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It’s been confirmed (through unofficial channels, but confirmed) that it was SMU who got bumped for us, specifically.
If SMU had gotten in, the selection committee would owe Seth Greenberg an apology. I honestly believe that any team with an OOC schedule that weak will have to do something special to get in.
It happens too often for it to be anything other than a punitive decision. As I mentioned, it’s happened to VT, Penn St, and Arizona State just in the last few years.
In 2009, Penn State had six Top-50 wins and two of those were Top-25 wins. OOC SOS ranked #304 and 1-1 in the conference tourney landed them in the NIT. Discussed here:
For FSU, I have to wonder if their wins against VCU and UMass carry the same weight as say wins against SYR and UNC. Neither A-10 team won the regular season (2nd and 5th) or the conference tournament. So were those wins considered less valuable than the RPI ranking would suggest?
I don’t know, but you have to wonder if the Committee had mental asterisks beside those wins.
In the past, Iowa would have been easy to eliminate because they lost 6 of their last 7, including the conference tournament. The first time I wrote about the Dance Card, I showed that several of the Dance Card misses (predicted in) had stumbled down the stretch.
It makes sense to me to judge bubble teams by how they are playing at the end of the year (good or bad). But the Selection Committee keeps stressing “whole body of work”, so I don’t know what to think.
One of the things that I forgot to mention was that I won’t be including this NC State resume in my list for future discussions. The margin was too thin this year to provide any confidence that the exact same resume would be included in the NCAAT next year.
BYU looks like the anti-SMU.
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/teams/rpi/BYU/brigham-young-cougars
If you are going to penalize teams for poor schedules, you should reward those that play tough ones:
#4 OOC SOS
#25 overall SOS
#31 RPIWith wins against Gonzaga, Texas, and Stanford. Not an easy pick to make, but it’s consistent with the inclusion of Arizona several years ago (which was the same year that Herb’s OOC scheduling caught up with him).
I’m glad BYU was brought up because they are another excellent example proving that so-called bad losses are ignored:
Losses to #133, #159, #178, and #179The Committee clearly did not value the American. Louisville a 4 seed,
That seeding is one seed better what you would predict from their RPI (19). You could argue that winning their conference (regular season and tournament) should move them up to consideration for a 2 or 3 seed.
But their overall SOS was only ranked 80th which isn’t all that impressive if you’re talking about a 2-seed.
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/teams/rpi/LVILLE/louisville-cardinals
I don’t buy the TJ Warren argument at all. That makes absolutely no sense and has absolutely no supporting evidence (ie equivalent past examples).
I would like to see a closer inspection of 100+ losses similar to what you did for 0-100 wins…But it’s not much of a cheer when you shout “We suck less!”
You can get to each team’s group of pages at CBS from their standings page
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/standingsclick the team you want to look at and then select “RPI Breakdown”. Here’s State’s page
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/teams/rpi/NCST/north-carolina-state-wolfpackBut bad losses either matter or they don’t. Plus I don’t see any way that the cry of “we suck less” would over-ride more and better wins from the other teams.
It was the wins at Tennessee and Pitt, and then Cuse (neutral).
How is that better than FSU’s wins?
VCU and UMass were neutral court Top-25 wins and they also won @PittWe were the only miss by the Dance Card. They had Cal in instead of us.
Glad you brought that up. The Dance Card also missed on State during the Herb-era (2003?)
Is anyone listening to ESPN talk about their BPI. If something doesn’t make sense versus their made-up ranking…maybe the problem is with the BPI.
he’d rather have players who aren’t forced to, but choose to play college basketball.
But his proposed solution doesn’t provide his desired goal. Even before the NBA age rule, there were kids that went to college not because they wanted to, but because they couldn’t get into the NBA.
We are playing top 25 basketball right now.
You have to ignore alot of crap like @Clemson and Miami in Raleigh to support that conclusion.
PS = It’s 37F and snowing in Central VA now.
But another look, it appears the ACC, B1G, and Big 12 all have 7 teams that are ~ Top 55. PAC has 6 in that range. So maybe the size of the ACC is making the graph appear worse than it really is. (Referring to VaW’s graph here)
It’s probably not size, it’s probably a matter of top wins. The 5-9 seeds in the ACC just don’t have very many and that will make a huge difference on Selection Sunday.
Luckily for you, the Bristol race is under red flag at the moment.
http://www.statefansnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Conference-Comparisons-2.jpg
I know absolutely nothing about the A-10. But the top of the conference appears weaker than the ACC, but the middle is stronger. But when you start making comparisons to mid-majors, that should pretty much settle the discussion on conference strength. So I’m not going to enter into cause/effect arguments comparing the A-10 and ACC.
One of the things that I haven’t looked as what each of the conferences are doing with their conference schedules. The grossly unbalanced model that the ACC is using could easily skew the conference to conference comparisons. I need to think about this before I say how much the ACC schedule affects the comparisons.
I looked at something for a potential blog entry a few weeks ago talking about how weak the ACC was this year. I decided not to do it, but the linked graph (using today’s RPI rankings from ESPN) is what I was thinking about.
http://www.statefansnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Conference-Comparisons.jpg
This graph tells me that the middle of the ACC is substantially weaker than the best conferences this year.
X-axis is conference ranking divided by total number of teams in conference so that the last place team in each conference = 1.
Going into the ACCT, Pitt had only one win against the Top-50 (Stanford) and was considered IN by every bracket that I saw. The key was that they lost no bad games…the worst were to FSU and State at home. So there is definitely value in having more wins, even if they came against bad teams.
But I think that the middle of the ACC is very weak compared to past years. This group won very few games against the RPI Top-50 and had a very poor record (2-22 before ACCT Friday) against the Top-4 seeds. By itself, WF won as many games against the Top-4 as the five teams seeded 5-9 did as a group.
So I agree that more weaker teams would make the middle of the conference look better. But the middle of the conference was undeniably weak this year.
