Pittsburgh began the season with high hopes. They started strong, going 12-2 across their first 14 games, even earning a top-five NET ranking to start the metric. However, none of that matters now. The hopes of an NCAA Tournament are nearly out the window following Pitt’s disastrous loss to Virginia. What happens the rest of the season hardly matters: Pitt will not make the NCAA Tournament. Do you blame Jeff Capel for refusing to play reserves? Do you blame the stars for their lack of effort? The problems with Pitt just keep coming, and there is no fix for them. All that this loss does is highlight how dead ACC basketball has become.
Pitt’s Disastrous Loss Proves the ACC is Dead
The Game
The game was never a game. Virginia went on a 15-0 run early in the game and led by double-digits the rest of the way. Jeff Capel played a group of starters that looked like they never left North Carolina, they play there again on Saturday against UNC after losing to Wake Forest last Saturday. Virginia looked like the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors with their lethal three-point attack and movement. Nobody could hit a shot for Pitt. Add it all up: Pitt’s disastrous loss seems like a pattern now. They couldn’t defend and couldn’t score, with Jaland Lowe playing inefficiently again, Pitt looked like they never had a chance in the must-win game.
NCAA Tournament Hopes Dashed
The loss is Pitt’s first Quad three (Q3) of the season. Before this showing, Pitt had avoided the bad loss except for a questionable road loss to Florida State (whose coach has since announced he is stepping down at the end of the season after losing four straight). Pitt lost four games earlier in the season, beginning the downfall of a team that appeared destined for a six-nine seed in the NCAA Tournament. Their four straight losses turned out to be a horrible thing. Their NET ranking sat at 35 before the game at Virginia and will fall drastically, well out of the traditionally safe zone. They already dropped from 35th to 42nd in KenPom, foreshadowing a worse drop in the NET.
A Q3 loss is back-breaking to a resume. Pitt was left out last season because of their two Q3 losses. They were only on the bubble because of key Q1 wins. This Pitt team has failed to win any Q1 games except for one road win over Ohio State, so without quality wins, the loss will be back-breaking. Theoretically, Pitt’s disastrous loss will not eliminate them from the NCAA Tournament, but there have been no signs that Pitt will recover. Losing six of their last eight games in the worst power conference will drop any team out of the tournament.
Pitt’s Disastrous Loss Highlights ACC Basketball’s Downfall
Pitt continues to fall and will miss the tournament. North Carolina looks destined to miss as well. It is looking more and more likely that the ACC will only get three teams in the NCAA Tournament, and some could argue they don’t even deserve that. No team is good enough to avoid the bad losses except for Duke, including Louisville, who just lost to extremely short-handed Georgia Tech. The conference is dead, and no solution to bring it back to life appears to be in sight. The top teams in the conference look horrid in the non-conference, while the best teams in the non-conference can’t win in ACC play. Nothing is going right for the ACC.
Pitt’s disastrous loss highlights the downfall of the ACC. The conference lost all of its best coaches and any hope of being a good conference with it. There needs to be a major turnaround and some heavy introspection by the ACC if they ever hope to return to their former glory. However, it appears more and more apparent that the ACC is closer to completely collapsing than to returning to glory. Simply put, the ACC is dead. Maybe Duke can win a national championship and make people forget about the worst power conference in recent memory.
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