RPI Update -6

General NCS Basketball48

Never ascribe to malice those things easily explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte

I guess Napoleon wouldn’t be surprised that even though I live within two hours of both UVa and VT, that neither mid-week game would be available via cable…but we did get WF/UM and of course Duke/BC. Reports on message boards from Richmond say that they didn’t get the State-UVa game either. Looks like at least a big part of VA got the Wizards instead. Oh well….on to your regularly scheduled update.

My first entry here was titled “Another Pathetic Performance� just after the BC loss in football. For a while there, I was thinking about recycling that title. But, State’s win over UVa gives State a 6-2 mark at the half-way point of the ACC season. That puts State solidly in second place….even if the manner of the last several wins doesn’t build much confidence about the tougher games coming up. Oh well…survive and advance. The team will either step up play better against good teams, or it won’t…time will tell.

State’s RPI Graph Update.

Still 2-4 against the RPI Top-50. GW has a big road game tonight against Xavier. Does it bother anyone else that a home win against GW in December is State’s second-best victory of the season? (Please don’t bother telling me about GW’s poll numbers. Anyone who thinks that GW is the 10th best team in the country would fail urinalysis even if they just spit in the bottle.)

CONFERENCE UPDATE

Two teams have dramatically improved their level of play since State last saw them. Boston College has gone 5-1 since their miserable showing against State. If you remember, State’s RPI ranking went up after losing to Duke on the road…through the boost in State’s SOS plus the fact that the loss only counted as 0.6 games. Last night’s BC loss to the same Duke team, but in Boston, counted as 1.4 games ..and dropped their ranking.

Miami has improved their conference record to 5-3 and also shown steady improvement in their RPI ranking. More on Miami below.

It seems to me that the ACC can be split into the following groups:

– Duke
– Teams Fighting to Stay Above the Bubble
– Teams on the Bubble
– Teams Down Under

Here’s a summary of the conference, using these groups:

DUKE

That was as blatant a foul as I have ever seen when SheeWill hacked the BC player as time was running out. It was a stupid move for the BC player to try and drive instead of looking for a 3….but still. Anyone remember that DBR report that tried to use statistics to show that Duke didn’t get breaks from the refs?

FIGHTING TO STAY ABOVE THE BUBBLE

I’m not going to waste time or energy discussing the evils/necessity of unbalanced conference schedules. It is what it is…and this is what it is:

Maryland

NC State 

#25 (4-2) vs.

#26  (6-2)
vs.

 North Carolina

 

 NC
State

 Maryland

 Virginia

 Miami FL

 Duke

 Georgia
Tech

 Clemson

 Florida St.

 Georgia
Tech

 Virginia Tech

 Florida St.

 North Carolina

 North Carolina

 Boston College

 Miami FL

—-OFF—-

 Virginia

 Wake Forest

Boston College

North
Carolina

#30 (4-4) vs.

#36 (3-3) vs.

 

 Maryland

 Virginia Tech

 Clemson

 Wake Forest

 Duke

 Clemson

 Miami FL

 Stony Brook

 Georgia
Tech

 Miami FL

 Wake Forest

 Virginia

 NC
State

 NC
State

 Maryland

 Wake Forest

 Virginia

 Virginia Tech

 Duke



Clearly, BC has the easiest schedule remaining and UNC has the hardest…not that Maryland’s can be considered easy. Thursday’s game with UNC and Sunday’s game with State are big ones for Maryland. 0-2 would not be good for Terp fans….but pretty funny for everyone else.

Virginia

Clemson

Miami

#60 (4-4) vs.

#66 (3-5) vs.

#59 (5-3) vs.

 Wake Forest

 North Carolina

 Georgia Tech

 Maryland

 Virginia Tech

 NC
State

 Virginia Tech

 Boston College

 North Carolina

 Longwood

 Maryland

 Boston College

 Florida St.

—-OFF—-

 Duke

 Boston College

 Wake Forest

 Virginia Tech

 Clemson

 Virginia

—-OFF—-

 North Carolina

 Virginia Tech

 Maryland

 Maryland

 Georgia Tech

 Florida St.

Miami has the toughest schedule and Clemson’s the easiest. For Miami…BC, Duke, and UMD are all away…so the State and UNC games in Miami have to be considered critical to making the NCAAT. Clemson’s loss at FSU squandered a great opportunity to move up in the conference and in the RPI. UVa is far better than anyone around here ever dreamed about…but they need to finish some games if they want to move up the bubble.

The big question here is can anyone get it together and clear the bubble? With the ACC still rated third…you don’t want to go into Selection Sunday on the back-side of the bubble.

TEAMS DOWN UNDER

The only questions being asked in this part of the conference can’t be repeated in mixed company. However, GT is the only team currently with an over-all losing record. The ACC may fill out an entire regional of the NIT.

To be fair, FSU is in about the same position that State was last year. They will need a super-strong finish to clear the bubble. FSU’s OOC schedule currently ranks #323…illustrating the major pitfall of scheduling cupcakes early. Cupcakes absolutely destroy the RPI of teams in the middle of the conference.

 

RPI

Conf

Overall

Team

Rank

Record

Record

Florida St

85

4-4

13-5

Wake Forest

107

1-7

12-9

Virginia Tech

119

2-6

12-9

Georgia Tech

137

2-6

9-10

One final thought. Watching Wake Forest is like a car wreck on the interstate….you don’t want to look, but you just can’t help it. Isn’t the Deacon’s expression appropriate?

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

General NCS Basketball

48 Responses to RPI Update -6

  1. Trout 02/03/2006 at 9:32 AM #

    ^ Which people here are doing that?

  2. Jim 02/03/2006 at 9:49 AM #

    ^ The “HSSS”ers, whoever they are.

  3. Mr. O 02/03/2006 at 9:52 AM #

    V was a great coach. Herb isn’t better than V, but Herb does do some things much better than Valvano in terms of the program’s academics and overall image. Still, Valvano is a top 10 ACC coach of all-time and Herb is a long way from that at this point.

    However, the two coaches did inherit two entirely different programs so that should also be taken into consideration when comparing the accomplishments of the two coaches.

  4. Jim 02/03/2006 at 10:09 AM #

    A little off topic, but did you guys realize that, from a Georgia Tech perspective, Paul Hewitt is 3-9 v. Herb Sendek IN YEAR SIX!!??

    Here is a graph-like breakdown of Hewitt’s record against Sendek year-by-year.

    01: 1-1
    02: 1-1
    03: 1-2
    04: 0-2
    05: 0-2
    06: 0-1

  5. class of '74 02/03/2006 at 11:11 AM #

    ^maybe GT will fire Hewett to get our Herb!

  6. VaWolf82 02/03/2006 at 11:52 AM #

    I documented Herb’s Head-to-Head record against every ACC coach that had taken their team to the NCAAT’s two of the last four years in this entry:

    http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/archives/2005/12/13/rpi-and-the-acc/

    I hope to update this info and plan to put Sagarin’s final numbers in as well sometime after the season ends.

  7. VaWolf82 02/03/2006 at 11:56 AM #

    The question was asked about using V’s regular season as justification for Herb’s results. Here is the exchange I had in mind:

    Along with a poor record against good teams, State doesn’t typically have long winning streaks after Jan 1. The five-game win streak in 2004 is the longest one I remember.

    Four was also the longest win streak after the first of the year in the regular season in 1983 as well. Just shows what a miracle that post-season run was.

  8. Wolfpacklawyer 02/03/2006 at 12:59 PM #

    How is the above exchange “using V’s regular season as a justification for Herb’s results”?

    Here’s what you had said:

    “Along with a poor record against good teams, State doesn’t typically have long winning streaks after Jan 1. The five-game win streak in 2004 is the longest one I remember.

    The tendency to lay an egg without notice will generally bump teams from a tournament fairly quick.”

    My point by bring up the streak of only 4 in 1983 prior to the tournament was two-fold: There were no long streaks during the regular season of 1983 and nothing at the time with that team or coach that would have predicted a 9 game tournament run was likely in 1983 either.

    I agree that V was a better NCAA tournament coach than Sendek has proven to be up to this time. I don’t think anyone could argue otherwise. You were the one who seemed to be saying that a lack of long winning streaks in the regular season is an indication that the team won’t last long in the post season.

  9. class of '74 02/03/2006 at 1:10 PM #

    ^Isn’t that how we usually judge things based on past performance?
    The ’83 team got on a roll for sure but that team was damn good until Whit broke his foot on that jump shoot against UVA. My guess is if he had played all season the ’83 team would have had a better record but maybe they wouldn’t have won it all either.

  10. Wolfpacklawyer 02/03/2006 at 1:23 PM #

    Certainly. But, I think you will agree with me. The 1983 regular season didn’t indicate that a title run was to come did it? Not even the 7-2 start WITH Whit.

  11. class of '74 02/03/2006 at 1:55 PM #

    ^If I remember correctly the last home game we beat WF like a rented mule, making between the leg passes behind the back for slam dunks and things like that. We played the two best teams in the country, UNC and UVA, very competitively. All of this preceeded the ACC tournament. Yes I thought that team could go a hell of a long way if they could just get into the tournament.
    And Lo made the free throw to beat WF in that first ACCT game and the rest is delicious history. But that was no chump team that just got on a roll, no sir.

  12. Wolfpacklawyer 02/03/2006 at 2:06 PM #

    Who called them a chump team on a roll? No dispute that it was a good team. I just say there was nothing in the regular season that screamed national title.

  13. BJD95 02/03/2006 at 2:12 PM #

    The larger point I was trying to make is that when you prove yourself to be a great tourney coach (like V), people will gloss over regular season performance. If V wasn’t the great tournament coach that we all agree he was, we would have expected more from his regular season performance.

  14. class of '74 02/03/2006 at 2:21 PM #

    I always thought V was a great situation type coach. He was good a sizing up a strength or weakness and exploiting that. If our present guy had that same talent I’d be much happier.

  15. Wolfpacklawyer 02/03/2006 at 2:21 PM #

    I certainly agree that V was a great Tournament coach and in fact I’ll go a step further and say he was a great big game coach. He did such a good job preparing the team to go into battle when we were the underdog. He won a lot of games that on paper we shouldn’t have won. The flip side was that he lost games he shouldn’t have lost when we were the favorite. As a big game motivator, however, he was great.

  16. Wolfpacklawyer 02/03/2006 at 2:32 PM #

    Just as a side note on V, I had season tickets for two seasons he was coach and was a student for 4 of his season. Exciting times. My complaint with V and I’m not sure it is so much a complaint as an observation that always bothered me at the time, is this: During late game timeouts, he would always meet with the other coaches to discuss the situation before meeting with the players. Coaches huddle, then team huddle. I can’t tell you how many times that the coaches huddle lasted until the referee came to pull the team out on the floor so that there was never a team huddle. We won a lot of those games, so I guess it was not a big deal. Maybe he yelled play 3 after all that discussion with the coaches or whatever. But it was something that always bothered me when he was coach. Any of you older Pack fans who were at the games remember that tendency?

  17. class of '74 02/03/2006 at 2:35 PM #

    ^I think we agree on about 99.5% of V and the ’83 team.

  18. class of '74 02/03/2006 at 2:43 PM #

    ^Yeah, I do remember that. He really would let the guys rest and when play resumed he’d yell whatever play or defense he wanted to run. But according to Sidney Lowe that had all the pregame stuff memorized. There will never be another one like V that’s for sure.

  19. Mr. O 02/03/2006 at 3:23 PM #

    Interesting ACC tourney stats for Valvano and Sendek.

    Overall records:
    Valvano 9-8
    Sendek 13-9

    Valvano got six of those wins in two years. In the other 8 years, Valvano lost in the 1st round 5 times and made it to the semis twice for a record of 3-8 in the 8 years he didn’t win the title.

    Percent of years reaching the ACC Semi-Finals:
    Valvano – 50%
    Sendek – 77.7%

    Percent of years reaching ACC Finals:
    Valvano – 20%
    Sendek – 33%

    Percent of years winning title:
    Valvano – 20%
    Sendek – 0%

    Valvano did get his two titles, but he laid some eggs apparently as well.

  20. Mr. O 02/03/2006 at 3:25 PM #

    Correction, Valvano made the semis in 3 years in addition to the years he had a title. My percentages are correct, but my statement left out one semi-final appearance.

  21. BJD95 02/03/2006 at 5:50 PM #

    And again, I wold easily trade V’s “ups and downs” in the ACCT (which included titles) for consistently making the semis (i.e., “pretty good” finishes). Nobody hangs banners for Friday wins or even title game appearances.

  22. class of '74 02/04/2006 at 9:18 AM #

    Nobody with any sense would trade V for Herb if we had that as an option. We are left hoping one day Herb will hang a banner and the sooner the better.

  23. VaWolf82 02/04/2006 at 10:30 AM #

    On the off-chance that anyone is still checking this entry……kenpom.com says that the NCAA will updating their official RPI weekly. Based on the one that the ncaa has up now…..the “official” RPI will be two days out-of-date when it is posted.

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