2013 Preseason Review

Happy New Year to Wolfpack Nation.   It is that time of year for black-eyed peas and cornbread, hang-over remedies, the final Bowl games, and one of my favorite hobbies….the Annual Bubble Watch.

Born during the days of the Great Herb Debates, our long-time readers are familiar with these entries where we take RPI, conference record (not included today obviously), and Top 50 wins to determine where the ACC teams sit with respect to receiving an at-large bid to the NCAAT.   Before I get to my first table, let me give a couple of links for our newer readers so that they can catch up with what we are trying to accomplish with this entry:

A discussion explaining and defending my definition of the Bubble

The first half of this entry is a simplistic discussion and explanation of that most frequently misunderstood stat: RPI.

My past over-use of quotation marks as a way to express my inherently snarky nature has finally caused problems by playing heck with the formatting in these older entries (at least when I look at them in Firefox and IE8).   When you get to some weird characters in these old entries, you’ll have to figure out whether a quotation mark, apostrophe, or possible bullet should be mentally substituted for the weird characters.

So here is my summary of who has done what to whom and what it all means:

RPI_SOS

Random Observations on the ACC (while saving State-specific comments for a minute)

– Opinions may vary, but I think that the ACC’s performance thus far pretty much sucks…and would be even worse without two of this year’s new teams.

– Once again, Clemson is near the bottom of the conference in pre-season SOS (actually at the bottom this year).   I swear that this trend goes back to when I was in high school when they would start the ACC schedule with a great record and then fade to the middle or bottom of the conference.    (To explain my perspective, I distinctly remember watching Tree Rollins play on Sat afternoon/Wed night along with the Jefferson-Pilot theme song.)

– Even though Clemson’s OOC schedule is (once again) inexcusable, no team has reached the truly pathetic depths of Seth Greenburg’s scheduling  while he was at VT.   (I think that it is fair to say that Seth managed to schedule his way out of coaching and into broadcasting.)   In other words, it doesn’t look like any team’s OOC scheduling has set themselves up for punitive measures by the NCAAT Selection Committee.

– While I would grade Duke’s OOC schedule as “better than average”, it is one of the worst schedules that I’ve seen Duke play since I’ve been writing about this topic (ie back to the days of the HSSS.)

– It is truly impossible to say how good Pittsburgh is going to be this year.   They have only played two Top-100 teams and lost one of those games (Cincinnati, which at #52 is the highest ranked team Pitt has faced this year).

– UNC has been inconsistent thus far:    Home loss to Belmont (RPI #65) versus home win against UK (#14).    Road loss to UAB (#100) versus road win against Mich St (#20).    Good News for UNC fans… the top 50 wins have virtually guaranteed UNC an at-large berth. (They could coast into the NCAAT with a 10-8 ACC record.)   Bad News, those losses have lowered their RPI to the point that getting a 1 or 2 seed in the NCAAT will be extremely difficult.

I began working on this entry about two weeks ago and was looking at the best wins for each school.   The results were frankly shocking.    But luckily over the last two weeks, this table has gotten a lot less depressing.   (For example, State’s best win -Tenn- has improved about thirty spots in the RPI rankings).

Best_Win

Is there any confusion over why the ACC is currently mired in 5th place in the conference RPI rankings?   Looking at this table makes me conclude that more teams besides Pitt have something to prove to the NCAAT Selection Committee.

NC State Observations

This is Gottfried’s lowest-ranked OOC schedule since taking over in Raleigh.   But I see no reason to really complain about that for several reasons:

– Gott has already proven (and not just with words) that he understands the importance of OOC scheduling.

– Any team that loses to NC-Central shouldn’t be complaining about needing a tougher schedule.

– Having complained long and loud over Sendek’s poor scheduling, it’s hard to get worked up when Gott’s worse schedule still ranks as “average”.

– So I’ll choose to go with an optimistic assessment (BJD, quit laughing) and conclude that Gott realized that this team couldn’t handle a tough schedule AND will return to norm with a better team (hopefully next year).

It’s tempting for me to conclude that any team that loses to NC-Central can pretty much start aiming for the NIT as a best-case scenario.    While that conclusion may ultimately prove to be correct, it is too early to be quite that pessimistic just yet.  (But when I combine the NC-Central and Mizzu losses, I don’t reach any rosy conclusions.)    State still has enough quality games left on their schedule that they can earn a spot in the Big Dance…if they’re actually good enough.

State_Schedule

Schedule Observations:

– On a general note, the new ACC schedule has 4 games home/away, 5 away games and 5 home games for a total of 18 conference games.   As we’ve seen in the past, this type of unbalanced schedule has the potential for creating quite a variation in conference SOS for the ACC teams.    At this point in the season, State’s schedule looks like it would rank somewhere in the upper-middle in terms of difficulty.

– The rotation includes two permanent “partners” and everyone else rotates.    I expected the ACC to keep at least one permanent partner to maintain the two Duke/UNC games, but I was a little surprised when they selected two.    (I didn’t check, but the ACC usually puts up the multi-year schedule on their website.   But they might not put up a multi-year rotation until after Louisville takes UMD’s place in the ACC.)

– It would have been possible to keep all four home/away games as permanent partners.   If you take this option to an extreme, you could actually create three permanent basketball divisions.    But before anyone starts screaming about wanting this option to keep the four NC schools in the same division, do me a favor:    BUY A MAP AND LOOK AT IT.    Three geographical divisions would put three NC teams and the two VA teams in a “Central” Division.

– If we include UVA as a resume-building opportunity, then State has 8 games BEFORE the ACCT to do something worthy of attention by the Selection Committee….with four at home and four on the road.

– Playing FSU and UVA at home certainly qualifies as good news for State.

Here’s a few comments when looking at the schedule chronologically,

– State plays back-to-back road games (WF /Duke in mid Jan and UNC/UM in the first week of Feb)

– State has a three game road stretch in mid-Feb (‘Cuse, Clemson, and Va Tech).

– Adding those previous two bullets together, State plays five road games in a six game stretch from Feb 1 (@UNC) to Feb 22(@Va Tech).   The home game in that stretch is WF on 2/11.  State’s “off-week” is also in that stretch of road games (ie no games between @UNC on Sat, Feb 1 and @Miami on Feb 8).

– After that stretch of road games, State ends the regular season with three of four at home, with the final game of the season in Raleigh against BC (Really????)

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Yea, I know…conspiracy theories are usually hatched by idiots with no life and can generally be ignored.    But here’s one that I wouldn’t laugh at.

First we need a little background.   60 years and a few months ago, seven teams left the Southern Conference to form the Atlantic Coast Conference.   A few months after its formation, UVA was added as the ACC’s eighth member.   This is UMD’s last basketball season in the conference that it helped form.     What kind of send-off do you suppose was created for UMD in their one and only season in the 15-team ACC?    Here’s UMD’s home schedule:

Georgia Tech
Notre Dame
Pittsburgh
Miami (Fla.)
Florida St.
Wake Forest
Syracuse
Va. Tech
Virginia

 

One home game against the other original seven teams.   Five of eight home games against the six teams that took the ACC from 9 teams to 15.   Doesn’t look like there’s much history in that home schedule.

In other words….Don’t let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you.

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

13-14 Basketball Stat of the Day

Home Forums 2013 Preseason Review

Viewing 8 posts - 26 through 33 (of 33 total)
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  • #35112
    choppack1
    Participant

    Whiteshoes – I agree. After the game Saturday I tried to post that the key to this team was improvement from barber. We simply have not rebounded and avoided silly fouls consistently enough in the Gott era to expect anything else.

    Our team is talented and athletic enough. We take care of the ball good enough…. but we’ll likely give up too many easy points to do much unless this team improves significantly.

    #35113
    choppack1
    Participant

    This doesn’t mean I don’t think we don’t have a shot at the tourney – we do.

    Oh yeah, regarding magic numbers I would say if we win 11 of our next 19 we are likely in. This means even if we went 0-7 against the rest of the account, we would have gone 11-1 vs rest of acc which would give us a solid RPI.

    #35116
    JohnGalt78
    Participant

    Most long time Pack supporters such as myself will tell you they share a similar “hopeful” feeling at the start of every season. But, by season’s end, we collectively are reminded that, in fact, hope is indeed a bitch.

    #35117
    FergusWolf
    Participant

    The biggest issue I’m seeing so far is that we haven’t yet stabilized to consistent performances, including buckets (yes, TJ is consistently getting 20-30 points, but hasn’t been able to score down the stretch in the last couple of games).

    I suspect that Gott may tighten up his line-up starting with Pitt to try to nail the consistency. On the other hand, part of the consistency problem is foul issues for Cat and the Vandwagon, which are what is forcing us to play so many players.

    Either way, the preseason is over and it’s time to get our game together.

    Go Pack!

    #35123
    Daniel_Simpson_Day
    Participant

    “Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane”…“I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head.” Here’s to hoping we make it to Zihuatanejo.

    #35131
    VaWolf82
    Keymaster

    Test

    EDIT

    Comments to a front-page entry can apparently be made at the bottom of that entry or in the forums (based on my quick test). Since the forum thread that I deleted yesterday has reappeared, I assume that SFN management wants the discussion to be available from either location.

    This new feature should help in those instances where long conversations develop on multiple front page entries. We can all keep up with those conversations in the forums, instead of having to bounce back and forth between multiple front-page stories.

    #35134
    ryebread
    Participant

    This is the exact time of the year to begin determining who is in and who is out. I like this analysis and have it shaking out similarly. I had ND on the bubble before losing their player and NC State on the bubble as well (with UVA).

    With more and more games being played in conference, the out of conference schedule becomes even more important. It seems counter intuitive, but it’s the case. The league’s relative strength is determined by OOC play and there are fewer opportunities for that to go up or down.

    Our weaker teams have really hurt us this year. We have had some bad coaching hires (Johnson, Donohue, Gregory, Bzz) and at least one coach who I thought at the time was a good hire but who isn’t working out (Brownell). The league really needs to upgrade coaching before this is going to change. There’s no way coaches in over their heads (like the list above) are going to upgrade their schedules and risk a more rapid firing. They will continue to play against, and lose to, some RPI killing teams.

    With respect to NC State, we need Tennessee to make major noise in the SEC. That’s our only real win. Our Northwestern win is far less impressive, as shown by Wisconsin blowing them out at home. We also need Cincy and Mizzou to do well. I think Cincy will, but Mizzou may end up a bubble team themselves when all is said and done.

    I think the meltdown against Mizzou was far more damning than the loss to Central. Yes, the Central loss was bad, but in this day and age, a bad loss can be overlooked. Lack of quality non-conference wins is not overlooked (as Seth Greenburg can tell you). We had a golden chance to take one and let it slip away.

    Oh well, I still like this team. I have thought from the beginning that we’d be on bubble watch and one of the last 4 in. I still think we’ll be that way.

    #35155
    Rick
    Keymaster

    Nice post. Making the NCAAs is going to be a strugggle. I just wnat to enjoy the year and maybe, who knows.

    The “sail with the pilot” reminded me of two things
    1) Food Town (bfore the changed their name)
    2) Murray Jarman – 6’6″ center for Clemson who had a 40some inch verticle.

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