Jeff Capel Responds to Criticism Over Pitt’s Non-Conference Strength of Schedule

WASHINGTON — On Friday, 1-seed North Carolina took down 4-seed Pitt in an ACC Tournament semifinal battle in the nation’s capital, ending the Panthers’ run at an ACC Tournament title.

The Panthers, led by head coach Jeff Capel, believe that despite just one win this week’s tournament, they still deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament field when it is released on Sunday.

“I know we’ve gotten better,” Capel said. “I know if you look over the past — since January 20th, I think we’ve played as well as anyone in college basketball. Last year, I remember hearing, well, the early stuff doesn’t count, because we had an unbelievable win last year against Northwestern. We beat them by 28 points on the road. They ended up second in the Big Ten, so that’s a quad one win. We heard, well, that was November, or December, so it doesn’t matter. Now, all I’m hearing [about] is our Missouri loss. That was early December.”

Pitt’s worst loss of this season, a Quad 3 loss, came to Missouri at home. The Tigers made last year’s NCAA Tournament, but this year, aside from that Pitt win, have been abysmal. Dennis Gates’ team lost 19-straight games to end the season, and failed to win a single game in SEC play this year.

“Again, we thought we had a really good schedule,” Capel said. “We didn’t know West Virginia would turn out like they were. They were picked high in the Big 12. We didn’t know that Missouri wouldn’t win a game. When we played them, they were pretty good. We didn’t know they wouldn’t win a game in the SEC.”

That Missouri loss combined with Pitt’s lack of strong wins in the non-conference schedule, has come back to haunt them come March. On Thursday, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi mentioned on ESPN that the Panthers’ non-conference strength of schedule may hold them out of the tournament in the eyes of the committee.

“When I look at Pitt, if they played UVA best of seven on a neutral court, I think they’d win in six, and they’d all be ugly, low-scoring games. but my job is to say what they [the NCAA Tournament committee] are going to do, and the single most consistent metric applied by the committee in 30 years of this is if you’re on the bubble and your non-conference is really bad, you get bagged. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m saying, it is.”

According to Kenpom.com, Pitt’s non-conference strength of schedule (NCSOS) ranks No. 340 in the nation. Out of the top-100 teams in Kenpom’s rankings as of Saturday at 1 a.m., there are three teams with lower NCSOS rankings than Pitt. Iowa State (projected 2 seed per Mike DeCourcy) has a NCSOS ranked No. 352, James Madison (conference champ – auto bid to tournament) has a NCSOS ranked No. 342, TCU (projected 11 seed)’s is ranked No. 357, Northwestern (projected 8 seed), No. 355.