NCAA Sweet Sixteen Games for March 25

[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.

Let's start with your questions

1) How or what determines a good OOC win, if in reality the conference or teams in it were overrated to begin with
"Good Wins - Wins over Tourney Teams in the top 12 seed lines (or last 4 teams out)". Its the exact same criteria for all 5 conferences and they all had nearly equal opportunity to get quality wins.

2) Saying the SEC had 21 good wins?
- The list is below. I don't make up stuff or ignore stuff.

3) Against the Big Ten?
Some of them against BIG tournament teams. Yes. Just like every other conference had the same opportunity.

4) Against Non Tourney ACC Teams?
Why would they count. They are not good wins. Might be some of their bad losses however.

5) How is that metric determined?

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.

All the conferences had similar opportunity to fail or excel.


Here is the data

The table again as a reminder. Although when I scrubbed the ACC this morning, they were actually 6-16. I had included a loss at Western Kentucky as a bad loss.

 

[Sherman20]

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.

Great post. And I don’t disagree at all. We all knew the poor non conference performance would bite us in the butt come tourney selection time. My point is that posters were being wildly hyperbolic and the chatter was completely over the top about it being the worst ACC ever in terms of quality. Everyone acted like all the teams stunk except Duke. It became hardened conventional wisdom, and I thought it wasn’t accurate. Part of it was bad luck and part of it was youth and inexperience and integrating transfers on the top teams in the early going. And historically, I recall the ACC having a number of really bad down years about a decade ago before the infusion of Big East programs in 2013-14. In one or two years they got only like 3-4 teams in the tourney. Indeed that’s why Syracuse, Pitt and ND joining the conference was so touted.

 

[SWC75]

If this happens, the other final four game will probably be the least talked about final four game in history.

I can't get over the fact that the committee put them on the same side of the bracket. What were they thinking?

 

[orangenauburn]

Let's start with your questions

1) How or what determines a good OOC win, if in reality the conference or teams in it were overrated to begin with
"Good Wins - Wins over Tourney Teams in the top 12 seed lines (or last 4 teams out)". Its the exact same criteria for all 5 conferences and they all had nearly equal opportunity to get quality wins.

2) Saying the SEC had 21 good wins?
- The list is below. I don't make up stuff or ignore stuff.

3) Against the Big Ten?
Some of them against BIG tournament teams. Yes. Just like every other conference had the same opportunity.

4) Against Non Tourney ACC Teams?
Why would they count. They are not good wins. Might be some of their bad losses however.

5) How is that metric determined?

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.

All the conferences had similar opportunity to fail or excel.


Here is the data

The table again as a reminder. Although when I scrubbed the ACC this morning, they were actually 6-16. I had included a loss at Western Kentucky as a bad loss.

View attachment 215932


View attachment 215933

I wouldn't consider Rutgers a good win. BYU and VCU are wins but are they good wins? They padded wins against weaker conference foe. Same with UAB, Loyola, and SMU.

 

[DoctorBombay]

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.

Your “guess” is wrong.
I’m saying that logically, and again, for better or worse, CBB is no longer about proving “who the best teams are” based on the regular season. That makes OOC and to some degree inner conference play largely irrelevant to the final discussion.
There’s so much weight placed on the postseason that theoretically a St Peters can go winless during the season, win their conference tournament, and still make a S16 or even F4. Not likely and I’d hate to look up the odds, but it theoretically could happen.
Cbb is not about how good you look during the regular season, and especially during OOC- see; B1G mbb as an example. It’s irrelevant to the final discussion and its mostly blather to keep the pundits and fanbases engaged until the “real” season starts.
Yes, you need a reg season to get teams primed for March Madness, but that’s about it. After that, it’s all bets are off and everyone is on the same plane. That’s why we love it. JMHO

 

[jncuse]

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).

Fair enough on the bolded part. I apologize for two things:
1) I was unnecessarily annoyed by a few posts
2) Although I had laid out the definition of the "Good/bad: data in prior posts, I failed to include it in those posts -- and that was important to the data.

Those were not records between the conferences. The good wins were largely between the group, but the bad losses were largely from teams outside of the power conferences and in most cases non tournament teams. (The bad losses against tournament teams would have been teams seeded like 14 or lower... like a Colgate at home for example, or a Wright St loss)

So the ACC didn't really challenge themselves any harder / less harder than the others.

I'm not even sure if the ACC as a whole really improved that much (they probably did to some extent vs others)... I beleive it was more a case of the ACC's poor middle of the pack and the # of bad teams compared to prior years starting to become a real problem. The good teams were still pretty good (as we are seeing now), but the middle of the back and the really bad dragged down everybody. It was a bit of a problem in 2021 and became a real problem in 2022.

It's great that the top teams are doing well now. But if our middle teams don't start doing better, and we don't start lowering the amount of bad teams, the ACC will continue to run into this problem. Which is a problem for Syracuse moving forward.

Will expand on this later. Going for a bike ride!

 

[jncuse]

I wouldn't consider Rutgers a good win. BYU and VCU are wins but are they good wins? They padded wins against weaker conference foe. Same with UAB, Loyola, and SMU.

There are a few outliers that you can knock off. We could keep it to top 10 seeds or above, and the comparison on # of good wins would still hold. Furthermore if you are knocking wins against Loyola and Rutgers, 2 of the 6 ACC wins don't have much value either.

And more importantly the 17 bad losses would still be there. Those other conference didn't lose anywhere close to 17 bad games. The middle and bottom of this ACC conference was a problem in 2021 and became a real problem in 2022. It drags down everyone and has to change.
Unfortunately Syracuse was part of that problem this year. Certainly we want to be better next year, and do fairly well in the ACC ... but would hate for it to be the same fate as Wake this year because there are too many bad teams compared to others.

 

[DoctorBombay]

Fair enough on the bolded part. I apologize for two things:
1) I was unnecessarily annoyed by a few posts
2) Although I had laid out the definition of the "Good/bad: data in prior posts, I failed to include it in those posts -- and that was important to the data.

Those were not records between the conferences. The good wins were largely between the group, but the bad losses were largely from teams outside of the power conferences and in most cases non tournament teams. (The bad losses against tournament teams would have been teams seeded like 14 or lower... like a Colgate at home for example, or a Wright St loss)

So the ACC didn't really challenge themselves any harder / less harder than the others.

I'm not even sure if the ACC as a whole really improved that much (they probably did to some extent vs others)... I beleive it was more a case of the ACC's poor middle of the pack and the # of bad teams compared to prior years starting to become a real problem. The good teams were still pretty good (as we are seeing now), but the middle of the back and the really bad dragged down everybody. It was a bit of a problem in 2021 and became a real problem in 2022.

It's great that the top teams are doing well now. But if our middle teams don't start doing better, and we don't start lowering the amount of bad teams, the ACC will continue to run into this problem. Which is a problem for Syracuse moving forward.

Will expand on this later. Going for a bike ride!

Btw, jncuse- I’d love to see a “Data Battle Royale” between you & SWC75 sometime. Let’s make it happen!!

 

[SWC75]

When Steve Hyder was doing the post-game shows for SU, (a couple of decades ago), he was asked how come our talented 1998-99 team had looked so good starting the season 8-0, including a win in the Maui Classic and then stumbled to a 15-12 record the rest of the way, ending the season losing an 8-9 game to Doug Gottlieb's Oklahoma State Cowboys. Why did they get worse?

He gave a great answer. He said that maybe the team didn't get worse - they just failed to get better, at least at the same rate other teams were getting better. These are collegiate athletes, not seasoned professionals. They are not baseball cards you can trade with your friends and assemble teams of known quantities based on proven records. The beauty of rooting for college players and teams is that they can evolve and get better as the season progresses, although there's no guarantee they will.

A college basketball season is like a horse race. The standings will be in a certain order and distance at the quarter pole but change throughout the race. Some horses will slow down, others speed up. Then we see what they will look like at the end. Except the current system halts the race before the stretch and seeds the teams based upon their standings at the quarter pole.

It can't be spun that the ACC was the worst power conference at the beginning of the season. There's no point in parsing the value of the wins or losses: our record was clearly worse than the others. There is no way in the insular conference season to change those perceptions. But obviously, ACC teams improved considerably during their conference season and other conferences did not or at least not at the same rate.

Because it also can't be spun that the ACC has been the best conference in this tournament in games that are at least as important as the ones played at the beginning of the season. Yes, NCAA tournament games tend to be close and could go either way. But they are not 'random', anymore than Syracuse's close losses this season were random. Winning 10 of 12 games that could have gone either way is an impressive thing, just as losing 7 of 9 games decided by 5 points or less or in overtime is an unimpressive thing. (You competed with those teams but that's not the same thing as beating them.)

In reality there are not two seasons in college basketball: the regular season and the NCAA tournament. There are three seasons: the non-conference schedule, the conference season and the NCAA tournament. And the current system evaluates teams in the first and last of them. it could be made fair if conference and non-conference games were more integrated as they are starting to be as conference schedules expand. The committee could also base their evaluation of conferences on more than just the present year and acknowledge that if you do well in a strong conference, even in a 'down' year, you must be a pretty good team.

 

[SWC75]

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.

JB has made it clear that he sees the high/prep schools as the farm system and the transfer portal as free agency and that it's best to build your program though the farm system and plug leaks though the portal. You can argue with that view but that is what to expect from him.

 

[Cheriehoop]

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

Or the ranking of conferences is skewed. How does the Big 10 get 9 conference teams into the tournament yet just 3 teams winning 2 in a row making it into the sweet 16 with all 9 out by the elite 8? That sure doesn’t seen random. They made up over 13% to 14% of the entire field.

Perhaps playing just 10 or so total out of conference games all at the very beginning of the season coupled with the huge changes in team composition from the transfer portal and allowance for an additional year for seniors, played into what may appears to be unexpected results in March, April. Those early 10 games at the very beginning of the season are the only comparative conference stats available to make seeding and NCAA assumptions 3 months later. There’s definitely always some ‘luck’ involved regarding matchups, injuries, ’hot’ or ‘cold’ shooting etc that always makes the NCAA’s so interesting, somewhat unpredictable but the additional new factors and changes may make conference rankings much more difficult.

 

[SWC75]

Btw, jncuse- I’d love to see a “Data Battle Royale” between you & SWC75 sometime. Let’s make it happen!!

I admire people who take the rime to research something and base their conclusions upon what the research tells them, as opposed to editing facts to fit a foregone conclusion.

 

[SWC75]

There are a few outliers that you can knock off. We could keep it to top 10 seeds or above, and the comparison on # of good wins would still hold. Furthermore if you are knocking wins against Loyola and Rutgers, 2 of the 6 ACC wins don't have much value either.

And more importantly the 17 bad losses would still be there. Those other conference didn't lose anywhere close to 17 bad games. The middle and bottom of this ACC conference was a problem in 2021 and became a real problem in 2022. It drags down everyone and has to change.
Unfortunately Syracuse was part of that problem this year. Certainly we want to be better next year, and do fairly well in the ACC ... but would hate for it to be the same fate as Wake this year because there are too many bad teams compared to others.

A 10 minute bike ride?

 

[jncuse]

JB has made it clear that he sees the high/prep schools as the farm system and the transfer portal as free agency and that it's best to build your program though the farm system and plug leaks though the portal. You can argue with that view but that is what to expect from him.

I don't disagree with JB's view at all. The best way to get your program health and sustained success is through good freshman recruiting (and retention).

But you had noted teams that made a quick one year turnaround. And the best way to get a quick one year turnaround is through transfers -- although that is not sustainable year after year and will probably cause those schools that are more in the transfer portal to yoyo more.

That being said I wonder if schools like Houston and Iowa St that have excelled in the portal this year, have built some "portal" brand equity and will be able to benefit from it in the portal for the next few years.

Obviously the Duke's, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas have brand equity that help so much in standard recruiting. Will there be different names that start to get that brand rep for transfers.

 

[jncuse]

A 10 minute bike ride?

I made one more post before I left! It was about an 80-90 minute bike ride.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Or the ranking of conferences is skewed. How does the Big 10 get 9 conference teams into the tournament yet just 3 teams winning 2 in a row making it into the sweet 16 with all 9 out by the elite 8? That sure doesn’t seen random. They made up over 13% to 14% of the entire field.

That's exactly what randomness is.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

 

[jncuse]

Your “guess” is wrong.
I’m saying that logically, and again, for better or worse, CBB is no longer about proving “who the best teams are” based on the regular season. That makes OOC and to some degree inner conference play largely irrelevant to the final discussion.
There’s so much weight placed on the postseason that theoretically a St Peters can go winless during the season, win their conference tournament, and still make a S16 or even F4. Not likely and I’d hate to look up the odds, but it theoretically could happen.
Cbb is not about how good you look during the regular season, and especially during OOC- see; B1G mbb as an example. It’s irrelevant to the final discussion and its mostly blather to keep the pundits and fanbases engaged until the “real” season starts.
Yes, you need a reg season to get teams primed for March Madness, but that’s about it. After that, it’s all bets are off and everyone is on the same plane. That’s why we love it. JMHO

You can argue its all about the post-season. I don't really agree, but at the same time there is some strong arguments for your position (and against it), It is also somewhat about one's perspective, opinion and how one enjoys the college basketball season and what it values. It will not be the same for everyone.

But herein lies the rub for Syracuse and why early season is clearly relevant for the ACC - actually highly relevant for Syracuse right now. Because you have to get in the tournament to do damage in it.

If we were the consistent top 4 in conference school or consistent top 25 program year after year it really wouldn't matter much what the rest of the conference does when it plays others. May move us up or down a few seed lines but not that relevant once the ball hits the floor in March. Let's hope we can get back to that level soon.

But we are not at that level right now. Have not been there since 2014. Other than 2014 we are largely a middle of the pack ACC team. When the ACC does well out of conference it helps us to get in the tournament, and when the ACC does bad out of conference it will hurt our ability to get in the tournament.

And its not only about how the good teams do. The level of stupidity the bottom of our conference (and even the middle) did in November and December was off the charts bad for the ACC historically and even really bad for any P5 school hisrorically (excluding Pac12). Separate post on that is coming..

 

[jncuse]

Great post. And I don’t disagree at all. We all knew the poor non conference performance would bite us in the butt come tourney selection time. My point is that posters were being wildly hyperbolic and the chatter was completely over the top about it being the worst ACC ever in terms of quality. Everyone acted like all the teams stunk except Duke. It became hardened conventional wisdom, and I thought it wasn’t accurate. Part of it was bad luck and part of it was youth and inexperience and integrating transfers on the top teams in the early going. And historically, I recall the ACC having a number of really bad down years about a decade ago before the infusion of Big East programs in 2013-14. In one or two years they got only like 3-4 teams in the tourney. Indeed that’s why Syracuse, Pitt and ND joining the conference was so touted.

Looking at the data and what we did in Nov/Dec and now in March, the problem was not the better ACC teams even if they were largely underwhelming in OOC.

It's that the ACC now has an explosion of bad teams and its middle was very weak The 10 teams that missed the tourney (except Wake) did so many stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid (did I say stupid?) things that it hurt the reputation, metrics, and national standing of the top teams in the league. Leagues can tolerate a few bad teams without really getting hurt... but not this many.

 

[Eric15]

Was just looking at Google Maps... it's crazy how small St. Peter's is. There's no "quad" or anything like that. It's just a small collection of buildings.

 

[jncuse]

Btw, jncuse- I’d love to see a “Data Battle Royale” between you & SWC75 sometime. Let’s make it happen!!

Thank you, although me and SWC look at very different things and have different likes in the info we gather. SWC looks more at historic things.

I know SWC likes to come up with formulas to assess teams historically, or different numerical formulas to assess players. Not things I generally do. I tend to come up with numbers and date to assess teams and especially how it impacts the upcoming tournament. Which I am sure his limited interest as well.

But I do respect similar to what he said above that he looks at data to try to analyze rather than to only fit his views.

 

[jncuse]

In reality there are not two seasons in college basketball: the regular season and the NCAA tournament. There are three seasons: the non-conference schedule, the conference season and the NCAA tournament. And the current system evaluates teams in the first and last of them. it could be made fair if conference and non-conference games were more integrated as they are starting to be as conference schedules expand. The committee could also base their evaluation of conferences on more than just the present year and acknowledge that if you do well in a strong conference, even in a 'down' year, you must be a pretty good team.

Enjoyed the perspective but will focus on this last paragraph. In terms of the I'm not sure if the ACC improved that much compared to others... it certainly could have, but its hard to say as a whole. Obviously UNC as a team has improved substantially. Miami probably did as well.

I would really like if teams did what you bolded. It would be fairer and frankly add more entertainment to a time of the season that can sometimes drag as we wait for March. I remember one of the first regular season games I made a point of watching as an early teen. A friend of mine was obsessing about how big this upcoming UNLV-Arkansas game was going to be... in February 1990 I believe. Ended up being a dud, but you don't get big games like that anymore.

That being said I am not sure if the ACC would have done much better in the "OOC" race. It would have done better I think but not sure if the magnitude would have been much. What I am seeing right now more than anything is the top teams in the ACC were fine. But the number of poor teams doing stupid things is increasing in size from year to year, and its hurting everybody.

 

[longtimefan]

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.

Counterpoint, here.

Jim Larranaga was on PTI yesterday. He made the point that, with the portal, we are in a brand new era of NCAA hoops. The roster turnover from season to season for many teams will be extensive. That being the case, he concluded that the relative worth of teams will not be known until January. The squads where the pieces fit together (or don't) won't show their true worth until the conference season gets rolling in earnest.

If he is correct--and I think he makes a good case--maybe the committee needs to adjust the value they put on early-season vs. late-season games.

 

[jncuse]

Or the ranking of conferences is skewed. How does the Big 10 get 9 conference teams into the tournament yet just 3 teams winning 2 in a row making it into the sweet 16 with all 9 out by the elite 8? That sure doesn’t seen random. They made up over 13% to 14% of the entire field.

Perhaps playing just 10 or so total out of conference games all at the very beginning of the season coupled with the huge changes in team composition from the transfer portal and allowance for an additional year for seniors, played into what may appears to be unexpected results in March, April. Those early 10 games at the very beginning of the season are the only comparative conference stats available to make seeding and NCAA assumptions 3 months later. There’s definitely always some ‘luck’ involved regarding matchups, injuries, ’hot’ or ‘cold’ shooting etc that always makes the NCAA’s so interesting, somewhat unpredictable but the additional new factors and changes may make conference rankings much more difficult.

The Big East had 11 teams in the 2011 tournament.
Only one made the elite 8 (that school shall remain nameless!)
Only two of the 11 made the sweet 16, and they each had to be beat a Big East team in round 2 to make it.
It was not a successful tournament for the Big East except for that unnamed team.

The Big East got 11 teams that year for the same reason the Big Ten got 9 this year. Its top or middle teams as a whole did really well in out of conference play, and its worse teams didn't do stupid things like losing a bunch of bad games.

Also need to remember that its the Big East (16 team days), the BIG (14 teams), and the ACC (15 teams) are those that have had seasons with large numbers in the tournament. The metrics have been really good for the B12 and the Newer Big East in recent years as well but as 10 team leagues they are never going to get more than 6 or 7 in their good years.

If you follow some of my posts in November and December, I talk about the importance of the "multiplier" effect. If your teams did good in general before January, or bad in general, it just makes every in conference game start to look better or look worse. The multiplier effect results in some conferences getting a bunch of Q1 win opportunities (which is the largest determinant of selecting the field) and some not. There are years it has helped the ACC or the Big East, and there have been years it did not. But as I noted above this can result in some teams being overseeded and vice versa.

I know I have shown this chart multiple times now, but the level of stupid things the worst 9 teams in the ACC did this year was historically bad. It just destroyed things for everybody. The ACC has to many bad teams right now and its middle is not up to par. Things that don't really impact who does well in March, but certainly will impact who will get to March.

 

[jncuse]

Counterpoint, here.

Jim Larranaga was on PTI yesterday. He made the point that, with the portal, we are in a brand new era of NCAA hoops. The roster turnover from season to season for many teams will be extensive. That being the case, he concluded that the relative worth of teams will not be known until January. The squads where the pieces fit together (or don't) won't show their true worth until the conference season gets rolling in earnest.

If he is correct--and I think he makes a good case--maybe the committee needs to adjust the value they put on early-season vs. late-season games.

The portal factor was true. But it was true for every conference as well. How can you just assume it impacted the ACC more than others when selecting teams. You can't just guess who is good. You have to look at what conferences did to others.

How can you give equal credit to an ACC team going 6-4 to end the season vs a Big 12 team going 6-4 to end the season. Don't you have to consider those Big 12 opponents were actually winning quality games out of conference and more importantly not crapping the bed. 9 of the 14 ACC opponents were doing stupid things like losing to NorthWest Central Library School and Bill's Hairstylist Institute. You can't just ignore that.

Should we just take all power conference schools over .500?

Are you comfortable with treating Virginia (12-8 in the ACC) the same as Marquette who went 11-8 in the Big East because those schools had similar end of seasons. I just don't the rationale for doing it.

If you want to argue that you should not discount an ACC tourney team or appreciate that an ACC team may be better than the seed they earned that is perfectly fine and valid. But we can't let such assumptions dictate who is actually getting in.

And the fact of the matter those assumptions will not be made in the future because they are pure guesswork-- which means that until Syracuse gets out of the middle of the pack lull it has been in, it needs the middle and bottom of the ACC to be better.