In Joe Lunardi’s latest bracketology prediction, Pitt basketball is listed as a No. 5 seed, comfortably in the field.
Lunardi has five teams making the field from the ACC: Duke (2), North Carolina (5), Pitt (5), Clemson (9), and Louisville (Last Four In). He has Wake Forest as a “Next Four Out” team.
The SEC is projected to have 12 bids in this year’s NCAA Tournament, per Lunardi. Pitt’s next opponent, Mississippi State, is a projected 6-seed in Lunardi’s prediction.
Pitt began the season on Lunardi’s bubble. With its strong 7-1 start to the season with high-major wins over Ohio State, LSU, and West Virginia, the Panthers have skyrocketed all the way up to No. 5 in the country in the NCAA’s NET rankngs.
Pitt hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since the 2022-23 season, in which it went all the way from the First Four to the Round of 32.
This offseason, the NCAA added two new metrics to consideration for the NCAA Tournament field.
The two metrics — Bart Torvik’s “T-Rank” and Wins Above Bubble — will be considered when the committee is weighing prospective NCAA Tournament teams.
“The committee has always valued different data points and metrics to assist with its evaluation process, and these two metrics have increasingly been referenced by members in recent years,” NCAA Senior VP of Basketball Dan Gavitt said in a press release. “Adding them to the team sheet ensures that all 12 members easily have access to this data. The Torvik rankings, along with BPI and KenPom, give the committee three predictive ratings, while the WAB, Strength of Record and KPI give them three results-based metrics, all of which, in addition to the NET, will be beneficial to the team evaluation process.”
The NCAA announced this addition to the selection committee’s team sheet at its summer meetings. It also announced that the 2026 Division II and III men’s basketball championships and the NIT semifinals and finals will take place in Indianapolis the same weekend as the Division I Final Four. Here is more information on the new metrics in consideration.
“The committee has always valued different data points and metrics to assist with its evaluation process, and these two metrics have increasingly been referenced by members in recent years,” Gavitt added. “Adding them to the team sheet ensures that all 12 members easily have access to this data. The Torvik rankings, along with BPI and KenPom, give the committee three predictive ratings, while the WAB, Strength of Record and KPI give them three results-based metrics, all of which, in addition to the NET, will be beneficial to the team evaluation process.”
