Since State has reached the half-way point of its ACC season, I thought we would take another look around the ACC and summarize where everyone is. Here are the ACC standings, RPI rankings, and performance versus RPI Top-50 after Wednesday’s games.
Bubble definitions justified here.
If you went back and compared these standings to those just before the ACC season started, you would see that VT and FSU swapped places and not much else has changed. For today’s closer look, the bottom half of the conference isn’t worth discussing and I don’t want to talk about the Blues, so that leaves four teams to discuss:
FSU
With just a quick look at the various schedules, FSU looks like it is in the running for the toughest ACC schedule this year. Even if I’m wrong, they have quite the remaining schedule: Duke, UVA (2x), UM (2x), and NCSU…which means that FSU only has three games against the bottom half of the ACC over their last nine ACC games.
If you ignore FSU’s (ie Leonard Hamilton’s) history, then you would conclude that FSU had a chance to really pump up their RPI since most of their remaining schedule is against good, but not great teams. Time will tell how well they do, but with wins over UNC and Duke they should be in a position that they could coast into the NCAAT.
UVA
Their ACC schedule ranks among the easiest to date and their OOC schedule was no great shakes since they have only played two games so far against RPI Top 50 teams. Their win against Michigan in the ACC/B10 challenge is really nice, but it’s starting to get a little lonely.
Finishing up the year, UVA plays UNC and FSU twice. They could lose all four and still have a pretty good ACC record….but they wouldn’t like where that would land them.
Miami
Based on past experience, I keep expecting Miami to wither away. They don’t have any Top 50 wins, but they have played a reasonably good schedule and the loss to State is their worst so far. So how good (or how bad) Miami does is completely up to them.
I believe that for the vast majority of teams, you are who you record says you are. Their remaining games @ Duke, @FSU, and UNC will pretty much define who they are.
State
You would need a mighty precise micrometer to tell the difference between State and Miami at this point in the season. State has the head-to-head win over UM, but that means exactly nothing when it comes to Selection Sunday. The three game stretch against UNC, FSU, and Duke will pretty much define who State is this year.
State’s position with respect to the NCAAT Bubble has gotten a lot of discussion going on both the main blog and in the forums. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the vast majority of the comments showing that most posters here are basing their comments on reality as opposed to the delusional rants that so often appear on the internet. My guess is that a regular season win against one of the top three teams and then an ACCT win on Friday against either FSU or UVA (along with plenty of wins against the bottom half of the ACC) would be the minimum resume to feel good about Selection Sunday.
Overall, I have been pleased by the obvious improvement over the last several years. The real problem is how much room there is between “improved over last year†and “goodâ€. I don’t expect State to make the NCAAT, but I would certainly welcome the opportunity to eat some crow.
Conclusion
There are enough potential wins available for the ACC to put six teams into the NCAAT…but four bids are far more likely. In fact, I would say that the odds of putting only three into the NCAAT are better than putting six in (ie I’m not all that impressed with UVA). In any case, if the real world maintains just the normal amount of hassle (as opposed to the hell of the last week), we’ll take one more look at the bubble before the ACCT starts.
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