Men’s Basketball: Pitt heads to D.C. for first Tournament game

hen the Pitt men’s basketball team earned the No. 1 seed in the Southeast region of the NCAA… When the Pitt men’s basketball team earned the No. 1 seed in the Southeast region of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday, the Panthers faced a unique situation.

Unlike most teams, Pitt didn’t find out during the selection show which squad it would play this afternoon. Instead, Pitt waited for the results of the First Four games on Tuesday night to discover its opponent, UNC-Asheville.

That left Pitt without a team to immediately begin scouting, but head coach Jamie Dixon said the pairing did give Pitt the opportunity to get an up-to-date look at its opponent.

“I’d rather be in that position than be a No. 5, 6, 7 or 8 seed,” Dixon said. “It’s part of being the No. 1 seed. I think we can adapt and get ready for it. Plus, we’ll have another game of them, a recent game, too. Often times you don’t get as many recent games from those teams as you try to track them down.”

No. 16 seeds UNC-Asheville and Arkansas-Little Rock met Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, in the first game of the newly created First Four for the right to meet Pitt in the second round. Since the Tournament expanded to 68 teams, the First Four games are now considered the first round.

The game ended up showing why the NCAA Tournament is often referred to as March Madness.

Arkansas-Little Rock controlled much of the game and built an 11-point lead, but UNC-Asheville narrowed the deficit to only three with less than a minute to play. Then UNC-Asheville’s leading scorer, junior guard Matt Dickey, hit a tough 3 from the corner with about 10 seconds left to send the game into overtime. His Bulldogs held on for an 81-77 win after the extra period.

“We don’t have any quit in this team,” UNC-Asheville head coach Eddie Biedenbach said in a post-game press conference. “We’ve had some ups and down this season but Matt Dickey and J.P. Primm have kept us up all year long.”

Dickey and Primm each average more than 14 points per game.

The victory gives UNC-Asheville the opportunity to become the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 seed in NCAA Tournament history when it plays the Panthers today at 3:10 p.m. in Washington, D.C.

A Pittsburgh native, Biedenbach played basketball and football at Edgewood High School. He helped guide the basketball team to two league championships and was inducted into the East Boros, Pa., Hall of Fame in 1998.

Dixon is familiar with the UNC-Asheville head coach, and said on Sunday that he’s been trying to get the Bulldogs to the Petersen Events Center for a game.

“He’s a Pittsburgh guy,” Dixon said. “We always talk to him on the road about Pittsburgh. I don’t know a lot about the school, but I know Coach Biedenbach very well. We’ve always talked about him coming up and playing here, but have never gotten it done.”

The Bulldogs (20-13, 11-7 Big South) have played several good teams this season, but without much success.. They lost to North Carolina by 11, Georgetown by 15 and Ohio State by 47 early in the season. UNC-Asheville also beat a 28-5 Coastal Carolina team in the Big South tournament final to earn an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.

For the Panthers (27-5, 15-3 Big East), the matchup is the first game of what they hope will be a deep run into the NCAA Tournament and a chance to show that their first round lost to Connecticut in the Big East tournament was a fluke.

The only other time Pitt was awarded a No. 1 seed, it  also came off a first-round loss in the Big East tournament. The rust showed as it narrowly beat No. 16-seed East Tennessee State in that year’s first round of the NCAA Tournament.

This year’s Panthers, led by seniors Gary McGhee, Gilbert Brown and Brad Wanamaker, as well as leading-scorer Ashton Gibbs, aren’t expecting an easy game this time around, either.

After receiving the one-seed, Gibbs said that although the Panthers will face lower seeded teams, the distinction doesn’t matter. He said high seeds can fall to any squad in the Tournament.

Inside scoring and rebounding will be the key for the Panthers to defeat the guard-oriented Bulldogs.

Pitt averages around 40 rebounds per game this season, whereas Asheville averages only 36. However, if it comes down to a free-throw-shooting battle, the Bulldogs might have the advantage, as they average about 4 percent better than the Panthers from the charity stripe.

A victory would give the Panthers a third-round game against either No. 8 Butler or No. 9 Old Dominion on Saturday.

Although the Panthers are focused on the teams they’ll meet in Washington, D.C., they still have their sights set on the Final Four. Gibbs said the team believes it could reach Houston this year.

“This is the year that we have to do it,” Gibbs said. “We’re definitely all confident. We’re practicing really hard. We just need to carry everything over to the game. We can’t get out-rebounded and out-toughed like we did last game in the Big East tournament.”