By Joe Starkey
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, March 14, 2005
Stop complaining about Pitt's No. 9 seed in the Albuquerque Regional, if indeed you're among those who feel vicariously disrespected today.
Put away your "We All We Got" T-shirt and consider these facts:
# The Panthers built a weak resume by playing a non-conference schedule that ranked 261st out of 328 Division I teams, losing to Bucknell and St. John's and exiting the Big East Tournament before the lights went on at Madison Square Garden.
# Pitt has played its best basketball far away from home, with victories at Connecticut, Syracuse and Boston College. The farther away the better -- and Boise, Idaho, is roughly 2,140 miles from The Pete.
# It's the matchups that matter, not the seeding, and Pitt wouldn't have gotten better matchups as, say, the No. 5 seed in the Albuquerque Regional, playing George Washington in the first round and very likely Louisville in the second.
Seriously, scan your bracket sheet. The No. 5 seed in the Syracuse Regional (Villanova) is staring at a second-round matchup with Florida, which just dismembered Kentucky in the SEC Tournament. The No. 6 seed in the Chicago Regional (LSU) faces the prospect of a second-round game against Arizona, and your seventh-seeded West Virginia Mountaineers (Albuquerque) are a win away from facing Wake Forest, barring an upset.
I'm not even sure this is a more difficult road than Pitt faced as a No. 3 seed last season, when it had to play a road game at Wisconsin in the second round, against NBA lottery pick Devin Harris, then faced arguably the second-best team in the country in Oklahoma State.
One could even argue that Pacific is a more favorable first-round matchup than Central Florida was last year. Pacific plays in the ultra-weak Big West Conference, where it lost the tournament championship by 13 points to Utah State and didn't have a scorer reach double figures.
That's not to say Pacific is a pushover -- it played Kansas tough on the road this season and knocked Providence out of the NCAA Tournament last year -- but this appears to be an ideal matchup for Pitt.
University of San Francisco assistant coach Anwar McQueen told me last night that Pacific is not the stereotypical West Coast run-and-gun team but rather a physical club that favors a deliberate style -- in other words, a team that plays right into Pitt's hands. San Francisco beat Pacific, 67-64, on Dec. 18.
"I saw Pitt play Villanova, and Pacific is very similar to Pitt," McQueen said. "They want to play half-court, and they have a strong inside game."
The players to watch inside are 6-foot-9, 250-pound Guillaume Yango, who leads the team in scoring and rebounding, and 6-9, 235-pound Swedish forward Christian Maraker.
"Maraker is a real threat because he can post up and he's skilled on the perimeter," said McQueen, who was Jason Kidd's teammate at California. "He's a threat from 3-point range and has those European skills. He'll trail in transition and play a high-low game with Yango. He'll create problems for anybody."
Point guard David Doubley makes Pacific go. He's also one of the team's 3-point threats (42.7 percent).
Marko Mihailovic will present a challenge for Pitt on the perimeter, because he's a 6-foot-5 scorer.
"He's a good standstill shooter, and he can handle the ball," McQueen said.
The Tigers tied for fourth in the country in field-goal percentage at 50.4, but everything about them must be measured within the context of the Big West, which is nothing at all like the Big East.
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, March 14, 2005
Stop complaining about Pitt's No. 9 seed in the Albuquerque Regional, if indeed you're among those who feel vicariously disrespected today.
Put away your "We All We Got" T-shirt and consider these facts:
# The Panthers built a weak resume by playing a non-conference schedule that ranked 261st out of 328 Division I teams, losing to Bucknell and St. John's and exiting the Big East Tournament before the lights went on at Madison Square Garden.
# Pitt has played its best basketball far away from home, with victories at Connecticut, Syracuse and Boston College. The farther away the better -- and Boise, Idaho, is roughly 2,140 miles from The Pete.
# It's the matchups that matter, not the seeding, and Pitt wouldn't have gotten better matchups as, say, the No. 5 seed in the Albuquerque Regional, playing George Washington in the first round and very likely Louisville in the second.
Seriously, scan your bracket sheet. The No. 5 seed in the Syracuse Regional (Villanova) is staring at a second-round matchup with Florida, which just dismembered Kentucky in the SEC Tournament. The No. 6 seed in the Chicago Regional (LSU) faces the prospect of a second-round game against Arizona, and your seventh-seeded West Virginia Mountaineers (Albuquerque) are a win away from facing Wake Forest, barring an upset.
I'm not even sure this is a more difficult road than Pitt faced as a No. 3 seed last season, when it had to play a road game at Wisconsin in the second round, against NBA lottery pick Devin Harris, then faced arguably the second-best team in the country in Oklahoma State.
One could even argue that Pacific is a more favorable first-round matchup than Central Florida was last year. Pacific plays in the ultra-weak Big West Conference, where it lost the tournament championship by 13 points to Utah State and didn't have a scorer reach double figures.
That's not to say Pacific is a pushover -- it played Kansas tough on the road this season and knocked Providence out of the NCAA Tournament last year -- but this appears to be an ideal matchup for Pitt.
University of San Francisco assistant coach Anwar McQueen told me last night that Pacific is not the stereotypical West Coast run-and-gun team but rather a physical club that favors a deliberate style -- in other words, a team that plays right into Pitt's hands. San Francisco beat Pacific, 67-64, on Dec. 18.
"I saw Pitt play Villanova, and Pacific is very similar to Pitt," McQueen said. "They want to play half-court, and they have a strong inside game."
The players to watch inside are 6-foot-9, 250-pound Guillaume Yango, who leads the team in scoring and rebounding, and 6-9, 235-pound Swedish forward Christian Maraker.
"Maraker is a real threat because he can post up and he's skilled on the perimeter," said McQueen, who was Jason Kidd's teammate at California. "He's a threat from 3-point range and has those European skills. He'll trail in transition and play a high-low game with Yango. He'll create problems for anybody."
Point guard David Doubley makes Pacific go. He's also one of the team's 3-point threats (42.7 percent).
Marko Mihailovic will present a challenge for Pitt on the perimeter, because he's a 6-foot-5 scorer.
"He's a good standstill shooter, and he can handle the ball," McQueen said.
The Tigers tied for fourth in the country in field-goal percentage at 50.4, but everything about them must be measured within the context of the Big West, which is nothing at all like the Big East.
