Wednesday Bytes: Too Much Too Pass Up

General NCS Basketball NCS Football49

I’m busy this morning and wasn’t going to take a whole lot of time to post anything. But, every article/topic that I clicked on this morning in my reading provided me something on which to comment. So, I’m just going to hit some high points real quick.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

* As a super follow up to this entry regarding the strength of the ACC, Dave Sez does some number crunching and adds some comments that are perfectly complimentary to our entry.

* As a little further clarification regarding one of the criteria that I use to analyze strength of conferences:

I think one of the best ways to determine the strength of a conference is by dropping an identical, hypothetical team into each conference and projecting that team’s record.

I think that if you took a team and dropped them into both the Pac 10 and the ACC that the team would end up with a better record in the Pac 10 than in the ACC. Therefore the ACC is tougher.

I think that the depth and breadth of the statistical rankings help bear out this point.

* There were some AWESOME college basketball games last night. None more amazing than the Texas @ Oklahoma State game. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the 3 overtime thriller.

* I had my eye on the Maryland-Virginia game last night more than most people. Virginia beat Maryland last night in what I considered to be a ‘must win’ for the Cavs. UVa effectively staved off complete elimination from NCAA Tournament consideration with the win. Maryland effectively moved themselves a little closer to an NCAA bubble than they would like to be at this point of the season. (Update: Again, Dave Sez hammers important points regarding this game saying the Hoos “Had to have it”)
* The Charlotte Observer doesn’t normally add much insightful analysis to the universe. They break even less exclusive news. But, this front page article today discussing the importance of depth is definitely good…and very relevant to NC State.

Four teams in the ACC (Boston College, Duke, Maryland and N.C. State) entered the week with fewer than nine players averaging at least 10 minutes. Boston College was the only team among them with a winning ACC record entering Tuesday.

“The way it seems now, you have to have depth,” said N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe, whose team doesn’t have that luxury. “Because a lot of teams do. Teams are playing eight, nine, 10 guys, so you have to have it. It’s not the same as it used to be.”

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

* Over the last couple of years I must have heard one hundred times just how wonderful Marvin Sanders is and how he is one of the best coaches in all of America. I appreciate Dave Glenn’s work, but I have heard Glenn extol Sanders to almost saint hood on the radio since Sanders was brought to Chapel Hill. NOW…with Butch Davis in town…Sanders has been relieved of his duties. What you won’t read in the N&O is WHY Sanders has been released and what is going on in the background. We have definitely heard some things…but, would love to hear what some of you may have heard.

* Make no mistake about it – the move of Gary Crowton from Oregon to LSU is huge. HUGE! Crowton is one of the best. We even said as such on January 12, 2005.

* A lot is being made of the economics behind Nick Saban’s move to Alabama. This article discusses the topic, but I thought that one of the more interesting items from the article was the recognition of the impact of sports off the field.

…additional exposure from football may help officials meet school president Robert Witt’s goal of boosting the university’s enrollment to 28,000 students by 2013, a nearly 40 percent boost from a decade earlier.

“The message is getting out that we offer a quality education, and that Monday through Friday our students work hard with a focus on academics,” said Mary Spiegel, head of undergraduate admissions.

“But there is also that component of Southeastern Conference athletics on the weekend: Football, basketball, gymnastics, all those things,” she said. “Can I say that Saban being here will not help recruitment? I cannot.”

* Why isn’t Charlie Weiss in trouble? It is a question that I had not pondered until I reviewed this entry. Don’t misconstrue the basis that Weiss SHOULD be in trouble under normal circumstances. I don’t think that almost any coach should be in trouble after just two years on the job. BUT, the difference is that Notre Dame has behaved so irrationally in the past that they have served to set their own standard. By judging Weiss against their pre-determined standard then the question is legitmate.

General NCS Basketball NCS Football

49 Responses to Wednesday Bytes: Too Much Too Pass Up

  1. choppack1 01/17/2007 at 3:11 PM #

    “Choppack: I guess people will believe what they want to believe. In terms of GPAs and SATs for incoming football players, Glenn breaks the ACC into three groups:

    BC, Wake, Duke, GT
    UVa, UNC, Miami, Md
    FSU, Clems, Va Tech and NC State
    Not sure how you can argue otherwise considering how we led the ACC in non-qualifiers during the Amato era. Is it criticism just to state the facts as they have collected info. on incoming football recruits for the past decade+?”

    O – please read my post carefully. I mention that it’s the decade of the 90s when UNC’s academics took a nose dive. Not so coincidentally, that’s the period of the greatest combined success in the Heels for both football and b’ball. From a historical perspective, Glenn is right. However, he says this knowing that the time UNC-Ch was most successful in football is when they were doing the opposite.

    Regarding Doherty – the articles that Glenn wrote weren’t just about wins and losses, but personal in a nature that he didn’t have the tempermeant or respoect necessary to be HC. Like I said, if he had been successfull, I wonder if he wrote the same thing.

    You’re right about Glenn w/ our coaching search. I’ve state before and I’ll state again that I think he’s the best out there for dissecting the ACC – especially when it comes to recruiting. However, I still don’t trust him. There’s the notorious “where there’s smoke, there’s a fire” comment. There’s the anger I hear in his voice when he discusses Carl Torbush (it’s probably the same anger in mine when someone mentions the name Les Robinson.)

    Glenn can earn my trust – he can be critical of Dean Smith for the way he practically set up Doherty in the Forte situation. (He knew about the situation but didn’t notify Doherty.) If Butch Davis is successful, but has recruits who constantly get arrested or if there are academic shortcomings or if there’s something shady going on, he can be critical of Butch.

  2. noah 01/17/2007 at 3:15 PM #

    “My first thought was to 1983. State playing UNCH last game of regualr season — against Michael Jordan et al. Sidney Lowe takes the ball to the hoop at the end of the game, jumps up as if to make the play — drawing the defender — but bounce passes the ball back, down between his legs back to Whitt who dunks it in. Icing on the cake!”

    I have to pick a nit here.

    Wake Forest was the last game of the regular season that year. We played UNC-Ch in Raleigh on Feb. 19.

    Jordan had long since fouled out when the play you’re talking about happened. Lowe got a long lead pass and Perkins was trying to catch him. Lowe didn’t go up for the shot, he just stopped on a dime and gave Bailey a nice between-the-legs pass.

    Dean called a TO after that and Reynolds was about to bust. Whitt (who had pestered V about suiting up for the game) ran out on the court and gave Lowe a huge bear hug.

    Whitt would return against UVa eight days later in Charlottesville.

  3. noah 01/17/2007 at 3:25 PM #

    “I mention that it’s the decade of the 90s when UNC’s academics took a nose dive. Not so coincidentally, that’s the period of the greatest combined success in the Heels for both football and b’ball.”

    I don’t think you can accurately make that comment with the information that’s been made public. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I think you’re just speculating.

    Towards the end of Mack Brown’s career, we know that UNC stopped counting “academic exceptions.” As O correctly stated, this is not to be confused with “non-qualifiers” or “partial qualifiers.”

    Because of this, we have no idea (unless you have information from the admissions office that hasn’t been published in the papers) what the grades and SATs were like for the incoming freshmen. I only remember a handful of kids not qualifying (like one or two per class). I’m going on memory here, but I seem to recall Carolina making this switch around 1996. So this would have impacted their final three classes under Mack Brown.

    We are assuming that there was a nose-dive in the quality of student-athlete they were admitting. But we don’t know that. Apparently, they didn’t want to have to defend their decisions, but we have no idea how steep a dive they actually took. Whether every kid was a borderline non-qualifer or whether five kids were borderline cases…unless you were working in the football office or the admissions office, I don’t know how you would have that information.

  4. Dan 01/17/2007 at 3:34 PM #

    The conference is better. Look at how the teams have improved their RPI from last year. I dont think anyone would argue with the list below.

    UNC-CH – better substantially
    Clemson – better substantially
    Va Tech – better substantially
    Ga Tech – better substantially
    Maryland – better
    FSU – better (although this may be a RPI hoax.. we will see)
    Virginia – better
    Wake – same = bad
    Duke – worse, but still a top 30 team
    BC – worse, but still a top 40 team
    Miami – worse.
    NC State – regrettably, much worse (so far)

    The ACC has added 5 new teams to the top 50. Last year the ACC had three teams in the RPI Top 50. This year it has 8 to date. There was no time last year after January last year that even approached that. The median RPI last year was 70. The median RPI this year so far is 32. (btw, the ACC passed the SEC in the RPI last night).

    The best indicators of an improved conference are GT, Va Tech, and Clemson. Yeah, NC State is down (this year), but the rise of those three teams more than makes up for it.

    The funniest thing to me about the RPI this year is how FSU, after getting screwed by it last year, appears to be tweaking as much as possible. I mean what in the hell is Florida State doing playing on the road at Stetson and Georgia State. They are getting a 100%+ RPI bonus to 20 and 30 point wins is what they are doing.

  5. BoKnowsNCS71 01/17/2007 at 3:35 PM #

    Nit picker. Sorry I was not clear. It was the last game against UNC of the season. we had lost at their place and this was in ours. I didn’t say Jordan was playing — just that he was on the team that year.

    And yes it was probably Bailey. My recall was flawed and thanks for correcting that.

    However, it was still and awesome event and that paly last night remined me of it. So I thought I would give Sidney a recall (albeit flawed) high 5.

  6. choppack1 01/17/2007 at 3:44 PM #

    Noah – I recall seeing the seeing the SATs for football and b’ball during that period and UNC-Ch’s were at the bottum. (I think they were in the bottum 3rd of the 9 team ACC conference at the time.)

    Of course, that was well before the days of google/mass access to the www – so I’m going strictly from memory, but this isn’t a case of Shack going “I’m amphibious.”

  7. zahadum 01/17/2007 at 3:47 PM #

    VaWolf82: I’ll grant your point, but its sort of apples and oranges. You (and maybe Dave Sez) are talking about strength relative to the rest of the teams in the country. I’m talking about this year’s teams compared to last year’s teams from the same schools.

    On that basis, I think there are only 4 teams that are clearly better than last year; UNC, Va. Tech, Ga. Tech and Clem.

    Va. – maybe better, but maybe not
    Md. – who knows?
    FSU – almost exactly on pace with last year
    BC – yes, currently leading the conference, but no, not as good. Craig Smith was a beast and he and Dudley were the best frontline duo in the ACC last year. And while he’s a better scorer, T. Rice is not as good at the point as the guy (whose name I can’t recall) who graduated.

    Duke, Wake, Miami, NC State – no way are any of those clearly better

  8. noah 01/17/2007 at 4:38 PM #

    “Noah – I recall seeing the seeing the SATs for football and b’ball during that period and UNC-Ch’s were at the bottum”

    Was this the NCAA released info?

  9. statered 01/17/2007 at 4:38 PM #

    I googled sats for ACC scholls and got this link.

    Maybe Jeff has the data.

  10. Trout 01/17/2007 at 5:04 PM #

    http://seminoles.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/011707aaa.html

    Amato to FSU as LB coach and Associate Executive Head Coach

  11. choppack1 01/17/2007 at 5:19 PM #

    Noah – Not sure. But I recall it being all 9 ACC schools.

    Statered – I saw some state fans entry on a similar google. Couldn’t find any link dating back to the 90s.

    Trout – Isn’t that the exact same position he held before? Amato will do a damn fine job as he did w/ us. Expect their D to be vicious again and expect even more talent. Our days of whipping FSU are probably over (again.) However, hopefully, our days of 3-5 in the ACC are over too.

  12. Mr O 01/17/2007 at 5:26 PM #

    I know what Choppack is remembering. It was a Stanford website that had SAT averages for one year that was from the mid-90s. It had scores for football, baseball and basketball. Again, it was scores from one particular year so it didn’t show any long-term trends. UNC’s weren’t at the bottom, but they were in the bottom 1/3 for that year.

    However, the only real evidence that this website showed was that the only schools that had any significant difference in SAT scores were Duke and Ga Tech. After those two schools, everyone else was within 10% of each other.

    I don’t remember exactly when Glenn joined the ACCSJ, but I think it was later than 1996 so I don’t think he was even there during most of the Mack Brown era.

    Did UNC drop admission standards during the Mack Brown era? Absolutely. Will UNC take any player that qualifies? Absolutely.

    However, Glenn and the ACCSJ have still collected data on GPAs and SATs over the last decade even when this information stopped being published by the NCAA. Glenn consistently puts UNC in the middle group of ACC football in terms of SATs and GPAs.

    In regards to Doherty, he put stuff in print that no writer has ever put in print about basketball in this area. Supposedly during UNC’s board meeting about Doherty they even had Glenn’s article as a reference. This was despite the rest of the media dismissing all the rumors as product of message board idiots. They all dismissed it until Glenn put it in print.

    So according to you Glenn was just being pro-UNC by printing the “negatives” about Doherty(or was it just the facts?) in attempt to get him fired and for UNC to win more games. So were all of these other reporters then pro-NC State since they dismissed the rumors and supported Doherty and what was best for NC State basketball??

    I am not sure how Doherty was setup by Dean Smith in regards to Forte. IIRC, Forte played one year for B. Guthridge and then one season for M. Doherty.

  13. choppack1 01/17/2007 at 5:42 PM #

    O – Dean knew about the job Forte’s Mom had w/ Octagon, but didn’t notify Doherty. I can’t recall if he notified the NCAA or not. Dean, I believe still had an office at the Dean Smith Center or at the university at the time.

    Regarding the Doherty story, I’ve always thought that it was released in an attempt to insure that Doherty was removed before he could destroy the dynasty. Like I said, if Doherty had been more successful – I still don’t think those stories are printed.

    Can you explain to me how getting Doherty fired in year 3 was a bad thing for Carolina? If you were a Tar Heel fan and knew you had a good shot at Roy Williams – would you want a coach who had 2 straight losing seasons at Chapel friggin Hill to continue to coach your team? Printing those stories about Doherty would be about as courageous as FOX news reporting that John Kerry had been charged w/ DUI.

  14. Rochester 01/17/2007 at 7:33 PM #

    News flash: BC has kicked Sean Williams and Akida McLain off the team. Why couldn’t this have happened two weeks ago? We might have had a shot if they didn’t have Williams in there altering our shots. Touching on the earlier comments on Oklahoma State, maybe they want him. More likely he’ll just go into the draft and get enough money to keep him in weed for a long time.

  15. redfred2 01/17/2007 at 8:16 PM #

    Too bad it wasn’t the other Sean, the totally obnoxious one with the last name Marshall instead. But then maybe not, Marshall could possibly get a little taste of own medicine the next time around. Let’s us be a hopin’ so.

  16. vtpackfan 01/17/2007 at 9:15 PM #

    UNX roll’s in Littlejohn. I think VT is about to lose to FSU. If Williams is really done for BC then I don’t really know how 2-10 in this conference spells out. Right now I might be invlined to say UVA is the second best team and we lost to them in Charlottesville by a slim margin.

    You won’t see it on You Tube but the travel by Wright that wasn’t called on a fast break dunk was out of hand.

  17. VaWolf82 01/17/2007 at 10:36 PM #

    The funniest thing to me about the RPI this year is how FSU, after getting screwed by it last year, appears to be tweaking as much as possible. I mean what in the hell is Florida State doing playing on the road at Stetson and Georgia State. They are getting a 100%+ RPI bonus to 20 and 30 point wins is what they are doing.

    They didn’t get screwed as much as their miserable OOC schedule was exposed by the RPI formula. Even at that, they are probably in with a win over WF in the first round of the ACCT or a win over #146 VT towards the end of the season.

  18. Dan 01/18/2007 at 1:29 AM #

    miserable OOC schedule – where they lost only 1 game to SEC Champ UF… They only real conclusion you can make there is that they were untested OOC. You cant say they are bad. They didnt lose OOC but once. All you can say is ‘not enough info’. So the logical next question “is how did they do in the ACC?”. “Oh, they went 9-7? Next”.

    Data and numbers are dangerous in the hands of people with no common sense.

  19. VaWolf82 01/18/2007 at 8:42 AM #

    They only real conclusion you can make there is that they were untested OOC.

    And the NCAA Selection Committee has made it perfectly clear that weak OOC schedules are frowned upon. (Losing against a tough schedule is also frowned upon.)

    Eight of FSU’s nine conference wins came against VT, UVa (twice), UMd, Clemson, UM, GT, and WF. A home win against Duke was about the only positive thing worth noting on their “resume”.

    FSU got exactly what their record earned them…..a trip to the NIT.

    Data and numbers are dangerous in the hands of people with no common sense.

    Conclusions reached by people who refuse to look at all of the data are not generally worth the time they take to read.

  20. Rochester 01/18/2007 at 1:15 PM #

    Good story on Julius Hodge’s fresh start with the Buck in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=554147

  21. dj9686 01/18/2007 at 1:22 PM #

    Noah got it straight on the ’83 State-UNC game. It was Sidney who was on the fast brake with Perkins behind him going up for the block. Instead of attempting the layup, Sidney bounce passed it back through his legs to Thurl who dunked on the back of Perkin’s head. And Sid didn’t leave his feet on the pass. That would have looked pretty weird now that I think about it.

    Noah is also right about the place going nuts. I was in the endzone behind the basket on which the dunk was made. All those plastic stadium cups went in the air and kept circulating. It made me think of being inside a popcorn machine the way it looked. The roar of the crowd was deafening and that pseudo noise meter was topped out. The girl I was with and dating went to UNC–give me a break, I met her in H.S.–and she said the one thing that makes State fans so despise the UNC air of entitlement. She was serious when she said “We can’t lose. We’re Carolina!” I just pointed to the score board.

  22. Dan 01/18/2007 at 2:51 PM #

    Damn! Sean Williams just got kicked off the BC squad.

  23. Dan 01/19/2007 at 12:56 AM #

    “Conclusions reached by people who refuse to look at all of the data are not generally worth the time they take to read.”

    No one is arguing with that, but when data tells you that a 9-7 ACC team isnt worthy of a 65 team field then someone with half a brain will know that data is flawed.

    No one is saying to ignore data. But some would have common sense ignored.

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