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N.C. State: The Wolfpack (21-13) has a winning record away from Raleigh (8-7), fairly inoffensive bad losses (Miami and Wake Forest) and did its best work (beating Syracuse in Greensboro and Pittsburgh and Tennessee on the road) outside its own building. Of the remaining teams, there’s less bad about N.C. State, and sometimes that’s good enough. Verdict: IN
He uses the same sorts of logic that I’ve always used. But he sees a lot of importance with road wins and I’ve never even looked at those. Herb’s teams kept getting in without any during the regular season, but got a big win in the ACCT three times (#1 twice and #2 once). I don’t think that he’s right about State. But if he is, then I’ll definitely start paying attention to road/neutral wins.
I don’t usually play in the world of IF, but State definitely got close enough this year that you wouldn’t have to change much to have State comfortably IN. As best I remember, this is the first time that State has gotten close without getting in since the NCAAT expanded to 64 teams.
Some of us who are a little older do probably take for granted the good times of the past
I appreciate the good times of the past more now than I did at the time. What I don’t always appreciate is how hard State’s lack of success has been on students over the past 25 years.
The media created the “Cardiac Pack” theme and then combined it with the V-legacy as time has gone on. What gets lost are the real lessons that we should learn from the 1983 team….overcoming adversity, the value of hard work, the importance of talented kids, and the importance of a great bench coach. I will always contend that the ’83 championship was not a Cinderella story.
That team was good and everyone knew it at the time. Most of the losses came when the leading scorer was hurt. After Whitt came back, State was a different team and it showed up on the scoreboard. State played 10 games against teams that were ranked #1 sometime during that season. If my memory holds, here are the results:
UNC (with Jordan) 2-1
UVA (with Sampson) 2-2
Louisville 0-1
UNLV 1-0
Houston 1-0That’s a 6-4 record against the best teams in the country….not named NC State.
The refs being scared of K does not explain why espn would not show the full replay.
Here’s something else to ponder:
When a player would get hacked and not get the call, G-moron-ski used to talk about that player not “earning” the call. In other words, he was saying that the game was called differently depending on who was fouled. He hasn’t done that recently and I wonder why?
I suspect that it is not in the media’s interest to point out deficiencies and inconsistencies in the referees. It might not ruin the product that they are trying to sell….but it certainly would diminish its appeal.
For those that do like discussing RPI…
From cbssports:
Pitt beat UNC and went from 40 to 38
State beat SYR and went from 62 to 52I think that the difference can be attributed to two different things:
1) SYR has a better overall record than UNC and thus State got a bigger boost in SOS than Pitt did.
2) As you move up in the rankings, you will eventually reach a point where you can only move up as fast as people above you are losing. Obviously Pitt is alot closer to that point than State is.
The difference doesn’t mean anything as far as the remainder of this year goes. I only mention it as a warning to those who like to project changes in rankings based on the results of one game. How far you move following a win or loss depends alot on where you are in the rankings AND on what those around you in the rankings are doing.
Several years ago, the Selection Committee announced that all wins would be evaluated the same no matter when they occurred during the season. Before that announcement, it was undeniable that conference tourney wins were given more weight and I had a number of examples that left no doubt. But if big wins are valued the same no matter when they happened, then what value (if any) is attached to a strong finish (with big wins) or to a team that stumbles down the stretch? (not a rhetorical question)
When I first wrote about the Dance Card, I spent some time analyzing their misses (predicted in or predicted out) to see where math lost its effect and where other factors entered in. I found several examples of teams that the Dance Card predicted IN, but stumbled down the stretch and fell to the NIT. The write-up linked above also illustrates the importance of tourney wins (at least its past importance).
The decision to treat all wins as equal seems to make the selection process more mechanical and less subjective. So teams like Iowa (lost 3 in a row and 5 of last 6) and Arizona St (lost 3 in a row and 5 of last 7) still have their Top 25 and Top 50 wins and frankly have better over-all resumes than State (at least thru last night).
So I still think that the majority of opinions here at SFN are correct in that State needed two Top-25 wins in the ACCT or the automatic bid. It seems like everything we’ve seen still supports that projection.
Note: Over the years that I have been here, SFN has outgrown more servers than I can count. So the article linked above has some strange formatting issues that were injected during one or more of the site upgrades. I say all of that only as a way of explanation. I’m sure that it would have been easier to have just started with a blank sheet of paper, but alot of work was put in to maintain the SFN archives during the various upgrades….which is something that I am very thankful for.
Since I’m dreaming here, WHEN State beats Cuse tonight, does anyone here have a prediction on where our RPI might site?
It doesn’t matter. State needs top-quality, eye-opening wins. If State gets two Top-25 wins, RPI won’t be a problem.
With FSU down 15 with 7:30 to go, there is no use in hoping for an FSU win to give State 3 Top-50 wins.
The Dance Card archive page from 2008 still has their inputs listed:
RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) Rank
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 RPIOne game between two bubble teams or bubble team/bad team just can’t make that big of a jump. State fans have to hope for several things:
1) That the impact of a win over a Top25 is HUGE
2) That State gets one today and another one tomorrow
3) A lot of bubble teams lose quickly, ie todaygopack says that the schedule has been changed to a doubleheader on Sat.
http://www.gopack.com/sports/m-basebl/spec-rel/031314aab.html
We didn’t move at all on the dance card. That should tell you that we may very well need to win the ACC Tournament.
I’ve been taking screen shots of the Dance Card and State has been at 61 for several days.
We didn’t move at all on the dance card. That should tell you that we may very well need to win the ACC Tournament.
Maybe, Maybe not.
Another way to look at it is that as I argued several weeks ago, winning the first game in the expanded ACCT doesn’t get you anything. A loss to a bad team could be devastating to someone on the bubble….but there is no way that beating a bad team is going to be worth very much.
Maybe Pitt will be confident and rested and take out the heels. Helps our RPI.
State played both teams twice, so State’s RPI won’t be affected. However, a win would keep Pitt in the Top 50 which would make State’s resume look marginally better.
1. If a team has an eFG% +2% better than the other, it is considered a clear advantage.
2. If a team has a TO% +3% better than the other, advantage.
3. If a team has an ORB% +4% better than the other, advantage.
4. If a team has a FTR +5% better than the other, advantage.There are statistical packages that might be able to help correlate these factors into projected wins and losses….much like the professors behind the Dance Card analyze the NCAAT selection process. However, I have no experience with any of these packages.
The real trick would be to turn these calcs into point spreads.
The NBC contract as well as the sucker deals with the two weakest conferences shows the perceived value of ND’s nation-wide appeal. I would like to be wrong, but I don’t think we’ll ever see the conferences grow a set big enough to kick ND out.
We won’t add a 16th team unless and until the superconference landscape leverages Notre Dame to join a conference for good (and assuming they go with the ACC, which I don’t believe to be a fait accompli).
Their NBC football contract essentially removes all financial incentive to join a conference. I haven’t checked recently, but at one time the ND athletic department was giving $1M to the school every year. As the BE and ACC have shown, there will always be suckers around to insure that all of the other sports have conferences to play in.
A 22-game conference schedule would mean that everyone would lose two home games against some directional university (assuming that the number of games allowed stays constant). Now while that wouldn’t mean much to the average fan or most ACC schools, those schools with good season-ticket sales (like State) would lose upwards of $1M per year (assuming no increase in per-game pricing).
The only way that the conference schedule will be increased is for the media contracts to cover the lost revenue. But with the decline in ACC basketball, it doesn’t seem likely that ESPN would be willing to pay much for more of the same old shit.
But ignoring all of that, a 22-game schedule in a 15 team conference would mean 8 home/home games with 3 home only and 3 away only. This type of schedule would greatly reduce the disparity evident in this year’s conference schedule.
I have to admit that I’m skeptical of this approach if it led you to reach this conclusion last year:
Last year entering the NCAAT I kept beating the “We are better than our record indicates” drum.
Losing to a Top 15 Cincy at their place is not a bad loss. Mizzou is a bubble team, and NCCU got us early on while TJ was playing the 4 position, and it was an OT loss to a tournament team at that.
This is the exact same type of logic used by the HSSS. It was BS then and remains so today.
Bottom line….Good teams prove it by beating other good teams. State hasn’t beaten any good teams.
And this is an NC State message board, the only way that griping about him here is “feeding the troll” is if he is reading these forums. In which case, hi Jeff, eff you!
Doyel, Davis, Parrish, and Goodman are all clearly trolls looking for hits the only way that they can get them. My post was directed at anyone who was tempted to go to ESPN or twitter and tell Goodman what an ass he is. That is exactly what he is going after.
Dave Glenn is a different breed ie, just an a$$. One prominent UNC fan told me years ago that Glenn was hoping that the NCAA helicopters would land at the Murphy while Amato was here. I find it hilarious that they landed in CH instead.
I don’t know why, but Pitt jumped “up” about 5 spots on today’s Dance Card and looks to be in much better shape.
Good stuff. Its more meaningful to consider a more quantitative evaluation, such as RPI as opposed to rankings, here focused on conference records.
Jeremy, I’m not following you. What did you want to see?
Va wolf – correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t dance card include the old RPI for their evaluation? If so, Pitt’s roadies don’t matter as much.
Yea, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I should have kept that discussion in general terms and noted that the RPI advantage from road wins might not help Pitt much in clearing the bubble.
I’ll improve that next year and steal BJD’s reasoning on home/road games as well.
Jeff Goodman expresses his displeasure at the vote by publishing the dryest, shortest article he could manage on espn.com. pffffft
It was easier to avoid the drivel when all of the State-baters were concentrated at cbssports.com. I hadn’t realized that Goodman had left for ESPN. Just in case you doubt Goodman’s slant on things:
NC State is 19-12 and 9-9 in league play and likely headed to the NIT unless it wins the ACC tournament.
This sentence would make sense if it was placed in the context of TJ scoring in bunches in spite of being on a mediocre team with no other options. But Goodman, following in the footsteps of his mentor Doyel, continues baiting State fans who will stupidly go to ESPN and leave nasty comments.
