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Nice writeup. Results on the field will always be the most important thing, but it’s nice to see State put this kind of information out to the fans. Certainly beats the not-too-distant-past of “Wolpfack”.
Context Matters
Agree and yet you choose to nitpick a point made to counter the assumption that no one would transfer after this year.
Context matters.
Brilliant Work. Please forgive the edit, but I just absolutely had to highlight the overall conclusions for those whose eyes may have glazed over earlier. I turned the opening sentence in your concluding section to a Section Heading:
What Are The Key Differences Between Rounds?
I needed to see the last table as a chart. For anyone else that’s interested, here it is:
http://www.statefansnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Key-Stats.jpg
All I see are teams that are in some form of rebuilding in 3 out of 4 the years Gottfried’s been here and each seems to be managing to beat expectations.
Gott isn’t going anywhere and I’m pulling for him/State. But we should at least keep the discussion grounded in reality.
A very high number of teams undergo rebuilding every year. So Gott isn’t going through anything that dozens of other coaches aren’t dealing with as well. The focus needs to be on accomplishments, not excuses. BTW, “accomplishments” are concrete achievements not some fuzzy “exceeding expectations” BS.
Why the huge disparity between DanceCard and the Palm’s and Lunardi’s of the world?
I don’t know the answer, but I have noticed that Palm/Lunardi don’t like to make big changes from one update to the next. To me, this means that they’re using past impressions possibly with future predictions to pull their stuff together.
The Dance Card no longer lists their criteria, but they used to. Here’s what they used at one time:
– RPI Rank (Old Version where home/road games count the same)
– Conference RPI Rank
– Number of wins against teams ranked from 1-25 in RPI
– Difference in number of wins and losses in the conference
– Difference in number of wins and losses against teams ranked 26-50 in RPI
– Difference in number of wins and losses against teams ranked 51-100 in RPISo bad losses don’t count for the Dance Card but I doubt either “expert” has forgotten the BC ass-kicking.
The win at Clemson is currently a Top-100 win which means something to the DC, but might not to Palm/LundardiInteresting side note:
In this year’s practice selection for the media, it was specifically mentioned that conference record wasn’t on the data sheets and implied that it didn’t matter. The other thing that has supposedly changed is the emphasis on “entire body of work”, which would imply that conference results are no more important than OOC results. And yet, the DC has only missed on two teams over the last three years. File this under “Things that make you go hmmmm”.[NCAAT Selection Committee] will view a Wednesday win as still being preliminary, in my view. It will also matter who said Wednesday opponent is. If it’s a total dog like FSU or Wake, it will mean jack shit.
If you find yourself on the bubble going into the ACCT:
You can take a step forward and move past the other rabble. (Win on Thurs)
You can stand still and hope that enough teams fall back. (Lose on Thurs)In the past, I have said that losing on Wed is taking a step backwards, but I’m not so sure anymore. How would losing on Wed be any worse than losing to WF or BC already? Besides, everyone on the bubble has some warts on their resume. Last year, Iowa finished something like 1-6 with several bad losses and made the NCAAT.
In the post-selection article last year, there was some interesting data on BYU supporting the conclusion that “bad losses” don’t really have a discernible negative impact on bubble teams. I’m beginning to think that in this instance, one (more) aw-shit doesn’t wipe out a bunch of atta-boys.
Last year’s post-selection entry (long but one of my more useful articles):
it’s going to be a short run in any tournaments we play in.
Did anyone really expect anything different out of this season? [Stupid question, I know]
I’m happy that we’re talking about the NCAAT and not the NIT.Just some info for next week’s bubble watch….After that miserable performance on Sat, State dropped from 27 to 30 on the Dance Card.
Not as big a drop as I feared. Since the Dance Criteria doesn’t include “bad losses” (or at least didn’t the last time they listed their criteria), the drop is probably just teams moving past State.
but it is kind of a slap to the face of those low major auto-qualifiers.
They suck and yet get good money for getting their butts beat. Plus they’re ending the season the same way it started. What’s to complain about?
Two weeks ago, we had an interesting discussion about the advantages/disadvantages of using the RPI to pick and seed the field. This discussion also included the “benefits” of using margin of victory in picking which bubble teams make the NCAAT. Here’s something that ESPN put up Friday about evaluating BYU (before their win at Gonzaga).
In this case, the RPI’s blind spot — its ignorance of the final score — is actually kind of a strength. Yes, the Cougars’ eight losses have all come by eight points or fewer. Yes, two of their notable nonconference defeats went to overtime. But BYU still lost those games. They lost to San Diego and Pepperdine (twice). While most teams in this position could counteract the argument with at least one example of a quality win, the Cougars’ best three victories have all come at home — over Stanford, UMass and Saint Mary’s. There is maybe one tournament team in that mix, and that team (Stanford) is very much on the bubble.
The RPI is outdated, imprecise, too quietly impactful on the selection process, you name it. We tolerate it as a function of the Bubble Watch’s purpose; we rarely see its value. But in extreme situations, its inherent logic can hold true. At some point, you’ve got to beat somebody.
http://espn.go.com/ncb/bubblewatch
The URL makes me think that this will get over-written soon. Just in case that it does, I saved the entire (short) article.
Palm’s Bubble Update on State and Pitt
State (On the fence)
Wolfpack fans have been getting on me for not taking this team off the bubble. Know why they can’t get off the bubble? They were 2-2 on the road in February. They beat Louisville and UNC and lost at Wake Forest and Boston College. You never know what you’re going to get from NC State. At 17-12, they aren’t out of the woods yet. Schedule — at Clemson, Syracuse
Pitt (work to do)
Pitt has good wins over North Carolina and Notre Dame, but they still don’t have a good record against better opposition. Now, the Panthers have added a bad loss at Wake Forest to go with losses to Hawaii and Virginia Tech. They really need a quality win away from home, but that will have to come in the conference tournament. Schedule — Miami, at Florida St
Interesting nugget:
N.C. State…is 1-14 in the next ACC game after a win against Duke or North Carolina since the start of the 1994-95 season.
Would much rather be a 10/11 or somehow find a way to stretch to 6/7.
10 seed has a better winning percentage in the NCAAT than the 9 seed (and 6-seed does better than the 5’s)
Back in the days of the Great Herb Debate, I sliced and diced the RPI in a number of different entries…most notably the bubble criteria that I use every week. Over time, I’ve become convinced that for the true bubble teams, the RPI ranking of the teams that they’ve beaten are more important than their own RPI….and I’m OK with that.
Three out of four in last night’s RPI helper games resulted in our RPI going from 38 to 40.
Nitpick alert: The RPI RANKING went from 38 to 40.
I think that the problem with Palm’s “Reader” is that it also needs to include the teams ranked just ahead and just behind you as well. You want that group to lose.
Another way to think of it is that State’s win on Tuesday could easily have moved them past teams that haven’t had their mid-week game yet. So when you jump something like 15 spots, it’s not hard to imagine that if some of those teams win on Wed-Fri, then they could jump back ahead of State.
I try to get the RPI rankings on Fri and Mon for the RPI trending graphs to minimize that effect.
Is the one on ESPN not the same? They say RPI 35.
There are frequently small differences between the various RPI calcs. I guess you get what you pay for.
Here’s a little something to answer questions about improving RPI
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology/jerry-palm-reader
How the Wolfpack Can Boost Their RPI Today:
Hofstra needs to beat College of Charleston
Game Info: 7:00 PMRichmond needs to beat VCU
Game Info: 7:00 PM | TV: ESP2Jacksonville needs to beat Stetson
Game Info: 7:00 PM | TV: ESP3Cincinnati needs to beat UCF
Game Info: 7:30 PM | TV: CBS Sports NetworkOne more thing about conference standings….
There have been a number of mid-majors the last several years left out of the NCAAT with as many as good wins as State had last year. In general, those teams have nothing else to brag about and are somewhere in the middle of the typical, relatively weak, mid-major. So if conference standings don’t really matter, the Selection Committee has sure fooled me.
If you haven’t look through the photo gallery at N&O, then you really need to. Those guys got some great shots during the game and then in the locker room afterwards.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/25/4581947/nc-state-58-unc-46-022415.html
North Carolina State picks up another huge win at North Carolina: NC State went to Chapel Hill and held the Tar Heels under 50 points in a 58-46 win. That’s two big road wins now for the Wolfpack, who improved to 17-11. That is not a slump proof record. They don’t need any more quality wins. Just wins.
That’s what I was thinking after the L’ville win.
BJD, you can contact me when you want some real instruction on pessimism.
He may need some refresher training because he’s been way too optimistic recently. Make’s me think that he’s getting laid on a regular basis.
STATE is now a 5 seed according to USA Today as of 8:30 this morning.
Then that tells me to ignore the USA Today’s bracket. BJD’s program for reaching a 7 seed seems more accurate to me.
…. and Tarheels will probably fall from #15 to #17 in the polls after losing 5 of their last 7
Back in the days of “The Great Herb Debate”, I looked at the NCAAT results of the RPI Top 25 and the AP Top 25 and found something interesting. For the years that I looked at, the AP Top 10 had more predictive value than the RPI Top 10, while the AP 11-25 did worse than the RPI.
I used your argument to explain the difference. When a team starts losing, it won’t take too long to drop out of the AP Top 10. But the RPI uses the entire year so doesn’t necessarily reflect how a team is playing at tournament time. The other effect is that some teams hang around in the AP Top 25 based on reputation more than results.
