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Pitt's 2016-17 schedule finalized

By Craig Meyer / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 7 years ago

Anyone who follows Pitt basketball with even a modicum of interest has known for seven months what Pitt’s ACC schedule would look like as far as the opponents and game locations were concerned.

The arrangement of those matchups, a smaller but sometimes really important detail, was unknown over that time, though. On Monday, almost two months exactly until the Panthers’ basketball season kicks off, we found out.

What stands out, of course, is Pitt’s rotation of repeat opponents, a group that includes three teams that are listed in the top 15 of almost any preseason ranking — North Carolina, Virginia and Louisville — as well as a Syracuse team that many have as a top-25 squad after its surprise run to the Final Four last season. We knew as much based off the ACC’s announcement in February, but now, we have the full order in which those games will take place.


Pitt's 2016-17 ACC schedule (Craig Meyer/Post-Gazette)

I have a separate table detailing this that I tweeted, but the winning percentage last season of Pitt’s four repeat opponents this season is .745, with those foes going a combined 108-37 last season. That, by far, is the highest mark of any ACC team. The next-closest team, Virginia, has repeat opponents with a win percentage of .698 last season, meaning the gap between the No. 1 and No. 2 team in this category is as great as the difference between the No. 2 and No. 7 team.

A few thoughts and observations regarding the schedule...

** The thing that immediately stood out to me and several other people was the three-game stretch against Virginia, at Syracuse and at Louisville. There’s obviously the challenge of having to play three teams that will likely begin the season ranked, but having to do so in a stretch of just seven days will be a brutal welcome to conference play.

Even the ACC opener against Notre Dame that precedes that trio of matchups won’t be easy; while the game’s at home and it comes against a team having to replace some key pieces, the Irish have won at least 20 games in nine of the past 10 seasons.

** Ten of Pitt’s 18 conference games will come against teams ranked in ESPN’s most recent top 25, which was compiled after players’ NBA draft decisions were finalized. If we look at the Panthers’ entire schedule, 11 of their 31 games are against such teams and if it’s extended to include the teams listed under ’honorable mention,’ that number increases to 13.

** As difficult as the schedule is, Pitt never plays more than three consecutive games on the road. While the first two contests in that stretch are against North Carolina and Duke, the third is against Boston College, proving there’s some benevolence in the hearts of the scheduling gods.

** Aside from the week-long gap between the North Carolina State and Louisville games, the Panthers won’t have more than a four-day break between ACC games.

** Two of Pitt’s repeat ACC opponents, Syracuse and Louisville, were handled by the Panthers with varying degrees of success the past several years, going back to their days in the Big East. The Panthers have won nine of their past 13 meetings with the Orange dating back to the 2008-09 season, including their past five, but they’ve gone 1-9 against the Cardinals in that same span. All of that occurred under Jamie Dixon, though, with his teams often getting the better of Jim Boeheim’s 2-3 zone while never being able to contend with Louisville’s unrelenting press and (typically) superior athleticism.

It’ll be interesting to see if their fortunes against those respective programs change at all under Kevin Stallings.

** All of the conference games will be televised. The ‘RSN’ listed for several of the games is shorthand for the ACC’s regional sports network, which, in Pitt’s case, includes Root Sports.

I also got the chance to talk to Kevin Stallings for a few minutes this afternoon about the schedule and some of his immediate impressions of it. Below are some of his comments from that conversation:

On what immediately stood out to him: “It’s certainly exciting. It looks almost comically difficult. It’s just one really good team after another, but that’s the part that makes it exciting. I used to feel the same way when I looked at an SEC schedule. I just thought ‘Gosh, this looks hard,’ but it looks hard every year. I’m sure that will be the case with any ACC schedule I receive, too. It’s obviously an exciting challenge. It’s something our players will embrace readily. It’s certainly a motivator, as well to try to get our team as ready to play as we can.”

[Quick note on this: Tone’s never evident when something is in text, be it on Twitter or in a newspaper. When Stallings said it was ’almost comically difficult’ he did so with a slight chuckle, making a lighthearted note that a lot of other people did about the schedule, but just in different terms. Simply put, it’s really, really hard. I took that phrase as more of a coach stressing out and obsessing over the games rather than waving a white flag and effectively saying ’Oh my god, I’m so overwhelmed.’]

On if he prefers having that rough three-game stretch earlier: “We have 18 to play and the 18 are very, very difficult. You start with your two permanent opponents, two of the premier programs in college basketball in Syracuse and Louisville, and you work from there. Our other two-play opponents this year are Virginia and North Carolina, so right there are eight of your 18 games. You have three hall-of-fame coaches and another that might be on his way. It’s just very difficult from start to finish.”

On his adjustment from the SEC to the ACC: “Any time you go from one league to another, there’s an adjustment because there are things you get used to after a period of time being in one league, whether it’s opposing venues or whatever. This will obviously be a very new challenge for me. My players, at least most of them, will be more experienced at it than I am in terms of the different places we play and even our home court for that matter. It’s the reason I took the job. It’s the reason I wanted to be at Pitt, because of the challenges of the ACC and the excitement of trying to bring a championship-level program to the University of Pittsburgh.”

And one final note...

I can confirm that Pitt will be playing in the 2017 Legends Classic at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, along with Penn State, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M. The news was reported earlier today by Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports.

 

Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG