Conference SOS

General NCS Basketball28

As soon as ACC decided to go to an unbalanced basketball schedule, it was obvious that some teams would get “harder�? schedules and some would get “easier�? ones. So now the time has come to try and figure out which is which. I decided to compile the ACC wins by each team’s opponents and use that to rank the conference schedules. So subject to potential fat-finger mistakes, here are the teams sorted from hardest to easiest conference schedule:

ACC

Opponents

SOS

TEAM

W

L

Wins

1

Virginia Tech

4

12

140

2T

Miami FL

7

9

139

2T

Wake Forest

3

13

139

4

Maryland

8

8

132

5

Georgia Tech

4

12

131

6

North Carolina

12

4

130

7

Virginia

7

9

129

8

Florida St.

9

7

126

9

NC State

10

6

123

10

Duke

14

2

118

11

Clemson

7

9

116

12

Boston College

11

5

113

If you want to double-check anything in this entry, the team names link to their schedule and results at kenpom.com. Trying to compare Duke’s SOS to WF’s is a complete waste of time and meaningless as well. Duke get’s “penalized�? because they can’t play themselves….and WF gets the “benefit�? of not playing the last-place team. So let’s take a closer look at the top and middle of the ACC and see if there is any meaning to using total opponents’ wins to rank SOS: TOP FOUR TEAMS – When you look at the SOS ranking for BC, State, and UNC…you see that UNC had a substantially tougher schedule than either State or BC. This difference is also borne out by breaking down the schedules:

Games Against

Top 4

Bottom 3

ACC SOS

UNC

5

3

#6

State

5

5

#9

Duke

4

5

#10

BC

4

6

#12

– UNC”s scedule is just about as hard as theoretically possible. One of the few ways to make UNC’s schedule harder would be to take one of their games away from one of the 7-win clubs and schedule a second meeting with BC. (UNC had the absolute minimum number of games against the bottom three teams.) – While Duke does get penalized in my ranking system by finishing first….they also clearly got an easier schedule than UNC or State. – BC got to “max out�? with six games against the three worse teams in the league. They also played only one game more than the minimum against the three other teams at the top of the conference. THE MESS IN THE MIDDLE

Games Against

Top 4

Bottom 3

ACC SOS

Miami

7

3

#2

MD

6

4

#4

UVA

5

4

#7

FSU

5

4

#8

Clemson

4

6

#11

– Once again the schedule breakdown gives the exact same order as the over-all ranking. – While Miami and Maryland played tougher schedules than their nearest competition, both teams lost multiple games against the other teams stuck in the middle…and OOC games as well. (For instance, they both lost to Temple.) An easier schedule wouldn’t have had either team in contention for the conference title, but could have made getting into the NCAA tournament easier (but not necessarily a certainty). – While Dave Leitao has clearly done an outstanding job at UVa this year, I think that when you include the conference SOS into the evaluation…..Roy wins COY going away. (The preceding conclusion was written over a week ago…..is there any doubt now?) – How easy was Clemson’s schedule? They were the only team in the conference that played Duke, UNC, State, and BC only one time each. They also played the maximum possible number of games against the worse three teams in the conference. It doesn’t get much better than that. CONCLUSION Much like State’s season to date, there is nothing exciting to say about its schedule. State played five games against the top three seeds in the ACCT (going 1-4) and five games against the bottom three seeds (going 3-2). Thus State’s schedule was neither particularly hard nor easy…it was really pretty balanced. Since the unbalanced schedule isn’t going to disappear, it serves no purpose to develop a long diatribe outlining its flaws. One thing that I don’t like about the unbalanced schedules is that it will be more difficult to detect meaningful trends based on the regular season results. Note that I said difficult, not impossible…who knows what we might come up with in the future? 🙂

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

General NCS Basketball

28 Responses to Conference SOS

  1. VaWolf82 03/08/2006 at 11:29 AM #

    I just think that standings are more meaningful when the teams play the same schedule.

    I agree with this…but I view the regular season standings differently than you. For me, the ACCT seedings are not a primary concern….winning the tournament should be the primary concern. No matter which seed a team starts with, you will normally have to win several games against the top teams in the conference….the order that you play them doesn’t mean much to me.

    The conference schedule’s most important purpose for me is to offset the horrible cupcake schedule State schedules nearly every year.

    You make some good points for having divisions in basketball. However, you haven’t pointed out a situation where the unbalanced schedule made the standings “less meaningful”.

    How do you address the issues raised when one division is substantially harder than the other? Doesn’t this situation present the exact same problems that an unbalanced schedule cause?

  2. Nick 03/10/2006 at 7:45 AM #

    I think that most teams start each year with the same goals: winning the ACC regular season, winning the ACC Tournament Championship, and winning the NCAA Championship. In that order, however unrealistic those goals are for most of them. The idea is that attaining each goal increases the likelihood of attaining the next. Though failure to achieve any goal does not rule out achieving the next, you had better be close. When was the last time a team who didn’t finish in the top three in the ACC standings won the ACC tournament? That’s happens once every ten years. (Incidentally, we are due.) When was the last time a team who didn’t play in the ACC Championship game went further in the NCAAs than the teams that did? That happens about once every six years when a Duke or Carolina team (who finished in the top three in the ACC standings) stumbles in the ACC Semi-finals.

    The ACC standings mean something because to finish on top or near the top means a team must distinguish itself from lesser teams. You don’t finish on top of the ACC standings by accident. You’ve got to put yourself forward. You’ve got to win the games against this year’s lesser teams and you have to win your share of the games against this year’s top teams. You won’t win all of those games, but you have to win your share and when you lose you have to make them close. When the game comes down to the final few possessions at the end, the team that wins makes more plays than the team that loses. Nothing prepares a team for that situation except being in that situation, the more often the better. That builds character and confidence and, come tournament time, those things matter.

    I wish State would upgrade the pre-season schedule also, but actually this year was a pretty good year schedule-wise for State. Alabama, Iowa, and Notre Dame, and George Washington all had pretty good teams, comparable in size and talent to State. The trouble was all those other teams like Delaware, VMI, Citadel. They are so undersized and overmatched talent-wise that I don’t see what we get out of playing them. It’s more like an exhibition or showcase than a basketball game. We don’t have to run our offense or play disciplined defense, because the other team isn’t skilled enough to take advantage of our breakdowns. However, the most egregious scheduling error this year to me was scheduling the UNCG game right before the Carolina game. We had been playing well up to then and I think we lost focus. We never looked right against Carolina.

    About the danger of unbalanced divisions. I don’t see a problem. In football, if Miami and Fl State are in different divisions, and BC and Va Tech, the divisions will be balanced. In basketball, as long as Carolina is in one division and Duke is in the other, the divisions will never be far out of balance. Swap State for Carolina in the current divisional structure and you have Carolina, BC, Md, Fl State, Clemson and Wake in one division and Duke, State, UVa, Ga. Tech, Miami and Va Tech. Who knows what will happen, but right now they look like they will stand the test of time. BC may fade, but Wake and Md will come back. State may fade, but UVa and Ga. Tech look like comers.

    I think divisions would increase competition. Especially among the current also-rans. They will start with more optimism. Psychologically, climbing a six-rung ladder seems a lot more manageable than climbing a twelve rung ladder. And they will stay in the race longer too. Psychologically, playing for third seems a lot more important than playing for sixth. That will elevate play for the entire division.

    Beyond increasing competition, divisional play will help integrate the new teams into the conference as they are not being integrated now. A couple of years of home-and-home with their division mates and they will belong. Fans will know the name of their home arena and have stored up such a backlog of resentments toward their coach and their players and their fans that the games will mean something. Before long, they will be vying to unseat the traditional powers. Like the rest of us.

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Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. StateFans Nation » Blog Archive » Conference SOS - 03/04/2007

    […] Since the ACC plays an unbalanced conference schedule, it should be obvious that some teams will play a harder conference schedule than others. Last year, we took a look at the unbalanced conference schedules to see who got the toughest and easiest schedules. This year, both Coach K and the N&O have already chimed in with their thoughts. Let’s see if we can do a little more thorough job than they did. […]

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