Bracketology Watch: Pitt Arrives at Selection Sunday Sweating

The Pitt Panthers will enter Selection Sunday unsure of exactly where they stand.

PITTSBURGH -- The Pitt Panthers got as much help as they could have over the weekend, with Champ Week ending absent any bid-stealers to speak of and the vast majority of the teams on the bubble losing as well. Still, they arrived at Selection Sunday unsure of exactly where they stand in the larger NCAA Tournament picture. 

The rosy feeling of Pitt's second round ACC Tournament win over Georgia Tech was overshadowed by a devastating defeat to Duke in the next round, but even the foggy outlook won't stop bracketologists from making final predictions ahead of the final reveal later this evening.

ESPN's Joe Lunardi had the Panthers pegged as an 11 seed headed to Dayton to play in the First Four against Arizona State. Should they win, a date with Mountain West Champion San Diego State back in Greensboro, North Carolina - the site of the ACC Tournament - looms. Lunardi predicts they will be the 44th overall seed. 

Jerry Palm of CBS Sports also has Pitt as an 11 seed, but avoiding Dayton and playing Missouri in the first round in Denver, Colorado instead. The winner of No. 3 Arizona and No. 14 UC Santa Barbara would await the winner of Tigers-Panthers. 

Mike DeCourcy, Fox Sports' resident bracket expert, does have Pitt in the First Four as well, but playing Mountain West runner-up Utah State. The winner of that game would earn their place in the South region and face Texas A&M in the first round, according to DeCourcy.

The Athletic's Eamonn Brennan was thoroughly unimpressed by the Panthers' 96-69 loss in the ACC Tournament to eventual champion Duke. They were in "should be in" territory after downing Georgia Tech the day before but now the outlook is less certain. 

"The performance was bad enough (and it’s worth remembering that Duke isn’t some vintage behemoth this season, but a likely No. 6-7 seed) that it will almost certainly knock Pitt’s already questionable metrics down into even shakier territory overnight," he wrote in his latest Bubble Watch analysis. "Things are less certain here than they’ve been in months, and rather than celebrating their program’s resurrection season, Pitt fans will spend all weekend sweating it out."

That said, the Athletic's latest projections had Pitt off the bubble entirely, playing six seed Kentucky in the East Region's Des Moines, Iowa site in the first round as an 11 seed. 

Pitt could just as easily be in the field as they could end up on the wrong side of the bubble. Only the Selection Committee knows where the chips will fall when it's all said and done. 

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