Two sets of rankings worth viewing

'09 Football 09-10 Basketball17

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The proliferation of blogs and user-generated content on the internet has created a situation where everyone and their brother likes to compile forms of lists and rankings. They shouldn’t. Far too often the ‘average Joe’ conducting the ranking doesn’t have the intellectual heft to deliver a quality product.

This week I ran across a couple of rankings worth noticing:

Football
To this point of the season, the most accurate rankings of ACC Football teams comes from the ACC Sports Journal. This week’s power rankings are no exception. You can always argue individual rankings, but for the most part they seem to get it right. For example, I saw something on “Bleacher Report” that listed Boston College in front of NC State. Really? The week after the Eagles laid such a massive egg at Clemson? (Link to some follow-up on that game)

  • With both Miami and Virginia Tech effectively ranked in the Top 10, I wonder what the ACC feels about their ‘genius’ of scheduling this game for the last weekend of September? What a lost opportunity.
  • And, I wonder what the hell ABC/ESPN is thinking making Iowa at Penn State its 8pm feature game on ABC? Really? Are they secretly hoping that Joe Paterno rolls over and dies in the middle of the game? What other reason would anyone in the country care about his turd of a game?

Basketball
Sunday’s Charlotte Observer included a list of freshmen to watch in this year’s ACC. NC State’s Richard Howell was #8; Georgia Tech’s Derrick Favors was #1. N.C. State forward DeShawn Painter was effectively ‘honorable mention’.

As was discussed when this link hit our message boards, I feel as though this list may have taken the easy way out. I think a case could be made that NC State’s Scott Wood could have made the list. Wood’s shooting ability coupled with his size provide him some unique attributes that could be positioned to help NC State where we are particularly weak this season – on the wing.

(8) RICHARD HOWELL, N.C. State: Let the rebuilding continue. Without point guard Lorenzo Brown – who’s relegated to Hargrave Military Academy this year – the 6-8 Howell will be counted on to show there is hope for coach Sidney Lowe’s Wolfpack.

Couldn’t help but notice “Let the rebuilding continue”. What is another year over two decades?

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'09 Football 09-10 Basketball

17 Responses to Two sets of rankings worth viewing

  1. choppack1 09/22/2009 at 9:48 AM #

    I really can’t complain about the ACCSports power ranking.

    Right now UNC is better than us. Of course, I think they’ve been a better team in the first part of the season for 2 seasons now.

    I think it’s a toss up between us and Wake. We’ve done a better job against the FCS teams, but Wake has a win vs. Stanford – who at least is a solid D1 team. Right now, our loss to USC doesn’t look terribly embarassing. USC played well against UGa – and then took care of bidness against an inferior opponent, while UGA beat Arkansas.

    Regarding the recruiting rankings – it’s great that Painter is tearing it up in practice. I’m just worried because usually when someone plummets w/out a major injury, it’s a red flag. We’ll certainly get a chance to see. As for Scott Wood – his body doesn’t look like he’s ready for consistent minutes at the 3 spot in this conference, but neither did Josh Howard’s…

  2. PackMan97 09/22/2009 at 10:16 AM #

    “As for Scott Wood – his body doesn’t look like he’s ready for consistent minutes at the 3 spot in this conference, but neither did Josh Howard’s…”

    …neither did Juan Dixon or Julius Hodge among many others…

    looks don’t really mean much if you perform on the floor.

  3. GoldenChain 09/22/2009 at 11:10 AM #

    I think those f’ball rankings are pretty accurate.
    Miami has looked like the Canes of old (was it in 81 or 82 that they beat us like 56-0 or something?). That makes FSU’s loss not look nearly so bad.
    As far as State, I do think that USC has shown themselves to be better than most thought so a game where we had 3 dropped passes inside the 10ydl to lose 7-3 doesn’t look too bad.
    I actually think its a good thing that the ‘talking heads’ dropped us like a hot potato after the USC game. I’d rather be off the radar and emerge late in the season (if that’s our lot).
    UVA and UMD look like doormats. To me Duke looks like they have the ‘sophomore slumps’ under Cut….that means its a good year to have them on the schedule. Wake is not nearly as strong as in recent years but still dangerous, unx has no offense HOWEVER I’m concerned that those frosh receivers may have started to ‘find themselves’ last Saturday. Obviously they have a lot of talent, and just like w/Smack Brownie, the weight of that talent will eventually carry them.

    The Pack just needs to come out strong against Pitt and get the W, the game is a ‘pick’ so while Pitt may have a slight neutral advantage the home turf negates that….I hope.

  4. RickJ 09/22/2009 at 11:43 AM #

    Chop – Painter really is an interesting case. I think he originally played football then grew a ton and switched to basketball when he was 15 or 16. This is really pretty late to start basketball. He blew up immediately and got rated as high as the top 20 during his sophomore year. Not sure why he dropped so far but it does make you wonder. On the plus side, Gary Williams & Seth Greenburg really wanted him and they have a pretty good record of finding talent. Apparently, he is a very good athlete though he needs more strength. There was also a lot of doubt about Painter qualifying – this bit of good news has been understandably lost because of what took place with Brown.

  5. choppack1 09/22/2009 at 11:47 AM #

    GC – they are indeed very talented – and unfortunately, a lot of the talent is young enough so that next year they’ll be talented.

    Interesting that our game is a pick’em…appears that Vegas’ love affair w/ the Pack didn’t last long.

  6. howlie 09/22/2009 at 11:48 AM #

    I have no problems with those power rankings. We really don’t know squat at this point about our team… and continue to “DROP” in power with our usual calamity of injuries before the season even friggin begins…

    However, a rhetorical question… a “WHAT IF”…

    WHAT IF one of those bobbley passes had been caught vs. USC… or we didn’t have one of those late drive-killing offside penalties… and eeked out an undeserved win against them [like some of the other “power” teams above us have done?
    WHERE THEN would we NOW be “ranked” in those power rankings and in the Top 25 rankings?

    I’m betting we would be around 18 in the national polls, and in the Top 2-3 of those mythical ‘power rankings’. Point being…

    …they mean absolutely nothing.

  7. BJD95 09/22/2009 at 12:40 PM #

    I would put Clemson ahead of Georgia Tech. After they got over their initial trepidation, they took it to the Bees pretty good in Atlanta. If you want raw numbers, I think home field is usually worth 4 points in college (3 for NFL), so that would make Clemson 1 point better than GT on a neutral field.

    I expect that VT and Clemson will be better than FSU overall this season, but the Noles have shown more to date.

    State and UNC are roughly even teams, though I still give us the head-to-head advantage. I expect identical league records.

  8. CarnifeX 09/22/2009 at 12:56 PM #

    Iowa has beaten PSU 7 of the last 8 times that they’ve met. This being PSU’s best time in a while, it’s quite the trap/upset game.

    OTOH, PSU and Iowa are boring.

  9. StateFans 09/22/2009 at 1:20 PM #

    Recognize that by using the term “Power Rankings” as opposed to “Rankings”, the list gets a little more leeway of interjecting subjectivity from trying to just rank based on ‘results’.

    This is my problem with most rankings — I generally don’t care what people ‘think’. (At the end of the year) I care only what the real results are.

    If you are ranking just on ‘results’ then you kind of have to rank State behind Wake because of current results. But, by using “Power Rankings” you give yourself the license to add subjectivity.

    Based on the way State has played in our last 9 games; which includes a win over Wake; and what State returned from last year compared to what Wake lost from last year — I find it hard to subjectively rank Wake ahead of State.

    I recognize it is ‘subjective’. But, we will have our answers soon.

  10. Wufpacker 09/22/2009 at 1:28 PM #

    “With both Miami and Virginia Tech effectively ranked in the Top 10, I wonder what the ACC feels about their ‘genius’ of scheduling this game for the last weekend of September?”

    Given the ACC’s football prowess, they’re probably thrilled to have this game now before one or both teams folds.

    And I realize the whole reason for expansion was to improve the league’s football, but given BC’s successes thus far, and the fact that it appears Miami and VaTech are the cream of the league currently, is anyone else besides me ticked off that the rest of our “incumbents”, even FSU, cannot even seem to compete with the new additions? I realize I’m overstating the issue, but it still sucks.

  11. 61Packer 09/22/2009 at 4:17 PM #

    The real “sucks” issue with me regarding ACC expansion is that we’ve gone to more teams but less conference games. If the conferences won’t do it, then the NCAA should allow 13 games, one being against an FCS team, and require every Division One conference team to play all their league opponents each season. This would affect the ACC, SEC, Big XII and Big Ten teams and would go a long way in giving a better picture of who deserved to be ranked highest in the BCS. This would also have allowed us to have played both South Carolina and Pitt, as well as Virginia, Miami and Georgia Tech this seaason. That would have been much better for both our fans and our team than the past two weeks worth of scrimmages that sent many fans home early in the second half.

    The expansion is only part of the problem. The division alignment that expansion brought about wrongly assumes the power balance is always going to be the same, or that teams are geographically equal. Besides killing long-time ACC rivalries like State-Duke and UNC-Wake, division play has created the possibility that an ACC team could sweep its division oppponents but sit home during the ACC title game. If only this team could’ve played that team this season, then they’d be the ACC champion, not the other team that didn’t have to play this team.

    It should be settled on the field.

  12. packalum44 09/22/2009 at 6:13 PM #

    Ranking teams is like pricing options…the closer to the expiration date (i.e. the end of the season) the more accurate the price (i.e. ranking).

    Its quite impossible for me to opine on NC State. I do think USC’s defense is as good if not the BEST we will face all year. Not to mention they played a hell of a game (better than they played against UGA).

    Last year’s team would have beat Pitt. Have we improved? We’ll see Saturday.

  13. Sw0rdf1sh 09/22/2009 at 8:33 PM #

    I’m with Howlie. One catch and we are in a different place and time. Although our record is yes indeed 2-1 with those 2 wins being to “lesser” opponents, I’ll tell you our loss was not that much of a blow as a team.

    The media is a machine that, especially today…with so many people being allowed into the classification “media”, likes to rip itself off so much it weakens the impact.

    Today there is so much parity in the polls, you can easily see (without knowing squat about which teams have talent) that there is a lot of different “opinions” on who is the team to beat. I think the ACC will see a lot of movement in the polls this year, because just like last year I think there will be teams beating teams that “people/media” didn’t expect. GT, Miami, UNC, and hopefully on Nov 21st VT will all suffer losses that will screw their poll chances. Myself I hope GT gets back in there with a W this week, but I’m biased to seeing boys in baby blue cry.

  14. john of sparta 09/22/2009 at 8:46 PM #

    power rankings/line/etc.
    it’s all about Vegas, baby.
    “if i give you this, will you bet that?”
    and….i’ll take the 10% whatever happens.
    bottom line: more money is bet on the NFL.
    more money is MADE on the BCS.
    man, it hurts to type BCS.
    i HATE it so much.
    die BCS die.

  15. b 09/22/2009 at 10:27 PM #

    Beat Pitt squarely this weekend, and only FSU, VT and Miami will be ahead. The Chickens will beat Ole Miss, GT will ambush UNC, and Clemson will probably lose to TCU.

    That GT game in particular looks like a set-up to me. UNC feeling themselves more than they should, going to a place they never win, PJ and his staff will have 10 days to cut tape and stew, and the players are embarassed by the Cane thrashing. We’ll see if the Heels D is worthy of all the jock-riding, if a Dwyer-less GT team takes them out.

  16. bradleyb123 09/23/2009 at 5:26 PM #

    I think UNC stomps GT. Tech blows. They have no passing game. They only beat Clemson because of three pretty flukey scores (an 82 yard TD run, a dubious fake FG for a TD, a horrible missed tackle by Clemson after a pooch punt enabled the runner to take it to the house, etc.) Clemson came back and just fell short since they let themselves get too far behind. Miami spanked GT the way Clemson SHOULD have. I believe GT is favored in this game. If you’re wagering, take Carolina plus the point spread for some additional insurance. Tech has a bad passing game. If they’re ever 3rd and 7+, they may as well go ahead and punt. I think Carolina’s defense is made to stop an offense like Tech’s (see last year’s meeting). The question is, can Carolina’s offense get it done? (But with their strong defense, will they even need to?)

    I’d love to see GT beat the Heels. But I just don’t see it happening.

  17. bradleyb123 09/23/2009 at 5:29 PM #

    As for Pitt, I’ve read that in their only road game this year, at Buffalo, they gave up over 400 passing yards. I don’t know who will win this game, but with our passing game, that gives me hope.

    If our O-line can protect Russell, that is. I think that may be the key to this game.

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