ACC NET rankings 1/28

[Cusefan0307]

People forget how much they hated the RPI which 75% of the formula had nothing to do with your own teams actual performance:

The index comprises a team's winning percentage (25%), its opponents' winning percentage (50%), and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents (25%). The opponents' winning percentage and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents both comprise the strength of schedule (SOS). Thus, the SOS accounts for 75% of the RPI calculation and is 2/3 its opponents' winning percentage and 1/3 its opponents' opponents' winning percentages.

The RPI was a big reason we were screwed in other bubble seasons before the change to the NET. I distinctly remember it being called out when we missed in 2007. Ironically, the NET may have helped us back then. The same in 2002.

 

[jncuse]

Look, you're over-complicating this a ton. All of you passionate NET / advanced metrics guys.

Teams will win and teams will lose. Past wins will look better - and worse. I think it tends to even out.

Take Florida State, for instance. That is currently a Q3
loss , but they have won 6 out of their last 8 against ACC teams, not tomato cans. They have opportunities for Q1 wins upcoming against Duke and maybe Clemson on the road. They also have NC State at home, which would be another good win.

On the other hand, we thought winning at Pitt would be a Q1 win at the time, but they have slumped to 3-5 in the ACC, and the bloom is off that rose.

Similarly, Clemson looked great early, but has been iosing a lot of games lately. I don't think they've fallen as far as Pitt because they had some quality wins in the pre-conference season, which led to their ranking earlier this year.

When teams are all beating each other, you can't fixate on any one win or loss as the key to get you into the tournament, because the situation is dynamic, and each of those teams' ratings rise and fall every week.

Perhaps stat boys have taken over the selection committee, because I don't see how the ACC can only be the 5th or 6th best conference when they put 3 teams in the Final Four only 2 years ago.

People claim that the bottom of the ACC is soft, but didn't Clemson beat Top 25 Alabama on the road, and register good wins against South Carolina and TCU, and suffered a 2 point loss to Memphis. That's the 10th place team in the "weak" ACC.

Then look at the 11th place team, Pitt: They beat Oregon State, a good intersectional win against a P5 opponent, they beat West Virginia from the 'mighty' Big 12 on the road, and they just beat Duke. How terrible is Pitt?

And don't you think Pitt winning that Duke game, along with their follow-up win at Georgia Tech kind of offsets the computer rankings of our other opponents who may be trending downward? Pitt still is only 3-5 in the ACC, as well as 3-5 in their last 8 games.

Is the ACC going to continue to "get punished" in the computer rankings and the media, or won't these wins kind of even things out?

I say this in advance, knowing this could lead me to being called a stats boy! But I am going to try to help you out as someone who understands the process fairly well.

The ACC did not do as well as others top conferences in OOC play - as a result conferences that did better than us will have higher NET's (and boost each other in conference play) and get more Q1 and Q2 win opportunities. # of Q1 and Q2 is the biggest driver of getting teams in And the reverse . It's why the ACC has not had a high # of teams in 2022 and 2023, and certainly more than just trending that way in 2024. The ACC really struggled compared to others in OOC play in 2022 and 2023, and not quite as bad in 2024, but still not good.

And the fact that we got 2 teams in the final 4 in 2022, is totally irrelevant to the equation. Each year is a different year.

Of course you are going to find some good results in our OOC games - but the ACC have played 164 of them. Its the results of all those games as a whole that matter. As a simple point of comparison the Big 12 won 82% of its OOC games... the ACC won 71% of its OOC games. Fairly big difference. They also had a higher winning % against other top conferences, more Q1 and Q2 wins outside of conference and less bad losses. It wasn't as bad last year though. IIRC, last year the Big 12 had 32 quality wins out of conference (vs our 17). and had 2 bad losses (compared to our 21). Numbers might be off by a few,

 

[jncuse]

It's seems a lot worse than RPI, wasn't that what the original one was called? I think this whole "5 year rolling average" in an era of NIL and portal is nonsense. That underlies KenPom. We saw him say so himself in that interview with Mike Waters. And KenPom is kind of the step-father of the current system.

P.S. - I am way more of a stat head than you'll ever know.

There is no 5 year rolling average in NET.
Nor is KP a 5 year rolling average figure, nor does it underly KP.
Nor does KP underly NET

I listened to the same interview you did and I'm not sure where you got any of that from.
Yes KP is a poor pre-season ranking mechanism as is anything in the NIL and portal world.

He uses prior year results within his formula to determine pre-season rankings (amongst many subjective and non-subjective measures). Without pre-season rankings its impossible to reliably run KP for the first 5-10 games of the year as games are not connected -- then he draws out the weight of his pre-season rankings until it becomes 0% (presumably sometime in early to mid-January) By this point, rankings are purely based on connected results from games this year and prior year has zero impact on them.

And we see flaws based on margin -- but none of anything is a 5 year rolling figure.

 

[jncuse]

I think you'd be happier watching the ACC standings than NET. You're pissed because it doesn't show the ACC standings.

They really need to read post #20. I follow NET a lot, but I also knows its limitations come Selection Sunday.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Current things about NET that don't pass the eye test:

The ACC won more than 4% more of its out of conference games this year than the Pac12, which is rated higher.

The ACC is within about 2/3 of a point in terms of OOC winning percentage compared to the Big East. The Big East is the 4th rated conference and the ACC is 7th. Although, that might be the end of last year / beginning of this year.

As I'm looking online right now, it looks like as of yesterday, the ACC's aggregate NET is now 5th among conferences, having passed the Pac12 and the Mountain West.

My original point, which still stands, is that any one game does not have a huge impact on your chances to get into the tournament, because everybody is still winning and losing more games, and these things are dynamic.

A "Bad" loss to Florida State may be vindicated by their current form vs. ACC opponents continuing, while previously "Good" wins may not hold up over the whole season.

 

[jncuse]

My original point, which still stands, is that any one game does not have a huge impact on your chances to get into the tournament, because everybody is still winning and losing more games, and these things are dynamic.

A "Bad" loss to Florida State may be vindicated by their current form vs. ACC opponents continuing, while previously "Good" wins may not hold up over the whole season.

Matt I fully agree with you on these 2 points.

Things are absolutely dynamic. Even if the ACC is a bit down, teams around us are rapidly moving in any direction. All we can do is keep winning, and some of those things we accomplished already could well look better by year end. There are still quality wins out there.

And I also agree that whether Florida St is Q2 or Q3, if they end up 12-8 or something its not going to kill us. The only thing that is valuable at Florida St being Q2 instead of Q3, is that optically its very important -- it could give us a clean resume with no "bad" losses based on metrics (assuming we beat Notre Dame and Louisville which we better otherwise we have no chance) That is something most bubble teams tend not to have.

You are also correct in that we are #5 in NET, and that year we were #7. Unfortunately unlike RPI which gave you a Conference RPI%, its hard to see how big the gap is behind you or ahead of you. My guess is that the gap between our "score" and the top is less than before, which is why I am a bit surprised we are at the 3 teams in range. Was expecting 4-6 at the beginning of conference play based on how we did OOC (not as bad as prior year)

To be honest I'm not even sure if its just an AVERAGE NET figure by conference, or if it something calculated by the NCAA. Its not as transparent from a calculation perspective as RPI which was clean but simplistic.

Conference NET Ranking - 2024 Men's College Basketball | WarrenNolan.com

2024 Men's College Basketball Conference NET - a ranking of conference based on the average NET Ranking of the teams in the conference.

www.warrennolan.com

 

[SwagSocks]

Where does 21 wins come from?

Quality wins matter, as a poster pointed out.

Win at Wake, then winning at Clemson or home UNC would be huge.

If Cuse goes 0-3 in those games the "high quality" wins will be hard to find.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Where does 21 wins come from?

Quality wins matter, as a poster pointed out.

Win at Wake, then winning at Clemson or home UNC would be huge.

If Cuse goes 0-3 in those games the "high quality" wins will be hard to find.

We might win the first 2 of those games, but I don't see us beating UNC. They're a bad mix of interior strength and very good 3 point shooting. We don't have enough offense to keep up with them, or enough interior defense to stop them from getting a ton of inside scores, put-backs, and fouls drawn against us.