Well it’s the middle of February and we’re still talking about NC State getting into the NCAAT (without having to win the ACCT). It’s nice to still be looking at it even if State is squarely on the bubble right now, though they have plenty of chances to earn their spot in the Big Dance.
Let’s take a look at where NC State currently is and compare them not only to UVA & Miami but to the entire country and how they stack up against other teams on the Bubble and what they likely have to do to not be sweating on Selection Sunday. We’ll update this each week and more as we get closer.
Here are the big 3 Bracketology discussions:
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has NC State in one of the play-in games as a 13 seed as of Monday 2/13.
CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm has NC State in one of the play-in games as a 12 seed as of Friday 2/10.
NCAA Tournament “Dance Card” has NC State in a much better position for an At-Large Bid. Ranking them at #39, a full 12 spots before the bubble bursting, with a 60.78% of receiving a bid.
Per our discussion below I’m going to use CBSSports.com RPI and SOS numbers.
Here are a couple of assumptions I’m going to use. Looking back over the last several years no major conference team with a RPI 1-30 has been left out and no major conference team with a RPI above 69 has made it.
So we’ll go ahead and say everyone with and RPI 1-30 is a lock, though I have reservations about a couple of them…especially Colorado State.
Now we’ll look at the remaining teams up to RPI 69 and highlight the teams outside of the RPI top 30 who are “expected” to get their conferences automatic bid.
(Blue = conference automatic bid, Yellow = at large bid, Red = outside the bubble)
If you take the top 30 + the 20 conference automatic bids that are outside the top 30 = 18 at large bubble bids up for grabs.
If you look at ONLY THE RPI as to qualification you see NC State is third to last In and deserves the play in game and seed both ESPN and CBS are predicting. Which means they have no margin for error. If any of the “20 automatic” conferences have a team not expected to make the NCAAT get their invitation then it only hurts NC State. Though I have a hard time seeing any of the 4 automatic teams above State getting in ahead of State if said team(s) don’t get their automatic bid.
If you also look closer you’ll see that there is one glaring point that separates NC State from those above them…lack of RPI Top 25 wins. They have 3 chances over the next week to get at least one and really their only guaranteed chances since meeting any of them in the ACCT is anything from a given.
NC State’s RPI will increase just by playing the teams remaining on it’s schedule but can almost punch their ticket to the Big Dance simply by upsetting either Duke, FSU, or UNC.
So now you have a better idea who you not only need to be cheering for but also against…nationwide.
