I'll write more details about the Pittsburgh Panthers soon.
Jeff Capel is in his 8th season as head coach of Pittsburgh, and time is running out. That's not about any hot seat -- I'm not interested in speculating on his employment -- but instead it's about qualifying for the ACC Tournament, which takes only the top 15 of the league's 18 teams. Right now Pitt is one of 5 teams at the bottom of the standings, each with just 2 conference wins. (The others are Boston College, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, and Wake Forest.) After they play Duke, they'll get Notre Dame and Florida State at home, but they'll have to play UNC, Stanford, California, and Syracuse on the road.
An already thin rotation got thinner with the loss of leading scorer Brandin Cummings, who is about to miss his third straight game. According to
On3, Coach Capel said in Monday's media teleconference that Cummings was being evaluated this week, and mentioned the possibility that his injury could end his season. The Pittsburgh
roster still has 11 players available, but Coach Capel has mostly been using a 6-man rotation in recent games.
PROBABLE STARTERS
6-10 senior forward
Cameron Corhen #2 (12.3 pts, 7.4 reb, 1.6 ast)
6-6 senior wing
Barry Dunning Jr #22 (11.5 pts, 5.5 reb, 0.7 ast)
6-6 freshman forward
Roman Siulepa #13 (9.8 pts, 5.5 reb, 0.9 ast, 1.0 stl)
6-0 fifth-year guard
Damarco Minor #7 (9.5 pts, 3.7 reb, 3.5 ast, 1.4 stl)
6-4 freshman guard
Omari Witherspoon #8 (7.5 pts, 2.7 reb, 2.2 ast)
KEY RESERVES
6-5 sophomore guard
Nojus Indrusaitis #25 (8.0 pts, 3.1 reb, 1.7 ast)
BENCH PLAYERS
6-3 freshman guard
Macari Moore #21 (1.5 pts, 0.6 reb, 0.6 ast)
7-0 freshman center
Kieran Mullen #12 (1.0 pts, 1.4 reb, 0.1 ast)
6-7 freshman forward
Henry Lau #6
6-4 junior forward
Benjamin Mayhew #35
6-7 junior forward
Jajuan Nelson #44
OUT FOR TUESDAY'S GAME
(source)
6-3 sophomore guard
Brandin Cummings #3 (12.5 pts, 1.5 reb, 2.1 ast) --
last played January 31
6-10 redshirt sophomore forward
Papa Amadou Kante #4 (2.8 pts, 5.4 reb, 0.9 ast) --
knee surgery; out for season
6-11 fifth-year center
Dishon Jackson #1 --
heart condition, has yet to debut
I use
Sports Reference and other listed sources to put together a pair of comparison tables below.
Bart Torvik sees Duke picking up a road win, scoring 75 points (25 per local river) to Pitt's 62.
TABLE 1
| Category | Pittsburgh (9-15, 2-9 ACC) | Duke (21-2, 10-1 ACC) |
| Points Scored | 70.8 (302nd nationally) | 83.4 (44th) |
| Points Allowed | 71.5 (120th) | 63.9 (9th) |
| Scoring Margin (NCAA.org Stats) | -0.7 (248th) | +19.5 (7th) |
| Bench Points (NCAA.org Stats) | 19.7 (240th) | 21.3 (201st) |
| Fastbreak Points (NCAA.org Stats) | 9.0 (250th) | 10.8 (163rd) |
| Total Rebounds | 35.3 (208th) | 39.8 (32nd) |
| --- Offensive Rebounds | 12.5 (65th) | 12.1 (89th) |
| --- Defensive Rebounds | 22.8 (306th) | 27.7 (24th) |
| --- Rebound Margin (NCAA.org Stats) | +3.0 (117th) | +9.9 (10th) |
| Assists | 13.0 (263rd) | 17.0 (42nd) |
| Assist/Turnover Ratio (NCAA.org Stats) | 1.15 (221st) | 1.54 (43rd) |
| Steals | 6.5 (217th) | 8.3 (55th) |
| Blocks | 3.3 (184th) | 3.6 (140th) |
| Turnovers | 11.3 (140th fewest) | 11.0 (114th fewest) |
| --- Turnover Margin (NCAA.org Stats) | +0.4 (232nd) | -2.2 (66th) |
| Personal Fouls | 17.1 (144th fewest) | 16.0 (60th fewest) |
| Field Goal Percentage | 43.4% (284th) | 49.7% (22nd) |
| 2-Point FG Percentage | 50.8% (254th) | 62.0% (6th) |
| 3-Point FG Percentage | 33.3% (223rd) | 33.9% (198th) |
| Free Throw Percentage | 66.7% (312th) | 71.8% (203rd) |
TABLE 2
| Category | Pittsburgh (9-15, 2-9 ACC) | Duke (21-2, 10-1 ACC) |
| NET Ranking (NCAA.org Stats) | #122 (NET Summary) | #3 (NET Summary) |
| --- Strength of Schedule | 41st | 10th |
| --- Quad 1 | 0-9 | 10-2 |
| --- Quad 2 | 2-3 | 3-0 |
| --- Quad 3 | 2-2 | 2-0 |
| --- Quad 4 | 5-1 | 6-0 |
| KenPom (Ken Pomeroy) | #107 | #3 |
| --- Offensive Efficiency | 112nd | 8th |
| --- Defensive Efficiency | 123rd | 3rd |
| --- Tempo | 338th | 266th |
| T-Rank (Bart Torvik) | #111 (T-Page) | #6 (T-Page) |
| --- Experience | 1.639 (272nd) | 0.892 (363rd) |
| --- Talent | 55.186 (33rd) | 91.210 (1st) |
| --- Effective Height | 79.898 (238th) | 81.496 (44th) |
| --- Average Height | 77.116 (216th) | 79.421 (2nd) |
NET quadrants
explained:
The quality of wins and losses will be organized based on game location and the opponent's NET ranking.
Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353
Ken Pomeroy
defines efficiency as an extrapolated measure of points scored (offensive) or allowed (defensive) per 100 possessions against an average opponent. The more points you score and the fewer points you allow, the better. Tempo refers to the number of possessions per 40 minutes against an average tempo: the higher the rank, the faster the tempo. Faster isn't necessarily better; Houston is among the 10 slowest teams, and is currently KenPom #5.
Bart Torvik offers some clarification in the comments
here.
Experience "is based on class year (3 for senior, 0 for freshman) with caveat that it actually counts how many years a guy has played 10 games in, so if a guy is listed as a soph even though he's played two full years already, he'll count as a junior."
Talent "is based on composite recruiting ranks weighted for minutes played."
Effective Height "is an attempt to calculate minute-weighted height of the 4s and 5s. So it's basically the average height of the tallest 40% of minutes."
Average Height "includes all minutes, not just the bigs."
www.espn.com
