N&O Blog – ACC “Talent Index”

Very interesting – here’s the link. They have Duke rated higher than UNC, which makes me wonder how useful the index really is (I’d take UNC’s roster over Duke’s any day, and twice on Sunday). Also, if you look at perfoemance relative to talent, Oliver Purnell should get a huge raise – while Sidney Lowe and Paul Hewitt have some explaining to do (especially Hewitt, who is well into his tenure in Atlanta).

About BJD95

1995 NC State graduate, sufferer of Les and MOC during my entire student tenure. An equal-opportunity objective critic and analyst of Wolfpack sports.

07-08 Basketball NCS Basketball Sidney Lowe

26 Responses to N&O Blog – ACC “Talent Index”

  1. travelwolf 01/17/2008 at 12:14 PM #

    it’s interesting that NCSU’s talent almost ‘doubled’ in one year – it went from 19 in 2006-7 to 36 in 2007-8. i guess that means we’ve got young ‘talent’.

  2. packgrad93 01/17/2008 at 12:23 PM #

    Wouldn’t be surprised if Mayes & CJ Williams get into the top100 by the end of their Sr season.

  3. waxhaw 01/17/2008 at 12:58 PM #

    Talent by position would be useful in that analysis. You can’t start 2 centers and 3 forwards.

    Also, there should be a way to add in recruiting surprises. This uses recruiting rankings only. It would be nice if a non top 100 player who earns all ACC got some points.

  4. tooyoungtoremember 01/17/2008 at 1:20 PM #

    They should also handicap Duke and UNC because of the bump in the rankings recruits get just by being recruited by these two teams.

  5. pack80 01/17/2008 at 1:34 PM #

    good article. btw what happened to gopack.com?

  6. Fletch 01/17/2008 at 1:36 PM #

    Excellent point, Waxhaw.

  7. pakfanistan 01/17/2008 at 1:37 PM #

    They probably forgot to pay their hosting bill.

  8. RAWFS 01/17/2008 at 2:00 PM #

    They’re back up now.

    Probably some jackleg sysadmin’s fault. Ooops. I don’t do their site so it couldn’t be that…but at least I’ve gotten SFN more reliable. You guys are putting over 300K page views a month minimum onto this site.

  9. JeremyH 01/17/2008 at 2:22 PM #

    sorry RAWFS i forgot to turn off that exponentially recursive wget perl script I had running–fixed. just kidding, you guys are great in good times and *cough* in bad.

  10. bTHEredterror 01/17/2008 at 2:57 PM #

    There’s no guards in that 36 score.

  11. STLPACK 01/17/2008 at 3:00 PM #

    SFN, et al,

    There’s some mention of the summer conditioning issue on the latest ACCNOW post on Brandon Costner.

    I wonder if that’s there to give an excuse to the entry here. But it still doesn’t address why the whole team is out of shape.

    FWIW

  12. TNCSU 01/17/2008 at 3:03 PM #

    Did you guys know I made $3000 between 9 a.m. and Noon?…It’s true…

  13. zahadum 01/17/2008 at 3:48 PM #

    bTHEredterror, Fells and Johnson are both guards and they account for 9 of that 36.

  14. BladenWolf 01/17/2008 at 3:51 PM #

    Interesting post BJD95-
    I agree with your two assessments. One is how unuseful this index really is and that UNC’s roster is better than Duke’s.
    But the numbers are also interesting because they do not directly equate to anything tangible, i.e. wins on the court, talent exhibited in a game situation, or how that talent played out over the season. They simply reflect the total rating of the recruits coming into the program, then prorated over time.
    No regard to how well the player helped the team, how an under-rated player who steps up impacts the team, or how well the player adjusted to the role under the coaches system, etc. which is the true test of a talent index in my book.
    How many blue-chippers has the Pack had in the last few years – that actually came to the program and stayed? Most of our guys come into the program and have not even been recruited by the smurfs and the dookies. But they overachieve and collectively that is how we typically beat the holes and the devils, not because we out recruited them and have the better athletes.
    Ironic that UNX and DOOK are heads and shoulders above the rest isn’t it?
    Did Greg Doyle have anything to do with these numbers?

  15. cradletograve 01/17/2008 at 4:16 PM #

    This is the second simplistic piece in two weeks from Curle over on statefans.com. Am I in the dark or does anyone else believe that Lowe just pats his guys on the back and gives them “atta boy’s” in practice rather than frequently ripping them a new one?

  16. RAWFS 01/17/2008 at 4:26 PM #

    We saw Javi getting ripped a new one a few times in timeouts.

  17. TNCSU 01/17/2008 at 4:36 PM #

    I think it really shows that after about the Top 10-15, the rest of the Top 150 is a crap shoot….IMO.

  18. BillyVest 01/17/2008 at 5:12 PM #

    The only interesting thing about these numbers is how far ahead of everyone else Duke and Carolina are, in terms of loading up on Burger Boys, on a national level. I knew they keep loading up on talent, but I figured other schools – like UCLA, Kansas, etc. – would do the same, at the same rate.

  19. Pack92 01/17/2008 at 6:42 PM #

    It also does not measure how much or how quickly an 18 year old matures. SOme simply will respond to being on their own better than others.
    Maybe Roy and K have something to do with their ratings as far as being able to consistently reload.

  20. Trip 01/18/2008 at 12:11 AM #

    SFN is getting some high quality adds now…click…click…

    Oh, we’re #3 in talent in the ACC and we lost to ECU/NO. Bleh.

  21. RAWFS 01/18/2008 at 8:36 AM #

    Plenty of good web sites have died in the past because of their popularity — the bandwidth costs alone can kill one.

    The best example I can think of is statefans.com — and no offense to Pack Pride, but statefans was a better community.

  22. packbackr04 01/18/2008 at 9:18 AM #

    http://acc.starnewsonline.com/default.asp?item=73226

    Andrew Jones pretty much nails Cosnter with this one

  23. Cardiac95 01/18/2008 at 9:53 AM #

    I did a similar analysis a few years ago that included an “Experience” factor (based on years of eligibility expired [ie. not redshirt years]) that was equal in weight to “Talent”. Combined, it got very close to the actual ACC Standings.

  24. newt 01/18/2008 at 10:06 AM #

    Looks like our RPI went UP from 58 to 50 after the Clemson loss. We have looked like crap, but there’s still plenty of hope for this season. These next few “easier” games are key.

  25. Trip 01/18/2008 at 11:03 AM #

    ^^ Part of the benefit of playing in the ACC, no matter how terrible you are, it’s difficult to keep your RPI above 100 playing teams like Carolina/Duke/Clemson twice a year.

    For those who were wondering about how Johnson is doing, Sectionsix has computed the +/- numbers for all of our PG’s. +24 for Degand, +13 for Johnson, and a paltry +4 for Javi. He has some other numbers/stats on them as well, but I’ll let you all visit his site for that. As I commented over there, I think Degand’s +/- is slightly inflated because of not playing Carolina/Clemson, and that Johnson’s will go up some as he knocks off all the rust and has more than 5 games under his belt.

    Javi just needs another year. He’s got potential, just right now he’s outclassed and he isn’t playing with the confidence necessary to overcome that. Don’t give up, Javi, just play hard and it will come to you eventually.

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