Mid-Season BB Roundup

1/8 Update:

I made a horrible mistake when compiling the OOC SOS in the first table and totally screwed everything up.  Luckily, I copied and pasted the RPI numbers from CBS into a file and so I was able to correct the table.   The key changes are that:

– State’s OOC schedule should be seen as “average/mediocre” rather than “good”.   The super-weak teams at the bottom severely diluted the effect of playing (and losing) to four good teams.   Sadly though, this year’s OOC schedule remains one of the higher ranked ones over the last 15 years.

– Overall, the conference’s OOC schedules look really weak.   This will have a serious impact on the conference’s RPI ranking and could potentially affect any ACC bubble teams come Selection Sunday.

 

1/6 Article:

I was reviewing some old entries of mine in preparation for this mid-season ACC review when I came upon this comment:

If you play in the ACC and you get 20 wins (and 8-8 in the conference) you can pretty much rest assured that you’re getting a bid regardless of how many ‘quality’ wins.

Obviously, VT managed to prove that this “metric” isn’t worth the time it took to either type or read. Some of the early discussions that I’ve read on the forums here are just as wrong. If you want to avoid mistakes like this, then take a few moments to review all that we have documented about the Bubble and NCAA Tournament Selection.

Now let’s move forward and unveil what we know about ACC basketball as it stands today:

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

– These numbers came from CBS Sports. Any errors in the calculations are their fault and transposition errors are mine.

– I’ve noted two different things in red….Top 50 wins which are REQUIRED to get an at-large bid and the three teams that feasted on too many cupcakes. (More on this below.)

– If you go back through the 10 years of Herb and the 5 years of Sid, this season ranks about third in strength

– There are more sophisticated ways to evaluate NCAAT status, but for today, I’m only using RPI based on the discussion that I linked above (and yes I’m feeling generous towards BC today).

– This is the first time that I have ever done an ACC snap shot and not had a bubble team (unless I put BC here). I don’t think that we can consider this “good”.

– There is a lot of basketball left to play this season and the most important games have yet to be played. However, this may be the weakest ACC since the late 1990’s. There were several years then that only 3 of 9 teams made the NCAAT. We may be looking at a similar percentage this year.

 

LOOK BOTH DIRECTIONS

If you look at the review that I did last year at this time, you would see that the bottom and middle of the ACC are considerably weaker this year. As many people have pointed out, this situation reduces the number of chances that the ACC teams have to get those quality wins needed to make the NCAAT.

If we use last year’s mid-season numbers to project forward, we see that:

– Both teams graded as “IN” last year made the NCAAT

– 3 of 5 Bubble teams made the NCAAT.

– Only 1 of 5 teams graded as “OUT” made the NCAAT.

As I said earlier, there is a lot of basketball yet to be played and most teams have their future in their own hands. However, that does not mean that the information we have today is worthless.

 

STATE’s RESULTS TO DATE

 

This schedule is substantially better than anything we’ve seen from Sidney. It would be foolish to schedule only teams expected to make the NCAAT. But it is also foolish to schedule so many teams ranked 200+. An “average” OOC schedule could have been “good” or even “great” with a little more up front planning.

Please don’t attribute this large number of bad teams to luck. If anything, history suggests that having four good teams on the schedule is luck. But at least this type of OOC schedule won’t be an embarrassment if State is in contention for an at-large NCAAT bid in March.

 

REMAINING SCHEDULE

With such a weak conference this year, it seems silly to discuss whether the conference schedule is “hard” or “easy”.   Short of winning the ACC tournament, there is no way that a team with a losing conference record is getting an at-large bid. 

However, it is foolish to project that 9 or 10 conference wins would be required.   As seen last year, conference wins as a gross total can be meaningless.  Quality wins are what matter on Selection Sunday.  However, how many quality wins would be considered “sufficient” is a fluid number (based on the results around the country). But a minimum number of three Top 50 wins would at least get you into the conversation for an at-large bid. 

 

CLOSING THOUGHTS

There aren’t really any conclusions that you can draw from such preliminary data.  The purpose of the entry is simply to document where you are and how far you have left to go. Obviously State has a long way to go. In fact, State has accomplished literally nothing to date that would be seen as a positive on an NCAA resume.

 

 

WARNING:  I’m sure that the excuses will run like rain water in the comments.   But this entry is not a coaching discussion thread and it will not turn into one.