An Early 2024 Bracket Matrix Follow (or other Tourney Stuff if you Want)

[jncuse]

As of this morning per the matrix = 0 (which of course is right call)
Before tip off next game = ??

It won't be high, but it will not be zero either. We have made clear progress this week in our resume with a Q1 and a Q2 win (I would very much disagree with the few people that put us in, but it will show we are making progress in something that can be very fluid at this time in the season)

 

[jncuse]

I'm creating this thread for a few reasons, so we have a better thread to discuss our tournament outlook than the other thread.


#1) I would like no talk about KenPom in this thread. Please try to follow this guideline That other thread, often due to me, has turned into a mechanical decision of what KP does, which is irrelevant to this topic, and a discussion of what I believe are inaccurate reflections of what it is doing, again irrelevant to this topic. They become distractions KP really means nothing with respect to your tourney resume, and evaluates you totally differently (except for possibly a mid major or small school). So for this thread it should be a nothing.

#2) Discuss NET all you want that matters, especially for Q1 and Q2. Our standalone NET also matters as we want it to become at least satisfactory.

#3) In terms of doing full out brackets, I just don't have the energy anymore or desire. The matrix is an easy way of seeing how we are moving up / or down. Although as I said above even if we have 2 "in" and say somebody has 26 "in", that gap can close quickly with 2 good results in a week.

 

[OrangeTarheel]

Louisville (2), GA Tech, Boston College, Notre Dame and Fl State are the teams we have yet to play that have lower NET scores. Higher probability wins with those. I could see us stealing one at home against VA Tech, Clemson or NC State. Maybe two out of those three home games. Winning all the high probability games and two of the steals gets us twenty wins. Is 21 wins enough?

We aren’t beating UNC. NC State has a monster big man who can give us fits. Clemson looks beatable with losses toGA Tech (home) and VA Tech (away). Wake is all over the map beating Duke and Clemson but losing to an unholy trinity of Pitt, LSU and Rutgers.

If the ACC gets six teams in the tourney that seems doable for us but historically we have a poor conference tournament record. I could see us getting maybe 22 wins before the tournament and then losing early and heading to the NIT.

 

[jncuse]

Louisville (2), GA Tech, Boston College, Notre Dame and Fl State are the teams we have yet to play that have lower NET scores. Higher probability wins with those. I could see us stealing one at home against VA Tech, Clemson or NC State. Maybe two out of those three home games. Winning all the high probability games and two of the steals gets us twenty wins. Is 21 wins enough?

We aren’t beating UNC. NC State has a monster big man who can give us fits. Clemson looks beatable with losses toGA Tech (home) and VA Tech (away). Wake is all over the map beating Duke and Clemson but losing to an unholy trinity of Pitt, LSU and Rutgers.

If the ACC gets six teams in the tourney that seems doable for us but historically we have a poor conference tournament record. I could see us getting maybe 22 wins before the tournament and then losing early and heading to the NIT.

21 wins (heading into the ACC tournament) is my squarely on the bubble number. Could be enough / may not be enough.

I think (still early though) that 22 wins no matter what happens in the ACC tourney is fine. Although wouldn't want to suffer a bad loss on the exit to Notre Dame or Louisville.

 

[JustPherU]

As of this morning per the matrix = 0 (which of course is right call)
Before tip off next game = ??

It won't be high, but it will not be zero either. We have made clear progress this week in our resume with a Q1 and a Q2 win (I would very much disagree with the few people that put us in, but it will show we are making progress in something that can be very fluid at this time in the season)

Why do you think it won’t be zero?
16 teams are listed as “Other at large” that had at least 1 vote.

 

[OrlandoCuse]

21 wins (heading into the ACC tournament) is my squarely on the bubble number. Could be enough / may not be enough.

I think (still early though) that 22 wins no matter what happens in the ACC tourney is fine. Although wouldn't want to suffer a bad loss on the exit to Notre Dame or Louisville.

Keep in mind our Chaminade win really doesn’t count (I don’t think it’s included in NET) so we may need to get to 22 total wins. Maui really screwed us this year. We would have been better off playing and beating 3 mid major teams.

 

[Cusean]

Louisville (2), GA Tech, Boston College, Notre Dame and Fl State are the teams we have yet to play that have lower NET scores. Higher probability wins with those. I could see us stealing one at home against VA Tech, Clemson or NC State. Maybe two out of those three home games. Winning all the high probability games and two of the steals gets us twenty wins. Is 21 wins enough?

We aren’t beating UNC. NC State has a monster big man who can give us fits. Clemson looks beatable with losses toGA Tech (home) and VA Tech (away). Wake is all over the map beating Duke and Clemson but losing to an unholy trinity of Pitt, LSU and Rutgers.

If the ACC gets six teams in the tourney that seems doable for us but historically we have a poor conference tournament record. I could see us getting maybe 22 wins before the tournament and then losing early and heading to the NIT.

I think you’re confusing Wake with another team. They did not beat Duke and Clemson (because they haven’t played either yet). They also haven’t lost to Pitt and Rutgers. They actually crushed Rutgers. They did lose to LSU early on.

 

[jncuse]

Biggest improvements in NET this week (for teams 70 or above)

Gonzaga +20 (2 Q4 Road Wins by 67 points)
Drake +20 (2 Q4 Wins, one on the road, won by 70 points)
Virginia +16 (2 Q2 Wins, one road, won by 17 points)
Colorado +14 (Q2 Win + Q4 Win, both home, won by 49 points)
Syracuse +12 (Q1+Q2 Win, one road, won by 14 points)
Providence +11 (Q4 Road Win, won by 38 points)
New Mexico +11 (Q1 Win + Q4 Road Win, won by 32 points)
St. Mary's +10 (Q1 Road Win at San Fran)

Great to see the jump. But some of the data raises even more questions about NET at a general level. Will discuss that in the other thread.

 

[jncuse]

Why do you think it won’t be zero?
16 teams are listed as “Other at large” that had at least 1 vote.

Because we probably had a better week than almost all of those 16 teams. I doubt many of those teams had a Q1 win, Q2 win, and a 12 rank jump in NET in the last week.

The matrix is a trailing indicator as well at this time of year and is not really fresh. The last time the brackets were updated were after Thursday games, and their are brackets that are as old as January 13th on the Matrix.

So all those brackets don't consider our Miami win and some don't even consider our road win yet. Furthermore none of them consider the optics of cracking the 70 barrier in NET.

As I said should we be in? Nope, but we closed the gap, and I suspect few people will throw us in. (We can revisit before tip off of our next game)

Our Q1+Q2 record of 4-5 is actually in line with many of those teams now.

 

[OrangeTarheel]

I think you’re confusing Wake with another team. They did not beat Duke and Clemson (because they haven’t played either yet). They also haven’t lost to Pitt and Rutgers. They actually crushed Rutgers. They did lose to LSU early on.

You’re right - no idea what happened there.

 

[jncuse]

Keep in mind our Chaminade win really doesn’t count (I don’t think it’s included in NET) so we may need to get to 22 total wins. Maui really screwed us this year. We would have been better off playing and beating 3 mid major teams.

I guess we don't know if the trip positively impacted the team growth or bonding. but discounting that which is a total unknown, you are correct that in the NET world, 2 wins against 150ish type teams would have probably helped us more (assuming we won by average of 7 or so points or more). Not that those wins help our resume, but they are better results than getting beat bad at least for NET.

I'm not too hung up on the Chaminade game. Don't think it screwed us up - replacing it with a Q3 or Q4 game really doesn't change our NET or our resume. There all nuisance games that provide no value for winning at home. and all you want to do is avoid the loss.

 

[OrlandoCuse]

I guess we don't know if the trip positively impacted the team growth or bonding. but discounting that which is a total unknown, you are correct that in the NET world, 2 wins against 150ish type teams would have probably helped us more (assuming we won by average of 7 or so points or more). Not that those wins help our resume, but they are better results than getting beat bad at least for NET.

I'm not too hung up on the Chaminade game. Don't think it screwed us up - replacing it with a Q3 or Q4 game really doesn't change our NET or our resume. There all nuisance games that provide no value for winning at home. and all you want to do is avoid the loss.

My point is our 50 point blowout win vs Chaminade (D2) is basically the same as if we were to beat a 300+ D1 team by the same margin (like others have). It doesn’t count for our record but it counts for other teams. Look at other resumes with multiple Q4 blowout wins and you’ll see they have higher NET rankings. We’ve played fewer Q4 games and have a similar overall record but are somehow significantly lower in NET.

 

[upperdeck]

too bad there is nothing built into the NET to explain the pieces of what makes 1 team better than another.

At least in NCAA hockey the PWR is pretty simple to compute and you can change a result and see what cause an effect it has.

if the NET would let you really compare teams you could at least see where a team is gaining on others in the computation.

 

[jncuse]

too bad there is nothing built into the NET to explain the pieces of what makes 1 team better than another.

At least in NCAA hockey the PWR is pretty simple to compute and you can change a result and see what cause an effect it has.

if the NET would let you really compare teams you could at least see where a team is gaining on others in the computation.

I would imagine the PWR is calculated similar to the RPI.

When the RPI was used instead of the NET, there was a few good tools out there that allowed you to play around with past games and future games to see how the RPI is expected to change.

Simply no longer possible with NET.

 

[upperdeck]

I would imagine the PWR is calculated similar to the RPI.

When the RPI was used instead of the NET, there was a few good tools out there that allowed you to play around with past games and future games to see how the RPI is expected to change.

Simply no longer possible with NET.

PWR is RPI with a few tweaks. H2H and common Opps are added in. It really comes down to RPI for all but a few teams. in the top 35 teams 2 move up beyond their RPI, but right now none of them would make the tournament so it wouldnt matter.

But it is nice to be able to know exactly where you stand and what has to happen down the stretch to get into the NCAAs

 

[jncuse]

PWR is RPI with a few tweaks. H2H and common Opps are added in. It really comes down to RPI for all but a few teams. in the top 35 teams 2 move up beyond their RPI, but right now none of them would make the tournament so it wouldnt matter.

But it is nice to be able to know exactly where you stand and what has to happen down the stretch to get into the NCAAs

RPI (and H2H / Common Opps) probably works better in NCAA Hockey than Basketball because there are only 60 teams (based on a quick google). Also not as much discrepancy between the power of conferences -- some are clearly better, but the gap is not like basketball which has some truly bad conferences.

 

[upperdeck]

RPI (and H2H / Common Opps) probably works better in NCAA Hockey than Basketball because there are only 60 teams (based on a quick google). Also not as much discrepancy between the power of conferences -- some are clearly better, but the gap is not like basketball which has some truly bad conferences.

yes and it took all the drama out of the bad decisions they used to make

 

[jncuse]

We are starting to get some mentions. Andy Katz has us as one of the last 4.
Whomever the heck JBR Bracketology is -- they have us in.

Bracket matrix has yet to be updated since last Friday, but I think we will some people have us in. Do I think we should be in as of now. As I said above, probably not, we closed the gap "as of now" quite a bit last week, and some people might slip us in.

 

[blust2i3d4]

The site collects all bracketology. As now we appeared on 7. More than NC State and Virginia.

The Bracket Project's Bracket Matrix - 2024

 

[jncuse]

The site collects all bracketology. As now we appeared on 7. More than NC State and Virginia.

The Bracket Project's Bracket Matrix - 2024

The bracket matrix has been my go to site for years as a high level gathering point. Also used to contribute brackets to the Matrix back when it just got started -- 2008, 2009.

But does anybody else get a "Not Secure" warning when they try to enter the page. I'm getting a warning / stop before entering it. I do check it on my secondary computer.

 

[NineOneSeven]

The bracket matrix has been my go to site for years as a high level gathering point. Also used to contribute brackets to the Matrix back when it just got started -- 2008, 2009.

But does anybody else get a "Not Secure" warning when they try to enter the page. I'm getting a warning / stop before entering it. I do check it on my secondary computer.

Being in more brackets than Virginia is funny. That was the worst L of the year by far.

 

[Fly Rodder]

Being in more brackets than Virginia is funny. That was the worst L of the year by far.

I’m starting to chalk that one up to first conference road game and no team cohesion. Also I think UVA’s disciplined defense and pace is just a bad matchup for a freewheeling offense. Maybe we get another crack at them in the ACC tourney.

 

[jncuse]

Being in more brackets than Virginia is funny. That was the worst L of the year by far.

Gonzaga's loss is in a very similar category. They are actually outside of the bubble line right now as well (when was the last time that happened).

And that one was on a neutral floor so its viewed more poorly in that regard.

These two losses against fellow bubble teams could hurt on Selection Sunday if they are hanging around as well.

They both could fall from Q1 to Q2, which would not be great either. Would like to keep as many losses in Q1 as possible. Although Gonzaga had a ridiculously huge jump in NET last week from 50 to 30, based on destroying two Q4 patsies on the road .. I think someone is off in the NET formula specifically related to road blowouts.

 

[jncuse]

Tonight's Florida St is game is huge (as all of them will be)
1. We need wins to get to at least 12 in the ACC.
2, Want to keep that clean Q3 and Q4 slate... although if Florida St keeps winning it might end up being a Q2.

Florida St annoys me. They have screwed the metrics of the ACC and then its teams for 2 years in a row... they suck in OOC and then up their play come conference time.

Last year it goes a brutal 2-10 in OOC, dragging down the entire conference. It proceeds to go 7-13 handing out Q3 and Q4 losses to contenders for tourney spots.

This year they don't go nearly as bad at 6-5... but they didn't help things either by losing to Georgia, Lipscomb, and SMU at home. Then they come in and knock out 3 teams who were contending for tourney spots (as of now)

 

[upperdeck]

You see 12 B12 teams in on many brackets and thats just nuts.