Luke Winn at SI.com finally puts Pitt back in his weekly power poll at #16.
Welcome back to the rankings, Pitt. For the record, it wasn’t all of your fans’ hate mail that got you reinstated — it was the road wins at Syracuse and DePaul, and the 3-0 start in the Big East. None of that is anything to get too excited about, but let’s face it: You didn’t really beat anyone before January. The resume matters here. The good thing is that kenpom.com’s new feature — “Game Plan” — has diagnosed your problem: You’re struggling in the games in which you get killed on the offensive glass. The three times you let an opponent grab at least 40 percent of the available offensive boards, you either lost (to Oklahoma State and Wisconsin) or nearly lost (to Buffalo). So beware the Big East’s two best offensive rebounding teams, UConn and Providence, OK?
Meanwhile, Clemson is ranked #8 and Air Force #9. That doesn’t bother me as much as the not beating anyone comment. Mainly because he credits both Wisconsin and UNC for beating FSU. Something Pitt also did by a similar margin. I realize those two teams beat more good teams (like Wisconsin beating Pitt), but the absolutist tone annoys. Thanks for the tip on the offensive rebounds — we were already aware of it.
ESPN.com puts Pitt in the #2 seed group (#7) in its power poll.
Panthers are quietly playing solid ball while the rest of the Big East continues to stub its collective toe. Interesting to note how similar Pitt’s dossier is to the team ranked No. 9 this week, which very few are talking about …
That team is Texas A&M.
As for Vitale, I agree that he’s given to rambling but still has a way to go before he gets into John Madden territory. He also has praised Pitt in the past, so, yay for him!
Clemson, even though they are 17-0, could be argued to have only won one game against a NCAA Tournament caliber team, and that is Florida State, a team we crushed by 20+, but Clemson beat by 2. And I’m not even sure that FSU is really an NCAA team at this point.
Not only that, their next four games? at Maryland, UNC, BC, and at Duke. If Clemson is 19-2 on 1/26, THEN I’ll be impressed. It is more likely that they’ll be 17-4.
Also, Air Force is a little better than Clemson, but they still lost their only game to a “sure-fire” NCAA team when they played Duke. Sure, they’ve beaten some big names like Stanford, Colorado, UNLV, Texas Tech, and Wake Forest – but pretty much all those teams outside of Tech are either schools that are not for sure NCAA teams in some cases (Stanford, UNLV), or just bottom feeding power conference teams (Wake, Colorado).
To say that Pitt is below these teams because they haven’t “beat anybody” is a bit perplexing to me.
funny how wisconsin gets love for being #1, but we get killed for losing to said team…….makes no sense……..
they are both terrible…………