There have been a few comparisons made between this season’s Pitt squad and last season’s Boston College team. To refresh your memory, here are the similarites:<\/p>\n
– Both are\/were Big East teams.
\n– Both were expected to finish in the middle of the conference (Blue Ribbon had each forecasted for 6th).
\n– Both had a weak non-conference schedule.
\n– Both were among the last three unbeatens nationally.<\/p>\n
BC went 5-5 after a 20-0 start, losing in the first round of the Big East Tournament and in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to a 12-seed. Ergo, it is implied Pitt may be headed for a similar fate, or at least you should be wary about projecting much success for them. <\/p>\n
But I say, buy into Pitt. These teams are different. I wasn’t running the Pythagorean rankings last season, but I was curious where BC would have been at this time in 2005, when they were 18-0 and ranked #5 in the AP poll. Turns out they were 21st in Pythagorean. Pitt currently ranks 10th.<\/p>\n
BC really played down to weaker competition a lot during the win streak. Pitt isn’t doing that. The Panthers will lose a few the rest of the way – the Big East will do that to everyone. But don’t slap the “overrated” label on them yet.<\/p>\n
Line o’ the Night<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n Gray is the best overall rebounder in the country – 7th in OR% and 3rd in DR%. And if you can rebound against UConn, you can rebound against anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There have been a few comparisons made between this season’s Pitt squad and last season’s Boston College team. To refresh your memory, here are the similarites: – Both are\/were Big East teams. – Both were expected to finish in the middle of the conference (Blue Ribbon had each forecasted for 6th). – Both had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} FG 3pt FT Reb\n Min M-A M-A M-A O-T A F S TO BLK Pts<\/b>\nAaron Gray 33 7-10 0-0 9-10 4-12 3 4 0 3 2 23\nResult: Loss.<\/b> Connecticut 80, Pittsburgh 76.<\/pre>\n