How to get out of a hole

09-10 Basketball ACC College Basketball Stat of the Day9

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If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Will Rogers
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With the current state of the US educational system, how many of the scholarship BB players in the ACC do you suppose have ever heard of Will Rogers? In any event, Will certainly identified the first step in getting out of hole. But sometimes it is important to understand how you get into a hole before you can climb out.

The teams in the bottom half of the ACC have gotten themselves there several different ways:

1) Losing too much with a very hard schedule
UNC played the #69th ranked OOC schedule, which included losses to Syracuse (#1), Kentucky (#7), and Texas (#9). Throw in the fact that three of their first four ACC games were against Top-50 opponents, then you get a bunch of losses against the #15 ranked schedule.

UNC has plenty of games left against teams currently in the upper half of the ACC….Duke x2, WF, GT, FSU, UMD. They need a few good wins along with no more losses to COC-type competition to get out of the hole. A loss to State on Tuesday would suggest that Roy isn’t listening to Will’s advice.

2) Losing too much with an easy schedule
I tend to lump NCSU and UVA together when looking at the season to date. For the most part, State’s losses look better than UVa’s (#81 USF, #120 Stanford, #141 Auburn, #228 Penn State)…but the net effect is about the same. 12-6 with an OOC SOS of 293 and 13-7 with OOC SOS of 251 lands you in pretty much the same hole.

3) Not winning enough with an easy schedule
VT (14-3) and UM (14-4) look to be doing pretty well…as long as you don’t look too closely. Both teams have OOC SOS ranked 300+, so their chances of getting into the NCAAT start to look a whole lot like the view that mid-majors have.

4) Losing to nearly anyone at any time
BC is 0-6 against teams in the Top-75 along with losses to Maine (#121) and St Joseph’s (#162). With BC’s best win coming against #87 SC, it doesn’t look too good for the Eagles this year.

Minimum NCAAT Requirements
It is simple enough to say that all of these teams need to win a lot more to get out of the hole that they have dug. But it is much more difficult to say exactly what or how many wins they need to shoot for. While I refuse to study the new format for the NIT, we have looked at the minimum requirements for the NCAAT a number of times, a number of different ways. Here are the ACC seasons and significant OOC wins for two recent ACC teams that made the NCAAT with a 7-9 conference record.

NCSU-2005

UMD-2009

Finishing Strong
One of the interesting things to look at is the two teams’ RPI ranking at the end of Jan. #79 and #85 are not RPI rankings that we associate with receiving NCAAT bids. UMD’s Feb/March record was 4-5 with a truly embarrassing loss to UVA going into the ACCT. In 2005, State started Feb with three straight losses. The obvious conclusions are that:
1) It’s not too late to start climbing out; and
2) You don’t necessarily need to finish the regular season on an red-hot tear to still get into the NCAAT.

ACCT Wins
In 2009, UMD got into the NCAAT with a nice upset win in the ACCT. State did the same in 2005. In 2002, State had only one win against an NCAAT team…UMD (regular season champ) in the ACCT. In 2003, State had two wins against NCAAT teams; #12 Duke in Raleigh and WF (regular season champ) in the ACCT.

Contrasting these four teams with a number of 8-8/9-7 ACC teams that didn’t get an NCAAT bid leads me to the obvious conclusion that conference tournament wins are worth a lot more than regular season wins. You can argue about whether or not you think that this is “fair”. But it is hard to argue against the importance of ACCT wins for bubble teams.

This conclusion brings up a question about a team with a 6-10 conference record. If one upset is enough for 7-9, would a ACCT championship appearance be enough for a 6-10 team to get a NCAAT bid?

The short answer is….I don’t know for sure. In 1998, FSU finished the regular season at 6-10 and lost to NCSU in the opening round of the ACCT. FSU received an NCAAT bid that year. Does anyone think that they would get one today? (I sure don’t.) So until we get a more recent example, I guess that we file this question in the “So you’re telling me there’s a chance” category.

Extenuating Circumstances
There’s one other issue that I would to mention about the 2005 NCSU team. There were a lot of “headlines” swirling that year…Tony Bethel’s sickness and recovery, Chris Paul’s low blow and the aftermath, State’s 6-3 finish in Feb/March. Since The Dance Card “predicted” that State wouldn’t make the NCAAT in 2005, I’ve always wondered if State got some type of “sentimental” vote that you couldn’t count on every year.

Well I have some good news/bad news on this question. The Dance Card redid their algorithm last year and apparently redid the seasons up on their website. The 2005 State team is now predicted to just barely clear the bubble and land in the NCAAT. The bad news is that they no longer list the factors included in their algorithm. (So I don’t know if they changed the function/coefficients within their formula, or if they changed the six factors that I have quoted here so frequently.)

The important thing for this entry is that there is no longer any reason to put some type of asterisk beside the 2005 State team. State’s NCAAT bid in 2005 is consistent with decisions made by other selection committees. I don’t know how you feel about the selection committee and their process, but I absolutely do not want the selection committee to have the “freedom” to come up with their own criteria. I want consistency, with as little politics as humanly possible, each and every year in the selection process.

Final Thoughts
Last year, analyzing the NCAAT bubble teams in the ACC was really very boring. I suspect that this year will be much more interesting and may give us some new insights into where the line between the NCAAT and the NIT is drawn. If all goes well with me at home/work, we’ll take another look at the ACC bubble teams right before the ACCT. By then, I suspect that some of the teams in the top half of the ACC will have worked themselves into a much weaker position on the bubble.

1/26 EDIT
PS – Through games played on Sunday 1/24, the Dance Card has six ACC teams clearing the bubble…Duke, WF, GT, Clemson, FSU, and UMD.

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

09-10 Basketball ACC College Basketball Stat of the Day

9 Responses to How to get out of a hole

  1. Wolfy__79 01/25/2010 at 4:28 PM #

    well i’d say that those four teams could be in right now. most likely one of those could/will fall off. i have to think clemson, duke, md have a pretty decent chance? there will be alot of shaking up ahead of the ACC concerning the top half. i’ve never put too much thought into the “line” b/t the nit vs ncaa’s. with NCSU, you are either in or out. there isn’t normally a close call i can remember. if we’re barely making it in, then we probably won’t do anything in there anyway, e.g. see HWSNBN. this year, i haven’t ruled out the nit or the ncaa’s. we’ve got a long row to how, but we could come out in pretty decent shape. it looks like to me we’ll end up about .500 in conf play and could be playing very well heading into the ACC tourney… certainly hitting some bumps in the road on the way. with sid’s 10 man rotation working, we could wear down the competition and make a nice run in our tourney!

  2. FunPack 01/25/2010 at 11:20 PM #

    VaWolf, great stuff & very interesting.

    Re: “Contrasting these four teams with a number of 8-8/9-7 ACC teams that didn’t get an NCAAT bid leads me to the obvious conclusion that conference tournament wins are worth a lot more than regular season wins.”

    I’m not sold that the wins were important because they were in the ACCT. I think it’s more important that they were wins against good (high-RPI) teams. Good wins are important, and bad losses hurt, but I think that good wins are more important than bad losses. Hope that makes sense. And if you are a bubble team, the odds are high that you are playing a good high-RPI team in one of the first 2 games of the tourney.

  3. wufpup76 01/26/2010 at 6:30 AM #

    “But it is hard to argue against the importance of ACCT wins for bubble teams.”

    ^Amen to that. Last impression you leave on the Committee.

    In 2005, we got in due to wins over FSU + Wake in the ACCT plus heavy extenuating circumstances. Bethel for one, Paul’s punch for another, and also Hodge missed the loss to West Virginia at home. The biggest win to get in from that season (aside from Wake in the ACCT) might have been at GT. GT was solid that season, but HWSNBN owned Hewitt (does anyone wonder why Hewitt is criticized?). Interesting that the Dance Card has State squeaking in that season now. I always felt we got in with the Wake win plus the factors listed above.

    As for UMd last season, I can’t really think of any extenuating circumstances (unless I’m forgetting something obvious), but they had huge wins down the stretch – over the Holes and then vs. Wake in the ACCT. Plus they had that key early season win over Michigan St.

    Another argument for how much emphasis may be placed on conference tournament games involves UMd again. In 2004, UMd went from being on or near the bubble entering the ACCT to climbing all the way up to a #4 seed after winning that ACCT. Of course they beat both NCSU and Duke for that ACCT (yes, that was the Larry Rose game. The Karl Hess of yesteryear).

    Anyway, nice work. Always fun to discuss this stuff.

  4. VaWolf82 01/26/2010 at 7:38 AM #

    In 2005, we got in due to wins over FSU + Wake in the ACCT plus heavy extenuating circumstances.

    As I mentioned in the article, there is no reason to assume that the extenuating circumstances were necessary for the 2005 team. The Dance Card’s new algorithm shows that the “numerical” accomplishments of the 2005 team were sufficient to get a bid.

  5. VaWolf82 01/26/2010 at 7:54 AM #

    I’m not sold that the wins were important because they were in the ACCT

    In 2005, UMD (7-9) beat #4 Duke twice and #27 GT once, but didn’t get an at-large bid. None of those key wins were in the ACCT.

    In 2006, the MVC had six teams in the RPI Top-40 and four teams went to the NCAAT. The four teams that went were the teams that made the semi-finals of the MVC tourney. The 2006 team from Missouri State has the dubious distinction of being the highest ranked team (#21) ever left out of the NCAAT.

    Since 1999, there are only two BCS schools with an RPI in the top-40 that were left out of the NCAAT…LSU (2004) and Vandy (2000). LSU lost in the first round of the SECT and Vandy lost in the second after beating #127 Miss St in the first. In 2000, Vandy finished with an 8-8 conference record, but had four wins versus the top-25 before the SECT.

    I’ve never seen any quotes from the Selection Committee about conference tourneys, but all of the circumstantial evidence suggests that wins there are more important for bubble teams than wins earlier in the season.

  6. StateFans 01/26/2010 at 8:26 AM #

    VaWolf,

    I was thinking about this topic just the other day — the ACC could/should have A LOT of teams fighting for spots in the NCAA Tournament.

    Regardless of where NC State falls in this situation, we should not hold back with ACC-centric analyses of the NCAA Tournament and link to your work at/from all of the relevant ACC Blogs/websites.

    You could get positioned as the ACC’s resident “Bracketologist”!

  7. VaWolf82 01/26/2010 at 8:44 AM #

    I’m happy being known as the SFN’s resident curmudgeon.

    I checked the Dance Card this morning and they are now showing six ACC teams clearing the bubble and I’ve added them to the article. I don’t know what happened, I must have looked at the list before their last update.

    As it stands now, the six teams (in a hole) discussed above are the six that aren’t projecting into the NCAAT.

  8. wufpup76 01/26/2010 at 12:39 PM #

    “As I mentioned in the article, there is no reason to assume that the extenuating circumstances were necessary for the 2005 team. The Dance Card’s new algorithm shows that the “numerical” accomplishments of the 2005 team were sufficient to get a bid.”

    ^Yes, I find that very interesting. Sorry, I was not trying to be argumentative. I phrased what I said poorly. All I meant was that I thought those circumstances played a large role in our selection that season, and I was surprised to find that the Dance Card’s numerics alone now had that particular team in.

    And I still can’t get my point across without being longwinded 🙁

  9. BJD95 01/26/2010 at 12:54 PM #

    VaWolf’s analysis backs up what I see with my eyes. Essentially, I believe that every ACC team is fatally flawed (Duke just a little less so than the others – which makes them the “one-eyed king in the land of the blind).

    It reminds me of the Big Ten about 5 years ago – one season when neither Michigan State nor Ohio State was very good. They ended up having a slew of teams all in the 7-12 seed range, and I think their highest seed (#6, I think was MSU) was the only Big Ten team not to lose in the first round. They lost in the second round.

    I could easily see a jumble where Duke is the only real “lock” (but with a middling seed), with 7-8 others in the hunt for low seeds and early tourney exits. I certainly don’t see any ACC teams as being well-constructed for tournament play.

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