ACC moving to 18 game conference schedule for 2025-26

[Hoo's That]

Well that’s strange. Didn’t know that; thanks for the information

This must be a rule to favor North Carolina because I think they would have to play Duke and NC State annually

To call it "strange" is to give it the benefit of the doubt. ACC HQ will try to delay for as long as possible the year that UNC doesn't play NCSU. They don't want to hear the whiniest fanbase in the ACC whine at its loudest.

 

[Niastri]

Well that’s strange. Didn’t know that; thanks for the information

This must be a rule to favor North Carolina because I think they would have to play Duke and NC State annually

I don’t have to read too far into it to know it is set up that way because it helps Duke and North Carolina. Everything in the conference is set up to help those two teams.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

That's not really correct (or maybe it depends_. If you stink, like the ACC did last year there is nothing you can do to really game things.

Beating punching bags is only going to win the computer ratings game for the ACC if they do it as well, or nearly as well as the other power conferences. And last year the ACC was not even close to the other powers- they got their ass kicked in the "Q4" games relative to the other big conferences.

Here is my data from OOC this year (about 85% of games up to December 15 when i quit tracking it)

Margins in Q4 games:
B12 - 28.3
SEC - 27.9
B10 - 25.9
BE - 22.4
ACC - 19.2
That 9 point delta is a massive difference when those are about 50% of your games.

As stated in my tracking thread, the Q4 games matter a lot because its nearly half of your OOC possessions. And that is problematic - they shouldn't mean as much. (ACC played 46% of them... in line with all the other big conferences who played 44% to 49%) But its not simply a matter of playing more of them... everybody plays a lot. Its doing as well as others in them.

The concept that your tournament worthiness depends in great part on how well you do against crappy teams is the problem. Those games shouldn’t even factor in unless you lose them. Pass / fail. Losing a close game on the road against a top team should elevate your ranking. A computer might not be able to judge the quality of the loss strongly by a final score as scores can drastically change to a misleading greater margin down the stretch with fouling /etc. it might actually require humans watching the games and grading the performance . Then you take all those individual grades and come up with an overall power rank .