And even winning the ACC Tournament might only be one more Quad 1 win if the matchups break in a certain way. 7-4 Q1, 6-0 Q2 would be very solid, but some of the Big 12 teams in the mix for the 2 seed will have double digit Q1 wins.
That actually kind of makes sense if you assume none of the current top 8 lose. If we win out and they all win out (no idea if thatās possible, havenāt checked) then sure, I can see us not moving up. But if Kansas goes 3-4 over its last 7 games (and KenPom thinks theyāll go 4-3 so this isnāt much of a stretch) theyāll drop. If that happens to a few teams in front of us, then UVA can be on the 2 line.
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How is Ohio State a quad 1 win?
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Because every year, the Big 10 is the best conference in America from early November until about the second week of March.
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Iām wondering the same thing. They are 11-13 overall and 3-10 in conference. I was assuming they did well in the non-conference games, but they didnāt. They have 8 non-conference wins, and 6 of them are over teams outside of the top 250 in Kenpom. The other two are neutral court wins over Cincinnati and Texas Tech (both outside the top 50). They also lost to two mid-tier ACC teams (Duke & UNC).
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If we run the table, weāre a 1. Thereās a shitload of precedent for this.
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I think there needs to be an erosion of the importance of early season games in determining strength. Upsets will always happen in the NCAAT, but I think the current system is becoming more flawed each year and āstrongā conferences are getting exposed. Last year the B1G got 9 teams in and their collective record was 9-9. The ACC got 5 teams and their record was 14-5. All except VT outperformed to their seed.
What Lunardi said was that if UVA finished 28-4 with a regular season and conference championship, we would still be a #3 seed because we are playing in the ACC. That intuitively should be strong evidence of a broken system. If older games matter so much, they can just look at our wins over 2 upper-tier B1G teams and one win over an upper tier team from the vaunted Big12.
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Itās been said many times but they really need to spread non-conference games throughout the season. Itād be great if everyone would play non-conference games through Thanksgiving, then start conference play after that. Then all conferences agree to 4 scheduled weekends spread out from mid-December to mid-February that are designated for non-conference games.
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Downweighting early season games is fine, but they are still going to have some sort of effect because of the problem that the schedule structure poses, as @Wahoos is noting. Even if it was decided that only conference games count for seeding because they are closer to the NCAA Tournament, you would still need to come up with a way to be able to figure out how good a win at Clemson is compared to a win at Kansas St or something. And to oversimplify, currently you can either base that assessment on how the conference teams perform on those early-season out-of-conference games, or you have to make some assumptions about conference strength based on something else.
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Ohio State has lost 10 of their last 11 games.
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Bottom line ā¦ If we see the classic UVA defense that we saw against NCSU combined with our versatility we will be very hard to beat. Tony knows this and is putting down the hammer. Tonyās coaching this year has been a masterpiece. We are rounding into form. Now we are entering the home stretch and fighting for an ACC championship. These are the good ole days ā¦
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I donāt really see the problem. Take any ACC team, look at their resume, then look at where they are in mock brackets, andā¦ their seeding looks about right.
There is certainly a systemic challenge to this driven by the fact there are so few meaningful games between conferences (the majority of teams play maybe ~4 ācompetitiveā noncon games). But the committee has to use the data they have. The committee canāt just declare that ACC teams are better than the data indicates.
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Probably not unless Houston slips up or the top 6 Big 12 teams just continue accumulating losses evenly. Purdue is more or less locked in. Bama similarly solid with all their Q1 and Q2 wins. Houston has the same problem as us in the quads but ranks higher in all of the metrics. Big 12 someone could emerge and lock down the final seed. Could easily see us topping out at 5th or 6th overall even if we run the table
If we want better seeds in March, the ACC needs to make better hires and stop dropping so damn many early season games against sub 150 teams. Itās really simple. While it would be nice to restructure the sport I donāt see anyone outside of ACC fans calling for it.
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This. If ACC fans want to complain about something, complain about the terrible OOC losses being an anchor to all involved (and yes, that goes to some degree for us last year with Navy and JMU).
This year ACC teams have lost to the following (KenPom in parentheses):
Bellarmine (267)
Wright St (196)
Appalachian St (172)
Lipscomb (166)
Stetson (157)
Troy (144)
Siena (160)
Stanford (100)
Nebraska (104) twice
St Bonaventure (167)
Maine (257)
Tarleton St (198)
New Hampshire (280)
Colgate (118)
Bryant (173)
LSU (127)
South Carolina (241)
Loyola Chicago (249)
And that doesnāt even count some unnecessarily close calls against other terrible teams that have similar effects weighing margin of victory / net efficiency with strength of opponent/schedule.
These kinds of terrible OOC losses are the absolute first place we should expect improvement if we want more respect nationally. Really, I get that thereās a lot more parity in college basketball, but these are the kinds of bad losses the ACC shouldnāt be taking in such numbers.
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I donāt know the answer in a computer formulaic sense. The ACC may do better collectively to insist on playing some OOC games later after they have gelled.
UNC last year is a good example. They lost 3/4 of their front court from the prior year, with freshmen Dayāron Sharpe and Walker Kessler being somewhat unexpected. So they brought in Brady Manek and Dawson Garcia as upperclass transfers. Garcia turned out to be a cancer but they didnāt sort that out until after their 18th game (Jan 22 being his last game). They were 12-6 with Garcia and 17-4 after he left. Manekās production and consistency went up significantly after Garcia left. As if to punctuate his importance, UNC was up by 25 points vs top-seeded Baylor when Manek was ejected with 10 minutes left (and had 26 points). Baylor came back to send the game into OT before UNC won.
It used to be more predictable how much a team would vary from one year to the next, losing seniors while adding in freshmen and maybe a transfer who had sat out the prior year. But with free transfers and significantly altered rosters, a lot of teams arenāt going to find their potential in Nov/Dec but rather in Jan/early Feb when the computer models and bracketologists already have the conferences locked in the relative positions. Computers canāt have an eye test that shows how well a team is performing in Feb - they just assume itās because of inferior competition determined from Nov/Dec.
3 seed and 2 seed are functionally the same and frankly, the record for 3 seeds in the tourneyās first two,rounds is better than for 2 seeds. Just win baby, just win.
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Well thatās kind of my point. Anyone up here think any of those teams, outside of Purdue, Houston, and Bama, arenāt gonna drop a couple or even a few more before the end of the year? I think itās completely within the range of outcomes for us to get up on the #2 line.
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I would argue thereās a better chance of us being a #1 than remaining a #3 like Lunardi says if we were manage to run the table (which I donāt think will happen, but I DO think itās possible we lose only 1 the rest of the way and win the ACCT).
I just think the reasoning is ridiculous. One poster said not long back, weāre at the point of the season where some of these other teams, it doesnāt even matter if they lose anymore cause their playing in conference games and the powers that be have determined that theyāre in the best conference.
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I selfishly hope not, seeing as our 2 best wins this year were in November.
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