NCAA Tournament: Taking A Purely Objective Look At Pitt Vs. Colorado

Mar 14, 2014; Greensboro, NC, USA; Pittsburgh Panthers guard Cameron Wright (3) smiles as the final seconds tick off in their 80-75 win over North Carolina Tar Heels in the quarterfinals of the ACC college basketball tournament at Greensboro Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

With NFL free agency beginning to die down and the draft still a month away, it’s time to talk about another love of mine, March Madness.

My relationship with March Madness is strained, but I absolutely still love it, no matter what crazy upset kills my bracket. (I hate you Missouri. Norfolk State…really?)

Regardless of how stressful it may be, it’s exciting and I crave that in sports.

What does this have to do with Pitt? Well, it just so happens that the Panthers have made the tournament as a ninth seed and they are exciting. Whether they are close to blowing a huge lead vs. North Carolina, or almost taking down the then-No. 1 team in Syracuse, the Panthers are anything but dull.

I’ll go on record saying I’m not a Pitt fan. I am a Penn State fan to the grave. Unfortunately, Penn State is terrible at basketball. Pitt, however, is not. Not to mention there is something fascinating about Jamie Dixon’s squad this year.

Not being a Pitt fan allows me to take personal bias out of the equation and just go by the stats and what I see from watching games.

With that said, let’s preview Thursday’s Pitt vs. Colorado matchup and take an objective look at who is going to win.

To start, lets look at quality wins and bad losses. Colorado can only boast about two quality wins after beating Stanford and Arizona State. I understand they beat other good teams, but I’m only looking at how they have played since their leading scorer and overall best player Spencer Dinwiddie was lost for the season.

In terms of bad losses, they have a few. They were crushed by Washington and Utah. Furthermore, they were dismantled against quality basketball programs like Arizona State, UCLA and twice by Arizona.

Pitt has a couple more quality wins with victories over North Carolina, N.C. State, Clemson twice and basically a win vs. Syracuse, as close as you can get.

The bad losses are very few. The Panthers lost to Florida State, who was on the bubble to make the tournament, and were beaten soundly by Duke. Neither loss is awful, but those are their worst. Pitt played a much tougher schedule in the premier ACC, than the Buffaloes’ inferior Pac-12 schedule.