Pittsburgh March Madness To Begin

PITTSBURGH, PA — March Madness comes to Pittsburgh for the fifth time on Thursday and eight teams will face off for the first two rounds at PPG Paints Arena. But the only Pittsburgh team in the tournament won't be among them.

Third-seed Creighton and 14th seed Akron will kick off things at 1:30 p.m. Then sixth-seed South Carolina and 11th-seed Oregon take the court at 4 p.m. Third-seed Kentucky squares off against 14th-seed Oakland at 7:10 p.m. and sixth-seed Texas Tech faces 11th-seed North Carolina State at 9:40 p.m.

The winners of the opening games will play at the arena on Saturday.

The tournament here officially being hosted by Duquesne University, which also is in the tournament - its first time in 47 years. But the Dukes, who play BYU tomorrow, will be in Omaha ironically with the university being within a few feet from PPG Paints Arena.

The Dukes are 9.5 point underdogs, but The Athletic says not to count them out.

"The Dukes struggle offensively, ranking just 166th in adjusted efficiency," the website stated. But their defense is disruptive enough to threaten a Cougars team that has gone 11-9 in their past 20 games after a 12-1 start."

This will be Duquesne's sixth tournament appearance. The team previously appeared in the event in 1940, 1952, 1969, 1971 and 1977.