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Well that was a tough week. I really wanted at least one win last week.
[See the full post at: Weekly ACC Review]Thanks so much for these check-ins. I don’t even have the heart to offer a silly comment on any trends after we went through the Miami and ND games.
Same situation, different year. There’s always hope, I guess.
One thing about Syracuse – their conference schedule has been very favorable to this point, but with the exception of the Clemson game they won the winnable games that were in front of them. This has kept them in the conversation. It’s also one of the benefits of such a schedule – they can have a positive outlook going into a tough stretch and try to steal an important win or two.
Contrast that with the Pack – can they win the winnable games? It’s a damn lot tougher to do after demoralizing losses. I sure hope ND and Clemson’s ugly as shit basketball style don’t beat us twice on Wednesday evening. Really bad timing on the Clemson game. Gottfried teams have never fared well against their brand of basketball (ugly, physical D oriented slop fests).
I sure hope ND and Clemson’s ugly as shit basketball style don’t beat us twice on Wednesday evening.
I’ve been worried about that as well.
State’s schedule is easier in the second half of the season…but more of the games are on the road. So we’ll see which version of this State team comes out more often…the one that played Cincinnati or the one that played Duke.
I don’t dig into the stats like 1.21JW does, but it looks to me like all of the talk about improved defense was just that…more talk.
I just took a closer look at Syracuse’s conference schedule and added the following sentence to their writeup:
(Though it’s important to note that SYR’s overall ACC schedule was fairly weak playing Duke, Pitt, BC, and VT twice.)
So while the second half of their conference schedule is rather brutal, their post-season destination (NCAA vs NIT) won’t be a result of bad luck in the conference schedule.
I don’t dig into the stats like 1.21JW does, but it looks to me like all of the talk about improved defense was just that…more talk.
I’ve been looking at the last 10 games (prior to the ND game) and have found 2 things:
1. State’s defense has not improved.
2. State is a #50 team. The loses are against Top 50 teams (minus Duke) and the wins are against 75 and up.I’m looking at individual efforts during wins and losses and looking at it from up high Washington, Abu, and Caleb Martin are the only ones playing better offensively (on average) against the top 50 competition while Lacey, Anya, and Freeman are struggling big time and the rest are simply playing worse.
For the team (prior to ND) their Defensive Efficiency is awful, they are giving up 1.01 pts/poss in the Wins and 1.15 pts/poss in the losses during the 10 game stretch from Tennessee to Miami (National Average is 1.01 pts/poss). Calling this an improved defense is a lie, they loaded up their defensive stats on easy early wins. Calling it a bad defense is an insult to bad defenses.
I agree that our defense has not improved. It probably won’t improve because all the focus seems to be on the offense.
We’re .500 in the ACC now, but with 6 of our final 10 games on the road, it’s highly unlikely we’ll finish at or better than 9-9 overall. We might win a couple of the road games, but we’ll likely lose at least one if not two of our remaining home games. That leaves a likely ACC mark of 8-10, or maybe even worse. There’s no bubble in that number.
This expanded, “new and improved ACC” just sucks for teams like us. We’ll likely enter the ACCT needing wins, and while there will be plenty of chances, most will come against the lower half of the league. If we make it to Saturday with a chance to take out a quality RPI opponent, there won’t be a lot left in the tank.
So then the NIT will come to the rescue, and we’ll be back in the post-season, but maybe on the road somewhere, just another target of yet another small school looking to send us to March obscurity. Rather than repeat this scenario again, what we SHOULD do, just ONCE, would be to turn down the NIT and sit home. Choose NOT to be a part of this second-rate tournament. They probably need us a lot worse than we need them, anyhow. Let the players, coaches and administrators stew in the fact that this program can and should do better, and that our goals are no longer going to be associated with mediocrity. This team is young, but is way better than it has achieved on the floor so far. It is a deep team with real talent (Lacey and Turner) and genuine promise (Washington, Abu and the Martin twins).
With the amount of money and number of fans this program has behind it, at a school which historically has its sports roots in basketball, our goals should be higher than achieving just mediocrity. When it comes to basketball, we’re not Virginia Tech or even Florida State; we’re the “other” Tobacco Road team that also has multiple NCAA Champions basketball banners hanging in our arena.
I can’t think of one instance, with the possible exception of HWSNBM’s first post-season team, where the NIT actually helped our program. And going there in Gottfried’s fourth season will be about as useful to us as a screen door is to a submarine.
This expanded, “new and improved ACC” just sucks for teams like us.
You didn’t present any evidence to support this claim. I can’t see how State’s schedule or the opponents can be blamed for any of the obvious shortcomings.
Seems like you could just republish this same article every year about this time. We just don’t seem to be able to get away from the bubble.
We were away from it last week, bit we dropped 2 straight… So, we’re on it again.
We have 11 games left. If we win 7 – won’t be sweating selection Sunday . We’ll have a bid locked up. If we 6-5, very likely we’ll be in…5-6, we’ll be sweating it and will need another that usual 2nd AcC game tournaments win. Anything less, we got to win it.
I haven’t had much hope for Pitt ever since they lost at home to Clemson. But they keep hanging around close enough to the bubble that they’re still worth tracking.
But according to this morning’s CBS numbers, they’ve dropped off the graph with a ranking of 86. They may slide back on after Wed/Thurs games, but at this point tracking them has more to do with completeness than any real chance at the NCAAT.
Nearly half-way through the conference schedule and Pitt only has one Top-100 win…against #85 KSU. In the race for the last spot on Wed, Pitt is 1/2 game behind Clemson and 1/2 game ahead of FSU.
PS – State is only 1/2 game ahead of Clemson.
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