There was a full slate of games on Saturday, with four blowouts (three of which were in the Triangle) and two nail biters. With both nail biters working out to State’s advantage along with a fairly easy win against VT, I think that this weekend was about as good as could be expected. With the bottom third to half of the ACC being so weak, some weekends are just not going to have a lot of exciting basketball.
With State’s next game coming on Tuesday, it seemed like a good idea to get this week’s entry up a day early…especially since Sunday’s game won’t affect any of our conclusions even if FSU had pulled off a shocking upset in C’ville. I’ll probably try to do next week’s entry on Sunday as well, since State will be @Clemson on Tuesday next week.
Here is the conference summary with the teams sorted by RPI (from CBS Sports) calculated after Saturday’s games.
Both Pitt and SYR fell in the grey area between regions and I “rounded up” in both cases. It doesn’t really matter what we do with the ‘Cuse and Pitt has earned some slack with their impressive climb through the Bubble:
Pitt’s rapid ascent is due to a 5-2 record with the losses coming @L’ville and @UVA. While a good streak can come through a scheduling quirk with a stretch of weak teams, Pitt has wins against Notre Dame, UNC, and Syracuse (x2) over the last three weeks. If we used the old “if the season were to end today” analysis, there is no way that the Selection Committee would pass Pitt over. Of course we can also fall back on the Dance Card (updated through Sat’s games) to support that conclusion:
I don’t know that the ACC will get 8 teams into the NCAAT. But it is at least possible, even if not highly probable.
Miami came up a little short at L’ville which was a huge missed opportunity for them (while protecting one of State’s Top 25 wins). Miami still has UNC at home and at Pitt for a couple of chances for a big/good win before the ACCT. Miami might get a bid wrapped up before the ACCT, but I’m just not feeling it based on the last couple of weeks.
We had a really good discussion last week over the strengths/weaknesses of the RPI and the selection process. While I’m generally OK with the Selection Committee’s decisions and the RPI (probably since State has consistently fell on the right side of the Bubble), there are a couple of ACC teams that the RPI doesn’t seem to judge that well. Let’s start with ND and look at their losses along with their top 100 wins:
ND’s RPI ranking is being held down by a ridiculously easy OOC schedule (currently ranked #327). They’re 4-4 against the RPI Top 50 which is good but not spectacular. It reminds me of L’ville’s results last year that earned them a four-seed (along with a lot of whining from the media). I looked at Jerry Palm’s bracket at CBS and he has ND as a 3-seed. I haven’t put a lot of time into studying seeding, so I’ll probably just go along with whatever Palm and Lunardi say until Selection Sunday.
While ND looks like that they are better than their RPI, UNC looks worse than their RPI ranking:
3-7 against the RPI Top 50 is not great, but since five of the losses are against the Top-25, it isn’t horrible either. But it just seems like a team with an RPI Ranking of 13 should do better. Palm has UNC as a five seed which is one spot lower than what you would calculate from their RPI ranking. It should be clear that UNC’s ranking is being driven by the #2 SOS ranking more than their W/L record.
Duke is getting a lot of discussion as a possible #1 seed. That just seems strange for a team that is in third place in their own conference, so I thought I would take a closer look.
Combine that record with the #6 SOS ranking and the #4 RPI ranking “feels” right. Until I pulled all of that stuff together, I figured that including Duke in the #1 seed discussion had more to do with the coach/history than results. But then again I’m just naturally biased against all things “blue”.
I still have a problem with a third-place team getting a #1 seed, but Duke is only a half-game behind ND:
If Duke can finish in second (or a tie for second) and then win the ACCT, then they probably have a #1 seed wrapped up. But a lot of dominoes in other conferences are going to have to fall just right to have two #1-seeds come out of the same conference.
With no mid-week game, there hasn’t been anything new to discuss about State since the win at Louisville. With Chris Jones getting kicked off of the team today, it seems unlikely that Louisville will finish the season on a strong note. If Louisville tails off, only time will tell if the Selection Committee takes into account that State won on the road BEFORE Jones was kicked off of the team or not. Opinions will vary, but I’m sticking with the projection that 3-1 will secure State a bid before the ACCT.
State will be a big underdog on the road in Chapel Hill, a favorite at BC and probably two close games at Clemson and Syracuse in Raleigh. So as with most things, we’ll see what we see. And just maybe, we’ll find out why Washington didn’t play against VT.
Upcoming games this week in the ACC:
Not exactly a thrilling week of non-wolven games. One of the keys for the remainder of the season will be to keep focus in Chestnut Hill no matter what happens in Chapel Hill on Tuesday. In Palm’s bubble analysis of State, he says that less than a four-game differential between wins and losses usually means no bid….so State can’t give any more games away.
