Pitt is as close as it has been to achieving its first Associated Press Top 25 ranking since Jan. 11, 2016, when it earned a slot at No. 20 before falling out the previous week for good.
And, for the next six-plus years.
But this resurgence the Panthers are on -- as one of the three teams tied atop the ACC standings in the second week of February -- is not exactly getting looked at by the in-depth analytics which are so coveted nowadays.
The Panthers, as of this posting, are 51st in the NET rankings, which are updated daily to reflect standings among all 363 teams in college basketball.
For a team at 17-7 overall and 10-3 within its conference, this seems low. It certainly is among ACC counterparts, including Virginia, which is also tied with Pitt atop the ACC standings, has one more win (with three fewer losses), and has an identical conference record and has a NET ranking of 14.
Adding in, Pitt is 60th in the latest KenPom ranking.
Why is this the way it is?
As it turns out, there are a number of factors. The NET system in and of itself is a complex one, but can be broken down by two components.
One, the "Team Value Index," which according to the NCAA's official website is "a result-based feature that rewards teams for beating quality opponents, particularly away from home."
Two, the "adjusted net efficiency rating" which, according to the NCAA's official website, is "a team’s net efficiency, adjusted for strength of opponent and location (home/away/neutral) across all games played."
Those are two primary and decisive factors which determine the NET, but a team's winning percentage and its "adjusted" winning percentage, which factors result based on location, are third and fourth factors, respectively.
This is where the "Quadrant" system then comes into play. More of an explanation on those can be found in my story from mid-January.
Pitt is, statistically speaking, the best team within the ACC within Quadrant 1 games, at a 5-2 record. The next closest is Miami's 6-4 in such games. The Panthers are 3-4 in Quadrant 2 and a combined 9-1 in Quadrants 3 and 4 with respect to the NET.
Pitt began the season 80th in the initial NET rankings, seventh among ACC teams. So, the fact that it has bumped up 29 spots is a positive to draw, but consider this, as well: Pitt finished 193rd in the final NET rankings of last season.
So, the analytics at the beginning portion of the season saw Pitt as a "better" team than the one which took the floor for Jeff Capel last year, but still not enough to boost Pitt near where it should be in the now. The first NET rankings dropped on Dec. 5, after Pitt had opened to a 6-3 record which included its 1-3 start. Pitt then lost to Vanderbilt Dec. 7, which popped them back to 86th in the NET. By the time Pitt upset North Carolina at the Petersen Events Center on Dec. 30, though, it was up to 70th in the NET.
The win against Virginia Jan. 3 allowed Pitt to move ahead to 68th in the NET, which was a bump of three spots.
Pitt found itself in the mid-60s and firmly on the "bubble" by the time it lost to Clemson and Duke, but has since recovered by beating the teams in the conference which it should and adding wins over Miami, Wake Forest, and at North Carolina to solidify the resume.
All of that is broken down to say this: Even though Pitt is not getting the love it necessarily should within the NET -- it goes for now without mentioning KenPom, which is seemingly punishing Pitt for a "weak" nonconference schedule -- the Panthers' resume and the national attention which it has gathered from beating NC State, Virginia, Miami, Wake Forest, and North Carolina twice while only sustaining one loss between Quadrants 3 and 4 stand to reason.
Fair? Unfair? Maybe Pitt is still getting punished for such a poor showing last season?
Among the 50 teams ranked ahead of Pitt in the current NET, 18 teams have a lesser or equal overall record to the Panthers. Iowa State is ranked 13th in the NET at 16-7 overall while holding a 7-7 record in Quad 1 games, though it plays in what is likely the most impressive conference in college basketball in the Big 12.
The two largest and most egregious cases of teams ranked ahead in the NET over Pitt come from Ohio State and Florida. The Buckeyes are at 41st in the NET at 11-12 overall and 2-9 in Quad 1. The Gators are 46th in the NET at 13-11 overall and 2-9 in Quad 1.
The ACC is having another "down" season, and it is undoubtedly punishing the Panthers. Their 5-2 record inside Quad 1 games boasts the best winning percentage of those 18 aforementioned teams. Only one of those 18 teams has an above-.500 record in Quad 1 games: NET 34 Iowa, at 7-5 inside Quad 1.
Per KenPom, the ACC is at its lowest since 2013:
The ACC is now below the Mountain West and seventh overall in conference rankings at KenPom.
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) February 9, 2023
League has only finished as low as sixth once (2013) and was No. 5 the past two years.
2022-23 might can wind up as the worst top-to-bottom season for the ACC in modern history. pic.twitter.com/KKt64VruMI
It is unfair to Pitt that it cannot seem to crack into the 40s in the analytics department, but a finishing with 26 points and an effective ranking of No. 30 in the AP Top 25 signify that people -- not a computer -- are taking notice of the Panthers.
Remember, the NCAA Tournament selection committee is still just that. It is a set of human minds which are able to take these analytics and decipher which team has the "better" resume over the other. The NET is not the end-all, be-all, but it is heavily considered when picking an NCAA Tournament field.
Much more of this discussion is in the first segment of our first H2P Podcast, which is embedded at the end of this story and can be found wherever else podcasts are found.
MORE FROM OAKLAND
• Florida State upended Pitt 71-64 at the Petersen Events Center Jan. 21 behind an unbelievable shooting effort from the Seminoles and a not-so-clean effort from the Panthers. Nelly Cummings and Nike Sibande combined to make 3 of 18 from the field, but each have turned fortunes over since.
"Their size, their athleticism, their defense, their ability to pressure the basketball, those things concern me," Capel said of Florida State on Thursday. "Obviously they beat us the last time we played them here. Their size gave us problems. Hopefully we can shoo the basketball better, and hopefully we can defend better than we did."
• A typical Leonard Hamilton-coached team provides that size and athleticism, as Capel notes below, but this Hamilton-coached team also has had to battle from a bit of adversity this season. Guards Cam'Ron Fletcher and Jaylan Gainey are out for the season with knee injuries, and a few other injuries have impacted the Seminoles this season.
Florida State (8-17, 6-8 ACC), still, is no cakewalk after recovering from a 1-9 start, though it is 1-4 since its win at Pitt in January with the lone win coming against Louisville. Syracuse topped the Seminoles 76-67 in Tallahassee on Wednesday.
"You know you're going to see length, size, athleticism, pressure, switching everything," Capel said. "It's a team that you can't run a particular offense against. You have to play offense. They take you out of your plays with the way that they defend. Is this a typical (Hamilton) team? No, because they have a ton of injuries. I think he probably feels like he had some guys that he thought would be back that turned pro, and then they were just hit with major injuries in the preseason, so they don't have the depth that they normally have. They normally play 11, 12 guys. They're not doing that.
"It's funny when you look at Florida State this year, they have some guys that are in the top 10 in minutes played. I don't think it's been that way since I've been here. At times they've had their best players come off -- (2021-'22 NBA Rookie of the Year) Scottie Barnes came off the bench. (2020 fourth-overall draft pick) Pat Williams came off the bench, and so they've had a lot of depth. They still have depth, but not like they've had because of those injuries."
• On Thursday, Greg Elliott shared his experience of going through the transfer portal and eventually landing at Pitt. He said he talked to Wake Forest "a little bit" and had smaller schools interested, including Cleveland State in the Horizon League.
"I just felt like it was time for a fresh start," he said. "I knew I had one more year, and I just wanted to go somewhere where I could be a difference, go be a difference somewhere. I knew that my time had been worn out at Marquette. It wasn't a bad thing. It just was about that time for me to go try something else. When I entered the portal I didn't expect it to blow up like it did. I didn't expect a lot of schools to be calling. I don't know why, but I just didn't. I just wanted to look for something else, and when my high school coach told me about all the schools that were calling and stuff, I knew I really had to do this all over again, the recruiting process and stuff like that.
"Once I got into the portal it was really just trying to find the right fit for me. Find a place where I could come in and make an immediate impact, and I wanted to be at a program where I could impact winning at a high level. That's how I got here."