I said it would be late before I got back.

Now everyone still feels very disappointed right now. I mean on Wednesday, before the WVU debacle, Grant Wahl on SI.com wrote this.

I’ll give you five teams outside the top eight that wouldn’t surprise me if they reached St. Louis:
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Pittsburgh: The Panthers have won too many tough Big East games on the road (at Syracuse and UConn) to be discounted from the national-title chase.

Now, I’m sure he’d like to revise that after what happened. Having said that, this team is still NCAA bound. Will it do anything? Who knows. Will they be better than a 7 or 8 seed? Maybe.

Yet, the local media is ringing the bells of doom and gloom.

After being swept by West Virginia in the season series two nights ago, the following question was raised about the Pitt basketball team: Could the Panthers find themselves sitting at home in March while the likes of Vermont, Miami (Ohio) and Holy Cross are playing in the NCAA Tournament?

The answer could be yes.

The 18th-ranked Panthers not only dropped to 18-6 overall, 8-5 in the Big East, with Wednesday’s 70-66 home loss to the Mountaineers, but they also plummeted in the Ratings Percentage Index, a formula used in helping the NCAA Tournament committee select its 34 at-large bids.

The RPI gauges a team’s winning percentage (weighted 25 percent), an opponent’s winning percentage (50 percent) and an opponent’s opponent’s winning percentage (25 percent). Road victories are weighed more heavily than home victories and home losses more heavily than road losses.

The Panthers are ranked No. 51 in the latest RPI, updated daily by ESPN.com.
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In the event they finish 8-8 in the Big East and 18-9 overall, their profile will lose luster. They would have lost five in a row to close out the regular season. And, even if they finish 9-7, they would have lost four of five down the stretch, which would not sit well with the NCAA committee.

It should also be noted that teams that finish 8-8 in the league rarely make the NCAA Tournament. Of the 11 teams that went 8-8 the past five years in conference play, only Boston College in 2002 made it. Even a 10-6 mark is no guarantee. Two of seven teams that finished with that mark in the past five years have been left out of the tournament.

The bells are quite loud.

The top five teams in the Big East receive a bye in the first round of the Big East tournament. Pitt not only has a challenging final three games, but the Panthers also lose Big East tiebreakers to most of the teams around them in the standings. If the Big East tournament started today, the Panthers would be the No. 6 seed and would have to play the No. 11 seed in a first-round game because they lost games against Georgetown and Villanova, the two other fourth-place teams.

Big East tournament seeding, though, might be the least of Pitt’s worries. The NCAA selection committee has several criteria for inviting teams to the NCAA tournament. Chief among them is how a team finishes the season, in addition to the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI).

Pitt’s projected RPI dropped to No. 51 after the West Virginia loss. With Pitt’s remaining schedule acting as a double-edged sword, the Panthers can build their RPI back up, or it could fall even more.
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The game against Connecticut tomorrow is senior day, the final scheduled game of the season at the Petersen Events Center. If the Panthers don’t start winning again soon, they could be back at home for another unscheduled game in mid-March.

An NIT game.

It’s a bit much. Even to me. It’s one thing to raise the possibility, but this is a little ridiculous. Turns out, I’m not the only one to think so (Feb. 25 entry)

It’s not my job to police other members of the press — besides, if anyone needs the occasional traffic cop, it’s me — but what’s going on in Pittsburgh is ridiculous.

If your only source of news was the Pittsburgh-area media, you’d think the Pitt basketball team was in danger of falling into the NIT.

Stop it, Pittsburgh media, you’re killing me.

By losing their last two games the Panthers (18-6, 8-5) are undermining their seeding, and they’re crushing what appeared in December and January to be a potentially Final Four-type season. But they’re not going to the NIT.

Stop it, Pitt-area media. You’re embarrassing yourselves.

Pittsburgh’s RPI is in the low 50s, and would drop (a little) more if the Panthers limp to the finish line in their final three regular-season games against Connecticut and at Boston College and Notre Dame.

But Pitt is an NCAA Tournament team, and it’s not even a close call. Their non-conference schedule was mostly a joke, but the Panthers did beat Memphis, Richmond and South Carolina. That’s not Duke, Arizona and Kentucky, but it’s an OK place to start.

In the Big East, which is the best league in the country regardless of what the old RPI, current RPI or future RPI says, Pittsburgh has swept No. 15 Syracuse. Pittsburgh has won at No. 17 Connecticut. Pittsburgh has beaten Notre Dame.

Yes, the Panthers have lost their last two. But they’ve won six of their last nine, OK? A little perspective, please.

The game tomorrow is important. Pitt needs to put it together. Tough as UConn is, they could be just what Pitt needs. A team, with only one real outside threat, and mainly inside players. UConn is very good and putting things together, but they are still one of the teams that Pitt matches up well against.

And good news, Seth Davis at SI.com is picking UConn.

When these teams played in Storrs on Jan. 22, UConn was a talented, young team still finding its way. Well, guess what? The Huskies have found their way. This version never would let Pittsburgh erase a 17-point second-half deficit on its own home floor. The biggest difference is Charlie Villanueva, who has has shed his early-season diffidence to reel off four 20-plus-point games in his past five outings. Sophomore point guard Marcus Williams is also vastly improved and coming off the best game of his career, a sterling 17-point, 12-assist, two-turnover performance against Notre Dame. Yes, UConn is still without leading scorer Rashad Anderson (staph infection), but Pitt’s problems are a little bigger right now. The Panthers have lost their past two games, have been getting inconsistent play from Carl Krauser and Chris Taft, and they have road dates with BC and Notre Dame ahead next week. I expect they’ll be stumbling down the stretch.
Seth’s Pick: UConn 79, Pittsburgh 71

Let’s keep that streak going.