Joe Lunardi has predicted the NCAA tournament field with 94 percent accuracy the past two years, so when answers are needed for so-called bubble teams looking for one of the 34 at-large berths Lunardi is the person fielding questions.

Pitt fans, you need not worry.

Regardless of what transpires in the regular-season finale against DePaul and at the Big East tournament next week, Lunardi believes the Panthers already have done enough to qualify for their seventh consecutive NCAA tournament.

"I feel Pitt is in the tournament," Lunardi said in an e-mail exchange yesterday. "A win over DePaul would be a nice insurance policy against whatever happens in NYC."

Pitt (21-9, 9-8) will play DePaul (10-18, 5-11) in the regular-season finale Sunday afternoon at the Petersen Events Center. The Panthers will play an opponent still to be determined in a first-round game Wednesday at the Big East tournament.

Lunardi, an ESPN contributor who has been projecting the field for several years for the network, is confident Pitt will not be denied because of its strong RPI (No. 25 as of yesterday) and impressive victories against Duke and Georgetown.

The only team to be left out of the tournament field with an RPI of 30 or better was Missouri State in 2006. No team from a BCS conference with an RPI of 30 or better has been left out.

Then again, no team from the Big East with 24 victories was denied until Syracuse was left out last season. That was one of Lunardi's two incorrect projections last year.

Big East officials were upset that Syracuse was left out because they believed it was a byproduct of the Big East's size, and that the committee did not take into account how difficult the league had become with 16 teams.

The Big East has something else going against it this season. The Big East scheduled 18 conference games, which added two league games in place of non-conference games. But Lunardi does not believe Big East teams will be given the benefit of the doubt because of the increased number of conference games.

"I doubt it, especially since Big East teams typically have the weakest non-conference schedules compared to their BCS brethren. It all evens out."

When selected reporters were invited to Indianapolis last month to attend a mock NCAA selection-committee meeting, one of the topics discussed was how difficult Pitt would be to seed because of the injury situation to junior point guard Levance Fields.

At the time, Fields had not yet returned from his fractured foot, and there was a strong belief in the room that the Panthers would be bolstered by his return. For that reason, seeding the Panthers was troublesome.

Lunardi said that no longer is the case. Fields has played in the past six games, with Pitt going 2-4 in those games. Instead of improving with Fields back in the lineup, the Panthers appear to be regressing.

Lunardi said the selection committee "absolutely" will take into account Pitt's poor play since Fields returned to the lineup.

"It makes his return less of a plus for them in terms of their seeding," he said.

Lunardi does mock brackets weekly on ESPN.com. Despite a blowout loss Monday at West Virginia, Lunardi expects Pitt to remain a No. 7 seed when he updates his brackets tomorrow. Other web sites projecting NCAA teams have Pitt firmly in the field as well. CBSsportsline.com had Pitt as a No. 6 seed in its latest mock bracket, which was updated Monday.

A look at the other Big East teams Joe Lunardi currently has in the field of 65 (Sd=seed):

Sd.....Team.....Opponent

3.....Georgetown.....Siena

3.....Louisville.....Robert Morris

4.....Connecticut.....Cornell

4.....Notre Dame.....Massachusetts

5.....Marquette.....Virginia Tech

7.....Pitt.....Davidson

10.....West Virginia.....Miss. State

The skinny: Bids by conference: Big East (7); ACC (6); Big 12 (6), Pac-10 (6); SEC (5); Big Ten (4).