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Message: [QUOTE="jdubs30, post: 2009807, member: 1620"] We're in complete dire straights and I know the NCAA Tournament seems like an impossible dream at this point. But let's play devil's advocate here. We were awful in OOC. 2 bad losses (St. John's and UConn) and only 1 halfway decent win (Monmouth). If we're lucky, we end up with 1 top 50 non-conference win this year. Which means in order to even sniff an at-large bid, we have to do work in the ACC this year. The good news for the fans, that on 1/14 we will have our answer as to if the season is completely lost, or if the boys and JB were able to turn it round after Christmas. Let's start with Cornell on 12/27 - (every game right now is a must win) - we win that, we're 8-5 overall. IMO, the magic number of losses of an at-large bid is 12. If you have 12 losses, you better have some pretty damn good wins and not a lot of "bad" losses, because most likely you won't get in with 12 losses, but it's possible depending on the strength of the at-large field that year. 13 losses? Forget about it. 11 losses you're legitimately in the conversation. Based on our OOC, I say 12 losses isn't enough for us to get in. This means we have 6 losses, at most, to play with. 12-6 in the ACC gets us to the table. That'd put us at 20-11 overall. The ACC did us a favor this year - the front of our ACC schedule is soft. We start with @BC, Miami, Pitt, @VaTech and BC. Pitt and Miami are solid but aren't what they were last year - VaTech will be tough - but those 2 BC games so early on are nice to see. Our last game of those 5, BC at the Dome, is on 1/14. If end up going 4-1 in that stretch, all of a sudden we have life (and only have to go 8-5 the rest of the way). If we come out of there say 2-3, that means we'd have to most likely go 10-3 the rest of the way, which seems impossible if we couldn't even get a winning record in those 5 games. After those 5, we have @UNC and @ND - but then Wake and FSU at the Dome and @NC State. If we think of the ACC schedule as 3 6-game segments, we have to average a 4-2 record in each segment to get into the at-large conversation. Obviously we will need some wins vs. Ville, ND, Duke, UNC, UVA, etc. I would think that if we did get to 12 ACC wins, the committee would realize that we were playing our best basketball at the end of the year and put us in (they gave us a break last year though!) It could all be over on 1/14, or we could have new life. Happy Holidays [/QUOTE]

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