Monday Basketball Bytes

08-09 Basketball General100

Let’s kick off the week with some basketball.

Crunch =====> I have been accused by some of my friends of being too ‘soft’ on the current basketball situation and being more optimistic than the average fan. But, I am feeling more and more vindicated every time the Wolfpack steps on the floor. There is no doubt that a lot of fans are starting feel a renewed sense of optimism in basketball. It’s hard to believe there are only 4 remaining regular season games for NC State Basketball, especially since mid-January saw many hoping for a quick end to the season since their attention was Russell Wilson’s injury more than Sidney Lowe’s team.

Crunch =====> Hindsight can be a wonderful tool — looking back at the past 12 ACC games, if you are honest with yourself, this team has not lost any surprising games. Two come close – the blown lead against Florida State and the blown lead at Virginia Tech. Now, go check the ACC standings you’ll see Florida State sitting in second place with a surprising RPI of 16. The loss at Va Tech, will forever sting.

Crunch =====> This hindsight supports a point that I made to a friend shortly after the Florida State loss when I recognized that the Seminoles were putting together a better season than I was expecting — NC State hasn’t lost to a single team that will not be in the NCAA Tournament. (VPI is obviously the big ‘bubble’ team at the moment; by the same token, the Wolfpack didn’t lose that game as much as had it taken from them under ridiculous circumstances.) Additionally, State has defeated a Top 5 (at the time) Wake Forest and a Miami team that sits on the bubble.

Crunch =====> The Wolfpack dominated the Hokies for 30+ minutes before hell broke loose. A win there, NC State would be 6-6 in the ACC, ahead of VT in the standings, with a great chance to finish .500 or better. Can still do that, but it will be tough. Losses @Clemson, @UNC, @Duke and UNC – those are better teams and all NCAA locks. The loss against FSU doesnt look so bad now. The loss @ BC, on the road is somewhat understandable, especially since they have one of the leagues best players in Rice.

Crunch =====> Speaking of ‘dominating…can anyone tell me the last time that an NC State Basketball team had the offensive efficiency and the ability to take twenty point leads in multiple ACC games? The Wolfpack have led by at least 18 points in three of our last four games – against Wake Forest (Top 5, NCAA team), Virginia Tech (NCAA bubble) and Virginia. Forget the comebacks that followed for a moment; when have we been good enough to even be able to get that far ahead of multiple ACC opponents?

Crunch =====> Looking at the next 4 games to close out the season: at Wake will be tough. Wake is a talented, but young team. Likewise, they tend to struggle on the road and play well at home – wins against Duke and UNC in the The Joe). This is the toughest of the 4 games remaining. Maryland and BC at home are two winnable, but very tough games. Both teams feature a point guard that can go-off and dominate a game (MD’s Vasquez and BC’s Rice). Control the PG position against MD and BC, and NC State will come out with wins. @Miami to close to season will probably be a standings game, meaning identical or close records with the winner getting the higher seed in the ACCT. Miami’s arena has never been intimidating, but Miami’s Jack McClinton doesn’t seem to care. Additionally, dead environments don’t necessarily work well for traveling teams. Let’s hope that game is for .500 or better for NC State.

Crunch =====> Speaking of Vasquez, his performance Saturday was one for the ages – a triple double with 35 points. He is the main reason Maryland is now squarely on the NCAA bubble. Maryland does not have a talented team across the board, but they do have a talented PG. Looking at all the ACC teams, those with very good point guards are in position to make the NCAAT. Those without, are struggling or on the outside looking in when it comes to the NCAAT. The 2 exceptions are Duke and Clemson – both have servicable PGs, but not stars at the position. GT, UVA, NC State, VT and Miami all have major questions at PG – and those are the 5 teams on the outside as we head into the home stretch.

Crunch =====> Kudos to Florida State and Leonard Hamilton. This is Hamilton’s 7th season, and he finally will lead the Seminoles into the NCAA Tournament. FSU has not been to the big dance since 1998 and Hamilton’s seat was getting really warm in Tallahassee. Having an All-ACC performer at the point guard position in Tony Douglas has given the Seminoles the leadership needed to win close games against tough opponents – something FSU lacked in previous seasons under Hamilton. Would Hamilton have been given an 8th season to make the NCAAT? Probably not, but that’s all a moot point now.

Crunch =====> Take a step back for a minute. It would be an amazing feat for NC State to finish anywhere near .500 in the toughest basketball conference (by a mile) in the country during Coach Lowe’s third season and after what happened last year. Don’t forget — NC State plays the TOUGHEST schedule in the ACC. So, reaching .500 for us is a helluva a lot different as it is for everyone else.

Crunch =====> The NC State baseball team had a tough beginning to its season, losing 2 of 3 in the round-robin tournament played at Doak Field over the weekend. Now, baseball is different than football and basketball in that even good teams lose many games. However, giving up 11 and 8 runs to Atlantic 10 opponents Rhode Island and Xavier is cause for concern for a NC State pitching staff that lost its complete starting rotation from last year. Plenty of time to recover from the 1-2 start, but you have to consider this a red-flag on what the season might hold going forward.

Crunch =====> For folks that keep their eye on the numbers, the following are the latest RPI’s for the ACC from Collegerpi.com. Now that Quinten Jackson is no longer around to lazily construct the basketball schedule, perhaps we can be more strategic in the future and try to target OOC games against opponents in the #150-#250 range as opposed to a menu of games against teams sub-300.

3. UNC
4. Duke
8. Clemson
17. FSU
18. Wake
46. Miami
52. Maryland
55. Boston College
66. VT
90. NC State
100. UVA
161. GT

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08-09 Basketball General

100 Responses to Monday Basketball Bytes

  1. MrPlywood 02/23/2009 at 4:30 PM #

    “Then we can track it next basketball season to see how that schedule turns out. Note that we don’t want the schedule to be overly difficult, but we would want it to guarantee wins and at the same time give us a decent RPI.”

    Shoot, forget tracking it here. You could sell that list to every coach in 1A!

  2. VaWolf82 02/23/2009 at 4:49 PM #

    Va, whether it is actually true or not the NCAA insists on reminding us every season that teams are looked at individually and with no regards to conference affiliation.

    That’s completely different than saying that conference strength doesn’t matter. I think that your sentence above is absolutely correct and fairly easy to prove. VT was a four-seed in the ACC, won their opening round game, and still went to the NIT. On the surface, that appears ridiculous. However when you look at who they beat…you see that one win against UM was their best win of the year…not quite good enough.

    What matters is who you beat….not just who you play. In the MVC, you don’t play many strong teams…thus not many teams get at-large bids. In the ACC, you play a lot of strong teams….and those in the middle of the conference with wins against the top can get at-large bids.

  3. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 02/23/2009 at 5:18 PM #

    SFN your analysis fails when we see the steep decline of many of the teams on State early schedule. Take away the Big Ten game and maybe ECU and NCCU which probably are not games totally under Lowe’s control. I’m sure the North Carolina expects the larger schools to play smaller in state schools, as well they should. State OOC schedule would of been fine if (as stated above):

    New Orleans: 17-13 last year, 10-16 this year.
    High Point: 13-14 last year, 5-18 this year.
    Winthrop: 20-11 last year, 8-18 this year.
    UNCG: 19-12 last year, 3-23 this year.
    Loyola: 19-14 last year, 11-18 this year.

    I love this idea that coaches are going to be able to predict how other teams will do 6 month in advance.

    So State needs to do better predicting how good schools will be in advance and need to play a more difficult OOC schedule before playing the most difficult schedule in the best conference. I guess people would complaining that Lowe has to be fired because he can’t win OOC games or ACC games.

    Point is if State wins their 3 big OOC games this year they would be doing fine. It isn’t the fact the schedule isn’t difficult enough, the problem is that State didn’t win the games they needed to.

  4. TheCOWDOG 02/23/2009 at 5:54 PM #

    We seem to make this scenario more complicated than the selection commity itself.

    Look, despite the cupcake OOCS, we had 3 viable dancers on it that we could not close out.

    Add the VT melt and we did not take care of a schedule that was perfectly fine for the commity.

    OK. That was then and this is now.

    12 TOs/game or less over the next few weeks and we dance.

    NCAA or bust.

  5. Wait_Til_This_Year 02/23/2009 at 6:02 PM #

    OK, here are the remaining games for the middle tier of the ACC:

    Wake (7-5, 5th): NC State, @Virginia, @Maryland, Clemson- It’s unlikely, but possible we’ll catch them.

    BC (7-6, 6th): FL State, @NC State, Georgia Tech- It’s unlikely, but possible we’ll catch them.

    Maryland (6-6, 7th): Duke, @NC State, Wake, @Virginia- If we can beat them, then hopefully we could overtake them.

    Virginia Tech (6-6, 8th): @Clemson, Duke, UNX, @FL State- Yikes. They still have to play the current top 4. They will hopefully drop a few before all is said and done.

    NC State: (5-7, 9th): You should know our schedule. Also, someone was saying there are currently nine teams ahead of us, but there are “only” eight.

    Miami: (5-8, 10th): @Virginia, @Georgia Tech, NC State- They’re the opposite of VT, with the three weakest possible opponents (in theory) left. Realistically, they probably stand a better chance of going 8-8 than us.

    I realize that some match-ups will inevitably give wins to one of the teams on this list, such as Wake vs Maryland. Also, I realize that we could theoretically wind up in front of one of the current 8-win teams, but it’s not worth the extra thought right now. I don’t have a point really, just throwing the schedules out there as food for thought…

  6. VaWolf82 02/23/2009 at 6:25 PM #

    I love this idea that coaches are going to be able to predict how other teams will do 6 month in advance.

    There’s a strawman, if I’ve ever seen one. Maybe you would like to take a stab at explaining why nearly everyone else in the ACC didn’t have a problem scheduling a decent OOC slate?

    Here’s the national ranking of OOC SOS as of today:
    UNC – 81
    Clemson – 109
    Duke – 19
    FSU – 110
    WF – 283
    BC – 126
    UMD – 144
    VT – 100
    NCSU – 323
    UM – 89
    UVA – 21
    GT – 233

    As we’ve shown many times before….it’s really not that hard to figure out who you want to schedule and who you want to avoid.

  7. RabidWolf 02/23/2009 at 6:34 PM #

    choppack–“Arizona State and Sendek have once again gamed the system. We’re talking about a team that was taken to OT by IUPUI…”

    A-State….kind of a conundrum. A top 15 ranking, but they play in the Pac-10. I haven’t really paid much attention to the P-10 (who does?). Who have they beaten that is actually GOOD?

  8. BSIE80 02/23/2009 at 6:45 PM #

    What if we changed the NCAA invite list to a specific number of teams from each conference. This way, we would know that you have to finish 5th or greater in the ACC (for example). This way the out of conference schedule would not make a difference. Schedule all the cupcakes or all the best teams you want, it would have zero difference in post season selection.

    Even if one year the ACC gets 6 teams, the next year they get 5. I would rather see this versus the current bubble talks.

  9. wufpup76 02/23/2009 at 6:55 PM #

    ^Rabid – good question. The answer is no one, really.

    They have several decent wins, but based on their cbssports rpi page technically their “best” win is BYU by one point on a neutral court. BYU has an RPI of 30.

    http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/teams/rpi/AZST

    Other wins in the RPI top 50 include Arizona (2), UCLA (2), San Diego St., and USC (ha!)

    So, no top 25 wins and no Top 50 wins outside of the Pac 10 or the Mountain West conference.

    This to me would suggest a seed range of 5 to 7 should the tournament field be selected today …

  10. turnoffthetv 02/23/2009 at 7:04 PM #

    NC Central as the mid-season OOC game. What ever happened to scheduling that mid-season game against an OOC predicted powerhouse?

    For example, I remember way back when(I’m thinking maybe 1989) I can remember my dad got some tickets for the UNLV game at Reynolds. And I remember State going down by about 20 points at the half and Rodney Monroe caught effing FIRE in the second half(probably finished with about 40 pts)and rained the 3s all over the Running Rebels. And I can remember it was so dang LOUD in that place. And then Avie Lester DUNKED to either cut it to 1 point or tie and you would have thought the ROOF was gonna come off that place. It was one of my most memorable games there, the few I went to. State ended up losing but I will never forget that. And u go from that to playing NC Central 20 years later.LOL!

  11. 61Packer 02/23/2009 at 7:23 PM #

    And don’t forget, turnoffthetv, this is the second year in a row we’ve hosted NC Central. Do we owe them a debt or something?

    “Maybe you would like to take a stab at explaining why nearly everyone else in the ACC didn’t have a problem scheduling a decent OOC slate?”

    I’ll take a stab at it, VaWolf82……….

    Come and lissen to muh story ’bout a man named Jed, pur AD………………

  12. GAWolf 02/23/2009 at 7:33 PM #

    I love NC State fans. Please don’t set yourselves up for disappointment. It’s great to be having these conversations about what needs to happen for us to make the NCAA Tournament, and while I want it to happen as much as the next guy it’s important for us to maintain some sense of perspective. I just don’t want to see the lemmings jumping off the cliff if we lose a few down the stretch here. At 20 turnovers a game it’s not only possible but likely.

    Just don’t turn on Sid in two weeks because you’ve forgotten how he and the staff basically turned chicken shit into chicken salad for at least a stretch during this season. There’s hope here folks, and it’s tangible and very real… not just some shallow slogan like with say other things going on around us.

  13. GAWolf 02/23/2009 at 7:36 PM #

    Wolfpup… the dreaded 7 or 8 seed kiss of death. What were our seeds each year under Sendek? I remember a decent one with Hodge maybe, and maybe a 14 but I think we were usually around that 7 or 8 range right?

  14. TheCOWDOG 02/23/2009 at 8:00 PM #

    VaWolf82, you’re a good #s guy like a few more in here. So, you post the OOC SOS and those #s are supposed to show some statistical analytic viability.

    Let’s take BC at 126.

    St Francis
    Cen. Conn
    Loy,MD
    ST Johns
    StLouis
    Purdue
    UAB
    Iowa
    UMass
    Bryant U
    SC Upstate
    Providence
    SanFran
    Sacred Heart
    Harvard

    Can you explain why that sched is 200 pts. better than ours?

  15. TheCOWDOG 02/23/2009 at 8:12 PM #

    Now here is UVA at 21

    Shepard
    VMI
    USF
    Radford
    Liberty
    SYR
    Minn
    Longwood
    Auburn
    Hampton
    Xavier
    Brown

    Some 300 spots better than us. Sumptin’ don’t quite make sense.

  16. redfred2 02/23/2009 at 8:18 PM #

    Whoa, man, I’m sure glad this thread got back on track and talking about our current chances for post season play! About a third of the way down, my eyes started glazing over and I was almost feeling the need to bust out in about a eight paragraph rant, just like I used to do regularly back in them good ol’ days of the past.

  17. TheCOWDOG 02/23/2009 at 8:26 PM #

    10-4 Red, but I know ya got it in ya. 🙂

    I still want to know why the skewed OOC #s are supposed to mean a freakin’ thing.

    Damn, I would never have thunk it, but we do have a shot.

  18. Alpha Wolf 02/23/2009 at 8:29 PM #

    GAWolf, on one hand I see your point in toto, but on the other, it’s good for State fans to be thinking about something positive for a change.

    I won’t be too disappointed if State doesn’t make the NCAAs, unless their losses come from some kind of regression in their play.

  19. VaWolf82 02/23/2009 at 8:33 PM #

    Sumptin’ don’t quite make sense.

    That’s because you didn’t include the important information for the OOC schedules. SOS is not some magical measure of the relative toughness of each opponent. It is a calculated number from a formula based on the W/L record of each opponent and each opponent’s opponent.

    This means that it is far, far better to schedule the top team in a weak conference than the bottom team in a good conference. Do you know what happens to an average when one of the those numbers is zero (or nearly so)? What would happen to an average with eight zeros?

  20. VaWolf82 02/23/2009 at 8:39 PM #

    It looks like I forgot to do my annual OOC SOS entry after the 2008 season. I’ll have to remember to do that again this year. Here is a discussion and analysis from 2007 that should answer most people’s questions.

    http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/archives/2007/04/01/ooc-strength-of-schedule-2/

  21. TheCOWDOG 02/23/2009 at 8:50 PM #

    Va82, I get that. Not what I was sayin. It’s the value that is askew.

    And some formulas are still theorum and some schedules are coincidental.

    Again, we had Davidson, Marquette and Florida. 3 probable dancers. Wins over 2 of them combined with a strong finish would be enough to clear the bar.

  22. BSIE80 02/23/2009 at 8:59 PM #

    VaWolf82

    We understand the system. We just don’t agree with it.
    Especially when you set up a schedule and the team turns out to have a bad team/year.

    The only way to avoid this is to only play teams from the best conferences (Big East/SEC/Big 12, etc.)

    Frankly, I would like us to play these guys vs. ECU/Central…

    I would also like to see the 64 spots identified by x number from each conference, similar to when we only had 1 going to the NCAA. This would eliminate all this bull about who is the 63rd and 64th rated team in the nation. Eliminate the bubble garbage…

  23. VaWolf82 02/23/2009 at 9:17 PM #

    I don’t understand what is “askew”. One bad team doesn’t destroy your SOS ranking….but 1/2 dozen or more will.

    A horrible OOC schedule doesn’t disqualify you from the NCAAT. It doesn’t even make it harder to get into the NCAAT when you play in the ACC. What a poor OOC schedule does is it eliminates a chance to get wins that would actually mean something on Selection Sunday.

  24. TheCOWDOG 02/23/2009 at 9:34 PM #

    Exactly Va. We had 3 strong ones.
    Looking at the likes of BC and UVA, there just isn’t that broad range of difference.

    The formula does not bare fruit.

    I’m a hard head.

    That said, I have been bitching about our OOC from the get go. I don’t feel like tracking it down, but it’s there in print
    where I was specific in pointing out the utter importance of the 3 games.

  25. wufpup76 02/23/2009 at 9:49 PM #

    “Wolfpup… the dreaded 7 or 8 seed kiss of death. What were our seeds each year under Sendek? I remember a decent one with Hodge maybe, and maybe a 14 but I think we were usually around that 7 or 8 range right?”

    ^This is correct, GA. In 2002 we pulled a 7 seed and lost on the Caron Butler 3 pointer “foul” in the 2nd round. In 2003 we pulled a 9 seed and lost on a last second shot in the first round to Cal. In 2004 we were a solid #3 seed (the Vandy/UMd season). In 2005 we rallied for a #10 seed (Sweet 16 year), and in 2006 we went from a top 4 seed “lock” to plummeting to a #10 seed and losing to Texas in the second round.

    So –

    2002 – 7 seed
    2003 – 9 seed
    2004 – 3 seed
    2005 – 10 seed
    2006 – 10 seed

    Bubblicious every year but one.

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