Thanks @HoozGotNext… too bad UVa didn’t give me a cake day present.
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In hindsight it turns out Virginia had a remarkably easy ACC schedule this year. We didn’t have to play twice against ANY of the top teams (North Carolina was our toughest home-and-away). Clemson had it easy too, as did Pitt, other than their home-and-away with Miami. These are the current conference rankings of the teams that each team had to play twice:
Virginia: 7 (tied), 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14 (tied)
Clemson: 6, 7(t), 11, 12, 13, 14(t)
Pitt: 2, 7(t), 9, 11, 13, 14(t)
In a year where we could end up with the top 4-5 teams separated by only a game, that scheduling makes a huge difference.
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More fun/depressing facts. Did you know Torvik considers the ACC the 8th best conference, behind both the Mountain West and the American Athletic? (Pomeroy rates the ACC as 7th, but still closer to 8th than to 6th.)
So anyway, I hope that, aided in part by favorable scheduling, we can share the regular season title of our mid-major conference! Sigh.
The ACC hate. Thats just wild. Well we have the NCAAT to see if the analytics are right. If the ACC gets 6-7 teams in the tourney. I can see 4-5 if the making it to the S16 tbh.
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I think we were ranked pretty low as a conference last year too. I feel pretty confident that the Mountain West will see early exits from the tournament again. The AAC has Houston but I would not trust other teams to get past the first weekend. The PAC 12 is always over ranked. The BIG 12, SEC and Big East are stronger than the ACC by a good margin. The BIG has a better title contender (albeit still flawed). The bottom third of the ACC has been awful and Pitt and Wake and some of the better teams didn’t come together early on (lots of transfers). I think the conference will be ok in March.
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Thats right. All we heard last year was how bad the ACC was so bad then look at the tourney. Way to much Kenpomery goin on. Oh and Lunardi
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A few ACC teams winning a few games didn’t mean the conference was good, though.
I don’t think we should be tying success to March Madness. Just my opinion from watching us perform in March the last few years …
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Also for what it’s worth, I don’t think the KenPom conference rankings are the best indicator for how good a conference is (at least from a practical perspective).
The better indication is looking at the ranking of the median team in the conference. That gives you a sense of what kind of opponent you are facing any given night. (I haven’t compared ours to AAC and MWC yet …)
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I get the concern for the top to bottom view of the conference. The bottom of the ACC is really bad. Would Wyoming, Air Force, Tulsa, ECU, Cal all be like middle tier in the ACC. Nope. I think just like last year the conference has some late bloomers. I just do not see the conference as anything less than the fifth best conference in the country. However, that really isn’t the level we should want to be.
Sorry didn’t see this before I posted, we might be saying similar things ultimately
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Just depends on how you wanna measure it. Is it important to have 8 teams ranked all year or 3 of the League go to Elite 8 and compete.
Like most things sports you can debate it lots of ways. But one thing you cant debate is that Va Tech has zero national championships outside of Bass Fishing
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For a broader level of fans I think it’s Final Four bids, then who you have consistently in the top 25, then all the other stuff is just debated by us that love College Basketball.
I don’t think the ACC is as bad as the American (which is basically just Houston, though they could win it all, and maybe Memphis is kinda ok?) or the Mountain West (which has a handful of so-so teams I don’t know much about tbh). But I also wonder if there’s any data that would convince ACC fans that the ACC isn’t very good, or would we just keep redefining what good means. (If some conference other than the ACC had our performance this year, what would we think of them?)
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When I watch the Big 12, those games are great. I can’t even argue the ACC is at that level. Even Kansas v WVU looked like a sweet 16 game. The SEC is better but still has some bad teams. Same with the Big East and BIG. I don’t think the talent gap is as large as the numbers would suggest for us and those last two. That said even not fully trusting the numbers, the eye test would confirm the Big 12 and SEC are the best.
I think it is telling that the best argument you can make for the ACC is essentially “well I just think some teams have gotten better” (but other conferences don’t?) and “well we were rated poorly last year and look what happened in March” (March is a poor indicator of overall strength)
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People who think the ACC is a good conference aren’t looking at data. They’re looking at their memory banks. The ACC stinks and I’m tired of this conversation. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. The talent is down. The coaching talent is down. It could all come back relatively quickly, but right now you have the top teams going through odd transitional periods, a few historically good teams that have, uh, let’s say “historic” coaches (FSU, Cuse) and a bunch of hot seat coaches who are having good seasons. And by good, I mean good enough to have their teams on the bubble…
That said, Miami, Duke, UNC, and us are all teams that could find themselves in a sweet 16, and who knows what happens from there. I don’t think we have anyone with near the talent Duke had last year, and whether UNC catches fire again is an open question, but signs point towards no…
Are we better than the non-Power 6 conferences? Yes, I think so. Are we the worst Power 6 conference? I mean, maybe we could argue with the Pac-12. I mean, is that what we want to hang our hat on?
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I mean no one having near the talent Duke did last year isnt exactly doing high analytical reaearch there hometeam. UNC has that level talent until they actually play the game though ha
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I’m appealing to emotion here, because appeals to data obviously have not, are not, and will not work.
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That’s about where I’m at. We could argue for being #5 (ahead of Pac-12). I might even argue that myself. But that ain’t great.
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I think my biggest annoyance is that the ACC office and ACC teams need to pick one or more of the following options:
- treat the noncon like it’s really friggin important
- mix more conference games early and noncon games late
- Whine with zero substance and immediately have national hoops media point out those whines make the coaches look absolutely foolish
And our choice is always #3.
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