Florida Gulf Coast Set To Play Pittsburgh In 2014

(Courtesy of Linwood Ferguson)

Florida Gulf Coast will play at Pittsburgh on Dec. 30, FGCU athletic director Ken Kavanagh announced on Friday.

The Panthers finished last season with a 26-10 record, including a 11-7 mark in the ACC. They grabbed an at large NCAA Tournament bid and defeated No. 8 seeded Colorado before falling to top ranked Florida.

FGCU's non-conference schedule is slowly taking shape as this announcement came just a day after we reported the Eagles would compete in a home and home series with UC Santa Barbara. Florida Gulf Coast plays host to Furman (Dec. 18) and FIU (TBD) this season, and they also head on the road to battle Iona and Xavier (Dec. 28). The latter of the contests is a 'guarantee' game which pays FGCU a sum to come battle a power conference opponent.

The Eagles will also compete in the Gulf Coast Showcase (Nov. 24-26), a Thanksgiving tournament located at Germain Arena. The field is comprised of FGCU, East Carolina, Evansville, Marist, Green Bay, Fresno State, and San Francisco. Each team is guaranteed three games.

Florida Gulf Coast, which will have arguably their strongest roster in program history, has had a difficult time scheduling strong opponents. Christian Terrell, Zach Johnson, Eric Moeller, and Demetris Morant round out FGCU's 2014 recruiting class while the Eagles also bring in a slew of transfers.

"We're in that situation where we've gotten more successful so teams are more leery of coming to play us because they know how hard it is to win at Alico Arena," Kavanagh told the Eagles Nest last week.

The departures of Mercer and ETSU from the A-Sun leaves FGCU with only 14 conference games, making the task even harder.

"We keep trying to call others schools like ourselves, good mid-majors, with the same problems getting home games," Kavanagh said.

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