Jay Bilas Blasts Pitt's NCAA Tournament Snub

ESPN's Jay Bilas defended the Pitt Panthers after they were left out of the NCAA Tournament.

PITTSBURGH -- The Pitt Panthers' 2023-24 season came to an abrupt ending when they were left out of the NCAA Tournament field and declined a bid to the NIT. 

After the brackets were released and Pitt learned that it had been snubbed, ESPN's Jay Bilas stood on the table for them, and said he believed the Panthers were left out by unreasonable criteria - namely, their relatively poor non-conference strength of schedule. 

"Look, I said it last year about Clemson and I say it this year about Pittsburgh - both those teams should have been in their respective field," Bilas said. "I think Pittsburgh's a tournament team that got left out because of this non-conference scheduling business. And look that's fine, we're going to move on and today or tomorrow we're not going to talk about it anymore, but I do think we need to change the way we look at this stuff because I can pick out three, four teams that are firmly in this field that Pittsburgh is better than. ... You've got teams that have injuries that played just as bad a non-conference, if you want to call it that, than Pittsburgh did and they're firmly in the field. I don't understand that and I don't think it's been explained, frankly, in a reasonable way." 

Pitt's non-conference strength of schedule, hurt by unexpected declines for Missouri and West Virginia, ranked 340th out of 362 teams in Division I and was cited repeatedly as a difference maker for their resume amongst other bubble teams. But Bilas isn't sold on the notion that non-conference strength of schedule should be used to make distinctions like this because it is somewhat outdated. 

"I think the non-conference schedule discussion is really interesting," he said. "Years ago, maybe that made some sense, but now that these conferences have become mega-conferences and they're playing 20-game schedules, you're non-conference schedule doesn't matter."

Bilas, who was a vocal supporter of their tournament resume late in March, believes the Panthers weren't judged for what they did over the course of an entire season, mostly for the opponents they played in November and December. If the committee had put more weight on conference play, he believes Pitt would have been in big dance. 

"They keep saying 'total body of work', so if your total body of work is good relative to everyone else, that should be the end of the discussion," Bilas said. "If we're sitting here talking about non-conference schedules being the difference, I don't think that's the right way to go about this." 

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