Virginia (18-7, 10-5) at Pittsburgh (15-12, 6-10)

Noon, ESPN2

Saturday’s matinee is a matchup of two teams heading in opposite directions at the moment. UVa will arrive in the Steel City winners of its last three in a row and six of the last seven. Those victories have placed the Wahoos on the right side of the bubble and solidly in fourth place in the ACC with five games remaining.

On the other hand, Pitt is starting to slide down the standings after a decent start. The Panthers enter Saturday’s contest losers of three straight and six of their last eight. Unless they win out, they will finish with a losing record in ACC play for the fourth consecutive season.

Jeff Capel’s rebuild of the Pitt program is in Year 2 and despite the setbacks they’ve suffered lately, it seems like the Panthers are heading in the right direction. Led by a nucleus of young players, they started the year 10-3 with wins over tournament teams Florida State and Rutgers.

After a 4-4 start to ACC play, they have hit a wall but still seem far more dangerous than other teams the program has fielded in recent years. Almost all of Pitt’s major producers have two or three years of eligibility remaining, so the future’s still bright in Oakland.

Pitt ranks 97th in KenPom, 12th-best among ACC programs. The Panthers are not particularly proficient at either end of the floor in terms of efficiency, ranking 118th on offense and 99th on defense. Like Virginia, the Panthers play at a deliberate pace, ranking 331st nationally in tempo out of 353 teams (UVa is dead last).

On offense, they do a decent job taking care of the basketball and are good on the offensive glass, but they struggle in the most-important area: Shooting. The Panthers are near the very bottom of Division 1 in effective field goal percentage, and are a sub-300 team in both two-point tries (46.1 percent, 310th nationally), and 3-pointers (29.4 percent, 329th nationally). In fact, after a really solid run of shooting from UVa, the Cavaliers now shoot the 3 better than Pitt does at 30.2 percent.

Meanwhile, Pitt doesn’t have quite as many glaring weaknesses on defense. The Panthers do allow opponents to make 34.1 percent of their shot attempts from beyond the arc, which is below average. Their biggest weakness is giving up far too many offensive rebounds and second-chance opportunities. Their opponents are grabbing offensive boards on 34.4 percent of their attempts, which is fifth-most nationally. On a positive note, Pitt is one of the best teams in the country at creating turnovers, ranking 17th in turnover percentage.

The Panthers have a guard-heavy attack on offense, led by a trio of players averaging double-figures scoring. Freshman guard Justin Champagnie has been a true bright spot this season and is his team’s top scorer. Averaging 12.4 points per game, Champagnie recently had a 30-point, nine-rebound effort against Georgia Tech in a game where he made 12 field goals.

Champagnie is joined in the lineup by a group of guards that cut their teeth in Capel’s first season in charge and have shown development this year. Sophomore Trey McGowens is second on the team in scoring at 12.8 points per game but has cooled off of late, scoring just 18 points total in Pitt’s three-game losing skid.

His classmate, Xavier Johnson, is an integral part of this Pittsburgh team in his second year with the program, and is one of the top distributors in the conference. Averaging 11.8 points and a team-high 5.1 assists per game, the Woodbridge native had a rough go of it in his return to his home state, scoring just three points and going 0-for-7 from the field in Pitt’s loss at JPJ late in the season. The sophomore point guard will surely be gunning for an improved effort against the Wahoos on Saturday.