ACC Mid-Season Review

Originally published on Tuesday of this week:

This past weekend had six games on Sat, one on Sun, and then another one on Monday night…Two overtime games, multiple close games, and only two with the final differential greater than six points. Throw in the fact that State won one of the OT games and UNC lost twice….and that makes for some entertaining basketball. So let’s get busy and see what nuggets of info we can find.

Since this is our mid-season review, we’ll go into a little more detail than normal. The summary table comes from ESPN for a change since they were nice enough to tabulate most of these columns for us. The RPI rankings come from Monday morning and I manually updated UNC/UVA records after the game. (No it was really no bother, glad to do it.)

 

 

Key changes from last week:

• Miami loses two games in a row to drop into the bubble zone.
• Pitt stops a 3-game losing streak by beating ND and sneaks onto the back-side of the bubble.
• Clemson is on a 3-game winning streak to break into our trend graph, getting close to the bubble again.

Let’s back up the summary table with an abbreviated version of the Dance Card analysis through games played on Sunday.

 

As expected with their RPI ranking and Top-50 wins, both State and Miami are on the good side of the bubble. I threw in a few other teams that might be of some interest to State fans along with both teams on either side of the predicted burst point. For the second straight season, Tenn has turned into one of my favorite teams since it would be nice for State to have a win against another NCAAT team. Funny enough, Tenn is one of SIX teams tied in the SEC with a 5-3 conference record.

Before we start breaking down the ACC, let’s put up the RPI trend graphs for completeness (and because I like them). Note that these rankings come from CBS and several are slightly different from the ESPN calcs.

 

 

Right now, the ACC breaks down pretty easily into three distinct regions with the 5 teams at the top and the four teams at the bottom moving in opposite directions away from the mess in the middle. So each summary will include that team’s remaining games broken down into these three categories.

 

THE UPPER CLASS

UVA

Strong overall schedule, numerous good wins, and a great record….I doubt if any of these nuggets surprises anyone here at SFN; so that doesn’t leave much to discuss. UVA’s remaining schedule looks to be one of the easiest of those in the upper level of the ACC.

With their win in Chapel Hill on Monday night and the tie-breaking win over ND, UVA may be hard to catch.

 

ND

We thoroughly discussed the Irish last week and I don’t see any new facts that warrant further discussion. My prediction was that ND will end up with one of the easiest overall conference schedules with home/home series against Duke, Clemson, GT, and BC. Of course as soon as I make that prediction, Clemson goes on a three-game win streak just to make a liar out of me. Regardless of their overall conference-schedule strength, their remaining games look fairly balanced:

 

Louisville

Louisville’s welcome package to the ACC included what will likely be the ACC’s toughest conference schedule with home/home games against UVA, UNC, Miami, and Pitt. If you were more observant of the overall summary table than I was at first, you would have noticed that L’ville’s three losses are all to teams in the RPI Top-25…Kentucky, Duke, and UNC. Their remaining schedule has a few games left against the top and then a whole bunch against the mess in the middle:

 

UNC

In overall conference schedule strength, UNC and Duke look to be in a race for the second hardest schedule. But their schedule split fairly evenly over the two halves of the conference schedule:

 

DUKE

One of the five teams at the top of the ACC will end up playing on Wednesday with the Mess in the Middle. With Duke’s two early losses to State and Miami, they have to play catch-up to get one of the byes to the first two rounds of the ACCT. Duke has essentially no chance to catch UVA or ND (unless either team decides to collapse), but they do have a legitimate shot at catching either L’ville or UNC. Their remaining schedule is pretty balanced and the two games against UNC could easily decide which day both teams first play on.

 

 

THE MESS IN THE MIDDLE

SYRACUSE

The ‘Cuse was another one of the teams we beat to death last week. In summary, the first half of the conference schedule was extremely easy, and the second half isn’t. But since they have no Top-50 wins, at least they will get a number of shots at a key win. But with an RPI in the 60’s, they are going to need a lot more than just one big win. I’m not betting on Syracuse pulling off an NCAAT bid this year:

 

MIAMI

We covered Miami’s dramatic rise through the conference and RPI rankings last week. Then they lose at home to give GT their first conference win of the year and on the road to FSU. Doesn’t that highlight exactly what we would expect from the messy middle…road win at Duke and a home loss to previously winless GT? Bottom line, they’re in a good spot but significantly degraded from last week. Their remaining schedule looks fairly balanced to me:

 

CLEMSON

I’ve only seen one half of Clemson basketball so far this year…and I’ve been trying really hard to forget it. Including State, they have three Top-50 wins, but State is their best conference win so far. Looking at their wins, it’s hard to understand why their RPI is so bad. Looking at their losses quickly explains their issue….five losses to teams ranked 100+ including a home loss to #247 Winthrop. I have no idea what to expect from the Jekyll/Hyde imitation that Clemson has going on this year. But here’s who will get one of the two Clemson teams over the second half of the season:

 

PITT

Pitt would have probably ended up in my definition of the bottom dwellers except for their home win over ND. Of course, Pitt also gave VT their first win of the year…so another dyslexic team in the lower end of the ACC middle. I’m not overly optimistic of their chances, but here’s who they’ve got left:

 

FSU

I’ve had FSU penciled into the bottom third of the ACC ever since the Jan 1 entry summarizing the pre-season games. But then they beat Miami to move into a tie with Pitt in the conference standings. I’m not overly optimistic of their chances over the rest of the year…but for today, they’re officially in the mess in the middle. Normally I say that the RPI rankings have no predictive power, but I’ll make an exception for FSU and their 100+ ranking. Their remaining schedule:

 

NCSU

State is managing to stay just on the right side of two different bubbles….for both the NCAAT and playing on Tuesday on the ACCT:

At present, State and Miami are lining up for the dreaded 8/9 matchup with both teams 1/2 game ahead of Pitt and FSU for the dreaded Tuesday start. Normally, I concentrate on ranking the ACC by their RPI ranking. But for right now, RPI and conference standings are not lining up very well. So we’ll need to keep track of the conference standings for at least the next couple of weeks.

State’s season to date as well as their remaining games:

As we’ve discussed since the Jan 1 entry, State is on the road for 2/3 of the games over the second half of the conference schedule. Good news is that the second half is easier than the first half and both of State’s schedule breaks come in the second half. It wouldn’t surprise me if State’s final game against Syracuse ends up being “must win” for both teams.

One of the things that I find truly amazing is that after the Duke win, the forums read like everyone thought that the team that played against Cincinnati was gone for good. Then when that version shows up against Clemson, the forums read like State has no absolutely chance at an NCAAT bid. Balance, people…..balance. No season is ever a success or a failure because of a game in Jan.

Going into the season, I had no idea what to expect. Last year’s team was a one-man team and the MAN went to the NBA. Luckily, Lacey is as good as (if not better than) advertised and the freshmen are contributing. The miraculous improvement in the returning players that were forecast by some have not really appeared (shocking huh?), but State has the deepest rotation since Gottfried took over.

State is slightly ahead of where they were this time last year. RPI ranking is about 10 spots higher thanks to a OOC schedule that turned out to be surprisingly strong. State also has a signature win this year (which they didn’t get last year until the ACCT). Here are their best OOC wins and I’ll be pulling for them through the end of conference play. (If this entry wasn’t already insanely long, we would discuss some leading reasons for the differences between the two sets of media calculations.)

From where State is currently sitting and with their upcoming schedule, not making the NCAAT would represent a failing of major proportions. But State will definitely have to improve their 5-7 record over the last 12 games if they’re going to meet that goal.

It all starts up again Tuesday night in Winston-Salem: