NCAA Sweet Sixteen Games for March 25

[goofnoff]

Miami has never been to an E8? Surprising to me

In 64-65, Rick Barry's senior year, Miami was 22-4 and unranked. They didn't get an invite. Barry averaged in the low 30's and 18 rebounds a game. I think Miami actually gave up BBall for a few years after Barry left.

 

[jncuse]

So true. So many people on here we’re droning on about how horrible the ACC was all season. You can’t judge teams only by how they perform in Nov and Dec when teams are still trying to figure themselves out.

Of course the horrible play of the ACC out of conference mattered. And it was a down regular season for the ACC. To say that it did not matter, or that it was not "down" as some of you are now suggesting above is incorrect (to be fair the post I am quoting is not stating this directly but others are so my post below is generally addressing all of and I quoted the last one) I think you are getting a few things mixed up (See my Part 2 below)

Part 1 - The ACC was horrible in the regular season which includes out of conference. It was clearly a down year in that regard. And it made a huge difference on the outcomes of several teams entering the tournament. And that was fair.
I droned on all year that the ACC's poor out of conference play in November and December would bite them in the ass on Selection Weekend. And I was indeed right
- Wake Forest missed the tournament because of it.
- Notre Dame had to go to a play in game because of it
- Virginia Tech had to win the ACC tourney to get in.
- If the ACC had played like it normally does in Nov/Dec, Virginia probably is an at-large
- Syracuse probably needed to go 14-6 or 13-7 (with some conference tourney wins) to have a chance to get in.

And all of the above outcomes were entirely fair. How can you expect the ACC to get anywhere near the respect of these other 4 conferences. The committee simply cannot guess who has improved or who has not. It has to go with the data. And the ACC did very poorly out of conference -- which dramatically hurt Q1 win opportunities for ACC teams post January.

The following table only considers out of conference wins and losses. If there is such a disparity how can you expect the committee to look at an ACC team that is 11-9 as compared to any team with a similar record in any of those conferences.

How could one possibly justify the ACC getting as much respect in tourney selection as any of the above 4 conferences. This wasn't even a case of being close. This was a case of the ACC being closer to the level of play as the MWC, A-10, WCC, the American before January as compared to the Top 4. In typical years the ACC is right there with the other 4. this year it was not. Those numbers are historically bad for the ACC - it was a down year for them in the regular season.

Clearly what the ACC did mattered. My droning on it was not unjustified.

I would be interested in what some of you think the committee should have done instead. Just guess and make up stuff on the fly?


Part 2 - Just because a conference did poorly or strongly in the regular season does not mean its member teams will do poorly or strongly in the post-seaon tournament. Which has happened this year with the ACC and BIG has happened in the past.

A paragraph below a post I made on March 11. It's basically a new season starting in March. But the teams are justifiably selected and seeded based on what they did before that. So if the ACC is down it matters on actually getting in (and fairly so)... but once in you need to reconsider. This has actually worked out well for me betting as I have rode the ACC hard in this tourney and the BIG losing as well. Although even an optomist about the ACC has had to have had their expectations surpassed. For the BIG failing is not that far from the norm, so this failure is not all that unexpected.

Before the brackets come out

Who are some lesser talked about teams we might see in the sweet 16, and which big boys might get knocked out earlier than expected? I didn't watch nearly as much this year as usual. I won't be sleeping on any Big 12 teams this year.

syracusefan.com

"The Pac-12 seemed like the worst P5 conference last year and then absolutely dominated in the NCAA tournament.

The following is based on observation, I have no numbers to back it up:
The system favours conferences that as a whole played the best before the end of December. And that is ultimately the fairest way to do things since how can you tell which conference is improving once they are only playing themselves. You can't. But what sometimes happens is that the 4th or 5th place team in "great" conference that gets a 4 seed is not as good as other 4 seeds.

My advice is don't pick your brackets based on the one or two conferences that get the most seeds or those that hog the top 4/5 seed lines. Those conferences on a "per school" basis have tended to do worse and proportionately have more flops before the sweet 16.. and this is not a new trend. Think back to the when the Big East got a huge # of seeds. They had some national titles, but a higher proportion than others of flops as well. (thanks Pitt, Georgetown and Notre Dame!). This has happened when the Big Ten has been very good, or the years where the New Big East and Big 12 get a high % of their teams in.

If the above sounds confusing, I'll give an example:

Team A - 3 or 4 seed from Power Conference with 8 bids and 5 teams in the top 5 seed lines
Team B - 3 or 4 seed from Power Conference with 5 bids and 2 teams in the top 5 seed lines

Team A has tended to flop earlier than Team B."

Respect
The ACC earned the scrutiny and disregard it had during the season. It earned the comments of being down. But the ACC has also earned most of that respect back in the tournament.

 

[jncuse]

I think college basketball experts need to stop basing a poor conference with overall league losses to nonconference losses to teams in November and December….

Depends on what experts and perspectives you are looking at.

If you are referring to those saying which teams will or will not have success in March, and writing off (or writing up) teams then it has some merit.

If you are referring to the committee selecting teams what do you expect them to do? Just guess? No reasonable committee can ignore how bad the ACC was compared to the other top 4. The ACC wasn't even close to those other conferences. What happened to the ACC on Selection Sunday was fair.

 

[Cheriehoop]

It was.

Somehow the ACC really improved somewhere along the way or the other conference team’s performances deteriorated comparatively over time. Maybe the number of very close games within the conference, the competitive conference race (top 4 teams separated by only 2 games), the Covid related shortened timeline between games because of postponements, experience playing the very different strengths, weaknesses of the conference teams themselves etc may have all helped the ACC in someway to prepare for the tournament??? Then again it could be just luck or the result of a nefarious conspiracy

 

[Dinkyspond]

We had Miami dead to rights twice this year and ended up losing twice. We had Carolina beaten on the road before blowing it late. Without Buddy, we were up with 3 minutes to go in the ACC tourney vs. Duke but just couldn't hang on. What could have been if we won a handful of those close games and made the tourney, even without Jessie.

 

[jncuse]

Somehow the ACC really improved somewhere along the way or the other conference team’s performances deteriorated comparatively over time. Maybe the number of very close games within the conference, the competitive conference race (top 4 teams separated by only 2 games), the Covid related shortened timeline between games because of postponements, experience playing the very different strengths, weaknesses of the conference teams themselves etc may have all helped the ACC in someway to prepare for the tournament??? Then again it could be just luck or the result of a nefarious conspiracy

What happened was probably a combination of all the factors you noted. Luck has probably been a factor in them doing so well, but not a big factor in them doing well in general. And don't rule out conspiracy when it comes to Duke!!

I think part of the problem is that people want to ignore that the following two items do not need to be mutually exclusive
1) The ACC has had a great NCAA tournament and overall this means it had a good year
2) The ACC had a down, historically horrible by their standards regular season (as the regular season does include all basketball

The argument we have for the ACC is that despite the occurence of #2, it does not preclude #1 from happening either. And part of that is due to those factors you noted.

 

[orangenauburn]

Of course the horrible play of the ACC out of conference mattered. And it was a down regular season for the ACC. To say that it did not matter, or that it was not "down" as some of you are now suggesting above is incorrect (to be fair the post I am quoting is not stating this directly but others are so my post below is generally addressing all of and I quoted the last one) I think you are getting a few things mixed up (See my Part 2 below)

Part 1 - The ACC was horrible in the regular season which includes out of conference. It was clearly a down year in that regard. And it made a huge difference on the outcomes of several teams entering the tournament. And that was fair.
I droned on all year that the ACC's poor out of conference play in November and December would bite them in the ass on Selection Weekend. And I was indeed right
- Wake Forest missed the tournament because of it.
- Notre Dame had to go to a play in game because of it
- Virginia Tech had to win the ACC tourney to get in.
- If the ACC had played like it normally does in Nov/Dec, Virginia probably is an at-large
- Syracuse probably needed to go 14-6 or 13-7 (with some conference tourney wins) to have a chance to get in.

And all of the above outcomes were entirely fair. How can you expect the ACC to get anywhere near the respect of these other 4 conferences. The committee simply cannot guess who has improved or who has not. It has to go with the data. And the ACC did very poorly out of conference -- which dramatically hurt Q1 win opportunities for ACC teams post January.

The following table only considers out of conference wins and losses. If there is such a disparity how can you expect the committee to look at an ACC team that is 11-9 as compared to any team with a similar record in any of those conferences.

View attachment 215920
How could one possibly justify the ACC getting as much respect in tourney selection as any of the above 4 conferences. This wasn't even a case of being close. This was a case of the ACC being closer to the level of play as the MWC, A-10, WCC, the American before January as compared to the Top 4. In typical years the ACC is right there with the other 4. this year it was not. Those numbers are historically bad for the ACC - it was a down year for them in the regular season.

Clearly what the ACC did mattered. My droning on it was not unjustified.

I would be interested in what some of you think the committee should have done instead. Just guess and make up stuff on the fly?


Part 2 - Just because a conference did poorly or strongly in the regular season does not mean its member teams will do poorly or strongly in the post-seaon tournament. Which has happened this year with the ACC and BIG has happened in the past.

A paragraph below a post I made on March 11. It's basically a new season starting in March. But the teams are justifiably selected and seeded based on what they did before that. So if the ACC is down it matters on actually getting in (and fairly so)... but once in you need to reconsider. This has actually worked out well for me betting as I have rode the ACC hard in this tourney and the BIG losing as well. Although even an optomist about the ACC has had to have had their expectations surpassed. For the BIG failing is not that far from the norm, so this failure is not all that unexpected.

Before the brackets come out

Who are some lesser talked about teams we might see in the sweet 16, and which big boys might get knocked out earlier than expected? I didn't watch nearly as much this year as usual. I won't be sleeping on any Big 12 teams this year.

syracusefan.com

"The Pac-12 seemed like the worst P5 conference last year and then absolutely dominated in the NCAA tournament.

The following is based on observation, I have no numbers to back it up:
The system favours conferences that as a whole played the best before the end of December. And that is ultimately the fairest way to do things since how can you tell which conference is improving once they are only playing themselves. You can't. But what sometimes happens is that the 4th or 5th place team in "great" conference that gets a 4 seed is not as good as other 4 seeds.

My advice is don't pick your brackets based on the one or two conferences that get the most seeds or those that hog the top 4/5 seed lines. Those conferences on a "per school" basis have tended to do worse and proportionately have more flops before the sweet 16.. and this is not a new trend. Think back to the when the Big East got a huge # of seeds. They had some national titles, but a higher proportion than others of flops as well. (thanks Pitt, Georgetown and Notre Dame!). This has happened when the Big Ten has been very good, or the years where the New Big East and Big 12 get a high % of their teams in.

If the above sounds confusing, I'll give an example:

Team A - 3 or 4 seed from Power Conference with 8 bids and 5 teams in the top 5 seed lines
Team B - 3 or 4 seed from Power Conference with 5 bids and 2 teams in the top 5 seed lines

Team A has tended to flop earlier than Team B."

Respect
The ACC earned the scrutiny and disregard it had during the season. It earned the comments of being down. But the ACC has also earned most of that respect back in the tournament.

How or what determines a good OOC win, if in reality the conference or teams in it were overrated to begin with? Saying SEC had 21 good OOC win - against whom? Big Ten that flamed out? Against Non Tourney ACC teams?

How is that metric determined?

Bruce Pearl discusses SEC’s poor showing in NCAA tournament - Sports Illustrated

The Auburn coach discussed the difficulty of conference play this season.

www.si.com

I don't buy what Bruce is selling for a second. The big East was a grind with teams beating each other up and that conference produced champions.

 

[kcsu]

ACC wasnt down it was underrated

 

[Newhouser]

I think ACC has better coaching. K obviously is great. The Miami guy is good, Hubert seems good...we also seem to be the best offensive conference. These Big 10 and Big 12; and SEC teams can't score.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Somehow the ACC really improved somewhere along the way or the other conference team’s performances deteriorated comparatively over time. Maybe the number of very close games within the conference, the competitive conference race (top 4 teams separated by only 2 games), the Covid related shortened timeline between games because of postponements, experience playing the very different strengths, weaknesses of the conference teams themselves etc may have all helped the ACC in someway to prepare for the tournament??? Then again it could be just luck or the result of a nefarious conspiracy

Or, the results of single elimination tournament games are fairly random.

 

[richmondcuse03]

I think ACC has better coaching. K obviously is great. The Miami guy is good, Hubert seems good...we also seem to be the best offensive conference. These Big 10 and Big 12; and SEC teams can't score.

Agree. I think a big part is coaching, which matters a lot more in tourney and matchups. There’s a reason Kansas is doing well too.

 

[Melancer46]

Duke is legitimately very good. I don’t think the poor conference talk matters with them because they are not poor at all. UNC is just an up and down team that has fortunately had hot streaks from Love and Manek to help them hang on in these games.

I can’t really speak to Miami as I haven’t watched any of their tournament games. Seems like they just may have been a horrible matchup against a zone defense, even as bad as ours is.

 

[Cusefan0307]

Duke is legitimately very good. I don’t think the poor conference talk matters with them because they are not poor at all. UNC is just an up and down team that has fortunately had hot streaks from Love and Manek to help them hang on in these games.

I can’t really speak to Miami as I haven’t watched any of their tournament games. Seems like they just may have been a horrible matchup against a zone defense, even as bad as ours is.

UNC had 15 conference wins and has 27 wins overall. Miami has 26 and 14. Pretty good for being “up and down”. If the ACC didn’t suck so bad in November and December that type of record usually gets teams a 3 or a 4 seed.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

If Iowa State can go from 2-22 to 22-13 and Miami can go from 10-17 to 26-10, where cane we go from 16-17?

10-23

 

[STEVEHOLT]

We had Miami dead to rights twice this year and ended up losing twice. We had Carolina beaten on the road before blowing it late. Without Buddy, we were up with 3 minutes to go in the ACC tourney vs. Duke but just couldn't hang on. What could have been if we won a handful of those close games and made the tourney, even without Jessie.

We didn’t have Miami dead to rights on the road. .. having a big first half lead on the road when you are a middling team isn’t a dominant position . As I recall , within a few minutes of the 2nd half , the entire lead was gone. The final score was actually deceptively close in our favor

The second game was pure SU choke job

 

[CousCuse]

We didn’t have Miami dead to rights on the road. .. having a big first half lead on the road when you are a middling team isn’t a dominant position . As I recall , within a few minutes of the 2nd half , the entire lead was gone. The final score was actually deceptively close in our favor

The second game was pure SU choke job

The team was still in the process of coming together as a team at that point.

 

[Ghost]

What happened was probably a combination of all the factors you noted. Luck has probably been a factor in them doing so well, but not a big factor in them doing well in general. And don't rule out conspiracy when it comes to Duke!!

I think part of the problem is that people want to ignore that the following two items do not need to be mutually exclusive
1) The ACC has had a great NCAA tournament and overall this means it had a good year
2) The ACC had a down, historically horrible by their standards regular season (as the regular season does include all basketball

The argument we have for the ACC is that despite the occurence of #2, it does not preclude #1 from happening either. And part of that is due to those factors you noted.

Yeah, I agree with everything you said.

Way back when the Big East had the best conference record followed by a poor performance in the NCAAT it never convinced anyone that the Big East actually sucked that specific year. It's just how the tourney goes.

Same on an individual level. In our great seasons, if we lose early, it doesn't invalidate how good we were. Same in the years we were bad - a decent tourney run doesn't necessarily mean we were better than we thought.

It's all part of the fun of the tourney, the randomness of it all.

How many games are decided in the last minute? That result shouldn't cause some seismic shift in anyone's opinion of how good/bad a team or conference is. In any given tourney there is probably some P5 bottom feeder that could get some beneficial match-ups and roll themselves into the S16 or E8. It doesn't mean they "belong" or were underrated.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

Duke is legitimately very good. I don’t think the poor conference talk matters with them because they are not poor at all. UNC is just an up and down team that has fortunately had hot streaks from Love and Manek to help them hang on in these games.

I can’t really speak to Miami as I haven’t watched any of their tournament games. Seems like they just may have been a horrible matchup against a zone defense, even as bad as ours is.

Some teams are just physically talented to the point they can just beat more structured teams. Ucla is a better “team” with more skilled players all around …. Unc just has longer .. stronger .. quicker dudes with more room for error

 

[upperdeck]

the system rewards teams based on how well you play early not how good you are at the end and that will always lead to large swats in hows teams will play.. the best way to have your team do well is for them to be playing their best late and even that doesnt always mean much but it helps..

still you can be playing well early and playing worse late but your league as a whole is playing worse so it still looks like you are playing well.. its one reason why you cant just look at records to see how good a team is and that is all how the computer generated stuff works.

just like you can awful offense and score and good offense and not score and the computer cant tell.. even off . stats dont really tell a whole story, nor does pace.

if you watched the B10 all yr the only predictor was the Bigs of Purdue/Ill if you couldnt handle them you would struggle to beat them.

What you are seeing now is that once you remove the eye ball test you getting more seeding errors and its still hard to understand who is good.

 

[texascpa]

I guess you think St Peters should’ve been ranked in top 10 with that logic.
One and done doesn’t prove who the best teams are.

Saint Peter's has the longest winning streak in the nation currently (and did before the Purdue game). After knocking off the last three teams they've played, I would say yes they now belong in the Top 10.

 

[texascpa]

How good can we do in the transfer portal? Those schools got some huge transfers in particular Iowa St.

Standard freshman recruiting is not going to make any team take a significant / massive jump in their year, unless you are dealing with elite prospects. Our incoming class of 5 is not going to have a massive difference on our performance next year but it is very important for program health beyond next year.

The transfer portal, though can provide an opportunity to get players that are more ready to contribute now and will make a bigger difference immediately.

I sometimes wonder if JB and Babers had some meeting and both agreed not to use the transfer portal extensively so as not to one-up each other.

 

[Cusefan0307]

St. Peter’s is a great story, but they were seeded correctly.

They lost to a St. John’s team that was comparable to us by 21 and lost to Providence by 15. They’ve made tremendous improvements, but were boat raced by anyone decent early in the season and lost to Iona twice as well.

 

[CousCuse]

St Peters is well coached. I do believe they did have Kentucky and Purdue looking past them, Murray wasn't really very good. UNC is not looking past them.

 

[jncuse]

How or what determines a good OOC win, if in reality the conference or teams in it were overrated to begin with? Saying SEC had 21 good OOC win - against whom? Big Ten that flamed out? Against Non Tourney ACC teams?

How is that metric determined?

Bruce Pearl discusses SEC’s poor showing in NCAA tournament - Sports Illustrated

The Auburn coach discussed the difficulty of conference play this season.

www.si.com

I don't buy what Bruce is selling for a second. The big East was a grind with teams beating each other up and that conference produced champions.

So you are accusing me of making up data or using bad data. Because obviously that is how I roll!

That table is as follows:
Good Wins - Wins over Tourney Teams in the top 12 seed lines (or last 4 teams out). (Basically only teams that would get in as at large's or be very close)
Bad Losses - Q3 or Q4 losses as defined by the NCAA committee.
(But I will get to all of this data in Part 2 of my post)

The table basically shows that the best teams were not doing that well (gathering good wins) and the bad teams were really bad compared to other conferences as were the middle of the pack.

I would have posted RPI and NET's by conference, but people seeing a list of conference RPI's where the big 4 was .56 to .59 and the ACC was .54 would think is not that big a difference... even though it is. Or the list of NET's which also don't show magnitude of "badness" as clearly as that chart of good wins and losses.

But let's start with the NET's and RPI.

Conference NET

2022 NET - Obviously there was 4 very good conferences in regular season play, And the next four were clearly behind them. It was a group that the ACC typically does n

2021 NET- 2021 wasn't even a particularly great year for the ACC OOC, but at least they hung around all the top conferences except the Big Ten.

 

[orangenauburn]

So you are accusing me of making up data or using bad data. Because obviously that is how I roll!

That table is as follows:
Good Wins - Wins over Tourney Teams in the top 12 seed lines (or last 4 teams out). (Basically only teams that would get in as at large's or be very close)
Bad Losses - Q3 or Q4 losses as defined by the NCAA committee.
(But I will get to all of this data in Part 2 of my post)

The table basically shows that the best teams were not doing that well (gathering good wins) and the bad teams were really bad compared to other conferences as were the middle of the pack.

I would have posted RPI and NET's by conference, but people seeing a list of conference RPI's where the big 4 was .56 to .59 and the ACC was .54 would think is not that big a difference... even though it is. Or the list of NET's which also don't show magnitude of "badness" as clearly as that chart of good wins and losses.

But let's start with the NET's and RPI.

Conference NET

2022 NET - Obviously there was 4 very good conferences in regular season play, And the next four were clearly behind them. It was a group that the ACC typically does n
View attachment 215930

2021 NET- 2021 wasn't even a particularly great year for the ACC OOC, but at least they hung around all the top conferences except the Big Ten.

View attachment 215931

Didn't accuse you of making anything up.

Also look how many more non conference games ACC played vs Big 12, Big Ten, Big East, Pac 12 in 2022.

Data can be interpreted in many ways. You could say ACC challenged themselves more OOC than everyone else but the SEC, and did so when their teams hadn't quite had their footing yet (transfers, roster turnover, etc).

I'd argue that, and ask why did the SEC underachieve vs why did the ACC overachieve?