On Wednesday night, No. 18 Pitt will have another Quad-1 opportunity as it will take on Mississippi State on the road.

Let’s dive in to the game preview.

PITT’S OUTLOOK

The Panthers are looking for win No. 8 on the year after a massive victory at Value City Arena on Black Friday over the Ohio State Buckeyes. Pitt won on a game-winning three from Zack Austin in the final seconds of the intense, overtime matchup. Check out that buzzer-beating three pointer here.

Now, Pitt faces another tough test. The Panthers arrived in Starkville on Tuesday night, and are now preparing to play against a strong Mississippi State team, who has pleasantly surprised many around the SEC so far, aside from one blunder on its resume.

MISSISSIPPI STATE BULLDOGS (6-1)

HEAD COACH

Chris Jans (3rd Season)

MISSISSIPPI STATE PREVIEW

The Bulldogs have made the NCAA Tournament in each of Jans’ first two years at the helm. Remember that first Tournament appearance? Pitt knocked out the Bulldogs in 2022-23, as Jamarius Burton hit a game-winning shot in Dayton in the First Four.

Pittsburgh Panthers guard Jamarius Burton (11) February 21, 2023 David Hague/PSN

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Now, Mississippi State has a bit of a different look.

The Bulldogs have a super star guard in Josh Hubbard. Hubbard is averaging 19 points per game, shooting 45% from three-point range on 58 attempts, and only has one turnover through the team’s first seven games. Alongside Hubbard, eight different players have started a game this year for the team.

6-foot-10, 230-pound forward KeShawn Murphy is averaging 11 points and nine rebounds per game for the Bulldogs, and should be a tough matchup inside for Pitt bigs Cam Corhen and Papa Amadou Kante. Cameron Matthews, a 6-foot-7, 235-pound forward, has started six games, and should add to the Bulldogs’ toughness inside.

Claudell Harris, formerly at Boston College, is the only other Bulldog who has made more than ten three pointers. He is shooting 31% from three this year. In addition, transfers Riley Kugel, Kanye Clary, RJ Melendez, and Mike Nwoko bolster the team’s depth all around.

The Bulldogs recently lost their first game of the year, falling to Butler. In that game, they shot just 7 for 27 from three and grabbed a season-low 33 rebounds. Butler was 12 for 22 from three-point range, and despite 14 turnovers, won the game.

METRICS

Pitt is ranked No. 5 in the NET rankings, while Mississippi State is ranked No. 26.

GAME TIME

Pitt Vs. Mississippi State will start at 9:15 p.m. est. on SEC Network.

SPREAD

Mississippi State is a 6-point favorite, per DraftKings. The Panthers moneyline is +200, while Mississippi State is -245 to win straight up. The over/under is hovering around 149.5 points.

TV

You can find Wednesday night’s game on SEC Network.

RADIO

Pitt Vs. Mississippi State will be live on 93.7 The Fan as well.

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GARYVILLE, La. (AP) — Louisiana has long relied on a vast levee system to rein in the Mississippi River and protect surrounding communities from flooding. But cutting off the natural flow of the river with man made barriers has been slowly killing one of the nation’s largest forested wetlands.

The 176 square mile (456 square kilometers) Maurepas Swamp just to the west of New Orleans holds Louisiana’s second largest contiguous forest, a beloved state wildlife refuge filled with water tupelo and bald cypress trees, their branches adorned by wisps of Spanish moss. A beloved recreation site, the swamp also houses bald eagles, ospreys, black bears and alligators and serves as a waystation for hundreds of different migratory birds.

Deprived of nutrients from the stanched Mississippi River, the swamp’s iconic trees are dying in stagnant water. Yet they’re now set to receive a life-saving boost.

State and federal authorities on Tuesday celebrated breaking ground on an ambitious conservation project intended to replenish the ailing trees by diverting water from the Mississippi back into the swamp.

“This is about reconnecting a natural system, actually fixing it to what it used to be,” said Brad Miller, who has shepherded the project for the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority since 2006.

Miller likened the $330 million river diversion to watering a garden: “The swamp needs river water to be a good swamp.”

The River Reintroduction into Maurepas Swamp will allow for a maximum of 2000 cubic feet per second (57 cubic meters per second) to flow out of a gated opening to be built in the levee system and routed along a 5.5 miles (9 kilometers) diversion channel. The project expects to revitalize around 45,000 acres (182 square kilometers) of swamp in an area where less than a third of the forest is considered healthy according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Besides injecting much-needed nutrients and oxygen into the swamp, river water will leave thin layers of sediment deposits that mitigate the effect of subsidence — a natural phenomenon on Louisiana’s fragile coast exacerbated by fossil fuel extraction — and climate change-induced sea level rise, said Nick Stevens, a researcher at Southeastern Louisiana University’s wetlands ecology and restoration lab. Healthier forests bolster the swamp with decomposing matter from branches and leaves, he added.

“All of that is completely hindered by not having the Mississippi River attached to it anymore,” Stevens said. “You’ve got all this land sinking as a result of just not getting nutrients.”

The swamp’s diminishing health has had ripple effects on biodiversity, says Erik Johnson, director of conservation science at Audubon Delta, an organization focused on bird ecology in the Mississippi River delta. Some migratory birds like the yellow throated warbler, prothonotary warbler and the northern parula have had their populations plummet by nearly 50% in the past two decades, Johnson said.

These birds rely on caterpillars who are dependent on water tupelo and bald cypress foliage. When there’s less healthy leaves for the caterpillars to gorge on, there’s less food for the birds.

“That’s driving a really rapid decline in these bird populations that depend on this one forest,” Johnson said. “The whole system has shifted.”

Scientists say they expect to start seeing an increase in canopy cover and new tree growth within a few years of the project’s anticipated completion in 2028.

Unlike the state’s controversial $3 billion river diversion project intended to combat coastal land loss, the Maurepas project has received widespread support from elected officials and local communities.

The Maurepas project is primarily funded by the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, a multi-state and federal program managing settlement funds from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that devastated the Gulf Coast.

The Maurepas project benefits from an innovative partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is building an adjacent 18.5 miles (30 kilometers) levee system to protect several southeast Louisiana parishes. The Corps will count 9,000 acres (36 square kilometers) of Maurepas Swamp restoration towards offsetting environmental damage caused by the new levee construction, meaning it can direct additional federal funds towards the diversion program.

“For every dollar the state can save here, they have more to invest” in other coastal restoration projects, said John Ettinger, director of policy and environmental compliance with Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council.

And conservationists say the Maurepas reintroduction project highlights the importance of coastal protection and wetlands restoration going hand in hand in a hurricane-prone region.

“You’re going to have a healthier ecosystem on the outside of that levee, which means you’re going to have a better buffer for storm surge and it’s going to allow the levees to be more effective,” said Amanda Moore, National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf Program senior director. “This is how we need to be thinking at large about what’s possible and how we can how we can do more effective conservation by working with nature.”