clemson, both at 6-7 through 13 games, to Wake Forest, which is 7-5. The Demon Deacons, though, highlight the folly that is looking past anyone in the league. A team that lost to Charlotte and struggled to beat Columbia at home also beat a then-ranked Xavier squad in December.
“They’ve been a little bit Jekyll and Hyde, to be honest with you,” Capel said. “When you watch them at times, they’ve been really, really good and in times, they’ve been not so good. My hope is that we help make them not good on Saturday. But they are a team that can compete with anyone.”
What, at this juncture, appears clear is that Pitt is better entering the ACC-only portion of its schedule than it was last season. The Panthers are 74th on KenPom after being 87th at this point in 2019, with an improved offense, more experienced players and a track record of beating major-conference opponents.
“We feel like we’ve got more momentum,” sophomore forward Au’Diese Toney said. “We’re a little bit more fired up than last year. It’s more so competitiveness.”
How big of a jump Pitt is able to make after last season’s 14-19 record, which included a 3-15 mark in ACC play, is entirely dependent upon how the next two months transpire. Already at 1-1 in the league, seven more wins would put it in good position to make the NIT, which would be no small feat for a program that was polishing off an 8-24 run 22 months ago. With at least nine more wins, NCAA tournament dreams start to feel a little more viable.
A postseason appearance would be a laudable outcome for the Panthers, an announcement that a proud program that quickly devolved into a laughingstock is, once again, worthy of respect. Such ideas and projections, though, only matter so much to their coach.
“I can’t tell you what other people think about us,” Capel said. “Nor do I really care, to be honest with you. We just want to play hard. We have to earn respect. Respect is not given. We have to earn it. How you earn stuff is you have to invest in it. You have to work hard every day. You have to show up every day with the mindset to get better. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.