Win by 24 and drop 2 spots to 35 in Net while SMU moves up a spot … 
Hoos are gonna have to do really well in Acc play to have a shot … 10-1 in Quad 4 games and 0-2 in Quad 1 games - but completely non - competitive in those 2 games down by 20 in the 4th and then some empty calorie points in the 4th quarters.
Literally have the worst schedule with Wake in the league so far.
Probably will have to go 13-7 with the right wins and losses to make it.
Maybe even a single loss to any of the current bottom 6 who are between 113 and 233 would doom the Hoos. Probably also will need at least 2 or 3 wins against current top 6.
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Ok, normally I’d reply to this with something like “Schools can be clumped weirdly, so sometimes a small gain in a metric moves you a lot in ranking because lots of teams were right in front of you. But a large gain might do nothing because you happened to be far away from everyone”.
But this time, that feels like BS. Because Washington just jumped us while beating Northwestern (who is worse than SMU according to NET) at home by less than we beat SMU, and even worse, Baylor jumped us while idle. Were we really more than 24 point favorites against SMU? I know they aren’t good, but NET doesn’t think they’re terrible.
Edit - I don’t know where to find betting lines on women’s hoops, but from the ESPN win% I’m guessing we should have been in the ballpark of -14.5 or so, which feels about right. I genuinely don’t understand how we lost ground.
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Could be common opponents.
But the Acc is down this year compared to previous years…. The Big Ten, the SEC and the big 12 are all significantly better in their top 10 teams right now and the bottom six in the ACC will drag down everybody’s net ratings kind of like the men’s the last couple years.
Already played 2 Acc games and both are Quad 4.
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Yeah. I mean, I don’t really think there’s a Baylor fan in the NET back room adjusting the numbers to screw us and help Baylor, it has to be coming from somewhere in the algorithm. Whoever was our best win probably just got obliterated by someone bad. Its just frustrating to have to do THAT degree of digging to find the cause of a significant move.
Also, truth be told, I suspect NET overestimates us a bit, or at the very least is still just generally weird. Like, St Johns is 12-3 with a win over borderline top-25 team Oklahoma State but they just got CRUSHED by Villanova. So, I can understand how we might be ahead of them, but I don’t understand how St Johns could plausibly be ranked 101st behind teams like Army and Albany.
I suspect that once you get out of the top 20 or so, NET almost entirely boils down to a team’s season-long point differential right now.
Edit - I note ESPN’s bracketology moved us up a few spots from yesterday.
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If you look at the records for all the top 10 teams in each conference, they just absolutely destroy and play a ton of quad four teams. So really there’s no way to tell who’s who yet until we get about halfway through the conference schedule
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Yeah, its remarkable how thoroughly everyone does that in women’s hoops. Our 24 point win over SMU was our second smallest margin of victory on the season.
The math appears to be: St John’s may be 12-3 with a win over a likely tournament team, but they only have 4 20+ point wins. So they can’t possibly be considered in the same league as us, because all of UVA’s wins have been by 20+ and we have 5 30+ wins.
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I was trying to figure out what is our best win of the year so far. To a computer (and relying on Torvik here), it’s probably either beating Longwood (#180) by 47, or beating SMU (#127) by 24. It’s tough trying to compare Quad 4 blowouts.
But our best outcomes (again, to a computer) might actually be our two losses: Nebraska (#15) on a neutral court by 9, and at Vanderbilt (#24) by 13. (The final Vanderbilt score is deceiving, but it still counts to a computer.)
It’s almost like the season begins now. January games are almost all Quads 2 and 3, and we’ll see where we stand.
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Yeah maybe to a computer but they were down by 20 in the 4th quarter of both of those games… lots of empty calorie Dak Prescott type 4th quarter points in those games… and Vandy and Nebraska are a combined 1-1 in Quad one games… at least Vandy is 6-0 in Q 2 and 3 games. But no way to know how good Nebraska is
Agreed on Vandy, but against Nebraska we were down 19 to start the 4th, cut it to 12 about 1 minute later, gradually whittled it down to a 4-point margin with 3 minutes to go… then ended up losing by 9 after fouls. That’s a legitimate comeback, not empty-calorie garbage-time points.
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It’s beautiful… the center of the page is so… pristine…
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Vacuous even
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And what’s kind of impressive is their non-Con SOS is actual fairly decently ranked! This is what a slightly difficult non-conference schedule looks like.
Edit - The guys are getting some credit for beating decent teams, yet their non-Con SOS ranking is garbage by comparison.
Edit2 - To clarify, the guys are more getting credit for beating teams that people think of as being respectable rather than having actually beaten good teams.
Playing clemson now on ACCN
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Epic collapse in progress. We had a 16-point lead with ~4:00 to go. Now a 5-point lead with 1:39.
We were just trying to hit the 7.8 pt T-Rank predicted margin dead on.
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We did hang on (but needed Clemson to miss some open looks to do so). 73-63 Hoos, and we finally have a legitimate “best win of the season”.
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Felt like they wanted to give that one away today. But credit where it’s due for pulling out a win
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Was at the GT/ND game today Yellow Jackets pulled a big upset in OT. The 2nd tier/middle group in the ACC could be spicy.
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Yeah, I was just about this. The top of the ACC this year is much weaker than last year, but the middle feels a lot stronger.
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