Well that was a pretty miserable weekend of basketball. The only close game was Sunday’s Pitt/WF game with the Panthers falling to the Winston-Salem Curse as well. I wonder if there is some shaman we could pay to transfer that curse to them permanently?
Here is the conference summary table with the RPI rankings coming from CBS after Saturday’s games.
Miami is just barely in the bubble zone and they need to pull off a dramatic turn-around if they are going to make it into the NCAAT. Clemson has fallen out of sight low on our trend graphs and hope is fading fast. The odds don’t look good for either team right now.
Let’s see if the Dance Card can shed some light on Pitt and State:
I’m not sure if the “Chance of Bid” column adds any value to our discussion or not. But it’s interesting to see how far State is above the burst line and how far they are within the 100% group. But I’ve never paid any attention to this column before so I’m not going to draw any conclusions today. I just thought that State’s position was surprising after that disaster on Saturday.
Pittsburgh
Before today’s results, I’ve been a little surprised that Pitt isn’t doing any better on the Dance Card calcs or with the Bracketologists. Last year this time, they had a miserable OOC schedule and their only Top-50 win was against a bubble team…but they were in every bracket and comfortably in on the Dance Card. This year they have a decent OOC schedule and several really good wins but by the time Monday’s results are in, they won’t be in on anyone’s bracket.
I figure that Pitt will be in pretty good shape if they finish the season 2-0 against FSU and Miami. But here’s ESPN’s view on Pitt before their debacle at Wake:
Pittsburgh [19-10 (8-7), RPI: 37, SOS: 32] Kansas State’s win over Kansas Monday didn’t just lead to an overly exuberant court storm and some film study for the campus police. It also got the Wildcats back inside the RPI top 100. That’s especially good news for Pittsburgh. Despite the Panthers’ decent RPI and schedule numbers, they are in desperate need of more top-100 victories, and with a schedule that includes just one in their last three games (March 4 versus Miami), it’s handy that a team Pitt beat in late November could lend a hand three months later. The ACC tournament looks like the best chance for the Panthers. They may not have to win the thing, but they’ll probably have to knock at least one good team off before they go home.
That seems a little harsh to me. Their current resume is on par with a number of our Herbble examples not to mention last year’s surprise bid for State. Oh well, let’s see if Jamie Dixon can get his team straightened out for their last two games against the ACC’s two Florida teams.
STATE
If State wins their last two games, they won’t need anything in the ACCT. Their distance from the Burst Line in the Dance Card makes it tempting to say that 1-1 would be good enough….but I just don’t know how fast the Dance Card rankings can change. If it’s as volatile as the RPI Rankings, then we’re back to needing to go 2-0 to feel comfortable.
Note that there is no way to establish the minimum requirements since that will be determined by how the other bubble teams perform the rest of the way. I would like State’s case to be clear-cut next week for the pre-ACCT bubble review, but I’m not holding my breath.
Speaking of volatile rankings, note that Pitt dropped 5 RPI spots just by not playing on Saturday:
Syracuse has already done better over the last couple of weeks than I expected. They seem to have really taken the opportunity to play spoiler to heart.
Here are the current conference standings including Sunday night’s result:
Over the last month of the season (as well as the season as a whole), Duke had a demonstrably stronger schedule than ND. So I’m really surprised that Duke not only caught ND, but now has a one-game lead over ND for second. With L’ville finishing the season against UVA and ND, the 4-5 spots could easily come down to a coin flip in G’boro.
The last week of the regular season has more games of interest than last week’s. I’ve color coded the ones that I thought would have some level of general interest along with State’s games:
Looking at the schedule, I just had a bizarre thought…if Clemson goes 2-0 this week, then we’ll another team that will deserve a closer look next week. 😉
Post Script
The “featured image” at the beginning of the entry kicked my butt last year because WordPress insisted on cropping it no matter how small I resized it. Through a process of elimination, I figured out how to get it to fit. Now I just have to figure out what Photoshop means by “Canvas Size”.
