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Pitt will come into the ACC Tournament as the number five seed after a heart stopping win over Clemson Saturday. That means they will just miss the double bye, but do get a day of rest before playing on Thursday at 2PM. The Panthers will play the winner of the Wake Forest-Notre Dame game. The Fighting Irish and Demon Deacons will play on Wednesday, so there is the added pressure of being the fresher team. The Deacons and Irish both have 6-12 ACC records on their resume with one team being under .500 by a game and the other being over .500 by a single game in their overall records. Both teams played Pitt once during the season and both came away with losses.
Where will Pitt go from there with a win? It's pretty simple at first. Should the Panthers survive and advance on Thursday, they will go to battle with the number four seed at 2PM on Friday. That number four seed would provide Pitt with yet another chance for a quality win. A win on Thursday would give them a rematch with North Carolina, who has steadily risen up into the top 15 before a tough loss on the road to rival Duke this past weekend. The opportunity (should it come up) will be on Friday. The tourney continues straight through to a championship game on Sunday before the selection show.
The bad news for the ACC Tourney is that some of the games are during the day and during the week. We all know the routine: You pretend to work and hope the boss doesn't catch you monitoring the game or just flat out watching it. ESPN will have you covered throughout the conference tourney, as it will provide coverage of all games on the major network. No need to go to ESPN2 or ESPNU....you can just go to the main channel this week.