Strength of ACC; NET & KenPom Tracker (24-25)

[Sbucketball]

Here’s a thread to discuss the relative strength of the ACC as a whole, which is important for Cuse and other teams that may not be the clear top in the conference but want to emerge on top of the middle of the pack and make the tournament. Instead of sending 8-9 teams to the tournament, the ACC lately has been sending 4-5 teams due to poor NET in the conference.

The ACC, while definitely not close to as strong as it used to be, has performed well the last couple years in the tournament despite the committee only letting a handful of teams in. It makes me wonder if there’s NET degradation, where if the conference as a whole, barring a few exceptions, starts ranked poorly in NET and has less than stellar non-conference, it makes it very difficult for the conference to climb out of the hole since during conference play they're only playing each other. At the very least it deprives teams of as many Q1 opportunities as other conferences. Compare to the Big 12 for example where it feels like every other game is a Q1 opportunity. Last year there was a lot of talk in the national media about whether the Big 12 gamed the NET in the pre-season, which set its conference up really well once they only played each other.

There’s a chart below that I made comparing this year’s rankings to last year’s rankings. Now, I know pre-season rankings are meaningless in the portal era, but I’m starving for basketball so I’m spending time with it anyway. Also, I’ll update this thread with more charts once the NET comes out and we have meaningful data.

Team	23-24 KenPom Pre-Season	23-24 NET post-season	24-25 KenPom pre-season	Change in pre-season KenPom (neg. is positive change)
Duke	9	10	2	-7
Wake	73	43	44	-30
VT	65	60	92	+27
Virginia	33	54	78	+45
Clemson	51	35	24	-27
ND	165	124	69	-96
UNC	17	8	14	-3
NC State	61	63	52	-9
Miami	45	101	55	+10
Louisville	109	216	64	-45
Cal	n/a (146)	n/a (128)	135	n/a (-11)
BC	128	81	113	-15
Georgia Tech	118	127	70	-48
Florida State	88	96	90	+2
Syracuse	105	84	68	-37
Stanford	n/a (42)	n/a (113)	99	n/a (+57)
Pitt	62	40	38	-24
SMU	n/a (92)	n/a (65)	74	n/a (-18)
Average	75.3 (not including newcomers)	76.1 (not including newcomers)	65.6 (including all)	-17.1 (not including newcomers)
Range	9 to 165	8 to 216	2 to 135	-96 to +45

When comparing last year’s pre-season KenPom to this year’s pre-season KenPom, the ACC has moved in a positive direction from average of 75 (not including newcomers) to an average of 65 (including everyone). The old ACC teams have moved up in the pre-season rankings by an average of 17 spots. Also, there's really only 3 teams whose kenpom pre-season ranking is worse than where they ended in NET last year. Likewise, only 3 teams have a worse kenpom this year when compared to last year's preseason kenpom (not counting ones that are really close and only off by a couple spots since that's essentially equal in my eyes). So most ACC teams are predicted to be better (and I know it's tough to predict, but it's still interesting to me, and, like I said, I'm starving for basketball).

The poorly ranked teams were traps for NET last year especially because some of them started playing well at the end of the year like Fl State and ND. The ACC should not have Q4 games, but we had that last year. Last year the ACC started the pre-season with one team ranked 165 and ending with a team being ranked with 216 NET. Last year’s pre-season KenPom started 5 ACC teams with triple digits, and NET ended with 4 teams in triple digits and another super close. This year the worst pre-season ranking is 135 and there’s only 2 teams in triple digits.

Once we have meaningful data and the NET is published, it would be extremely helpful to have as many teams as possible in the Top 75, since playing them away is a Q1 game. And I believe away games are weighted 1.4 compared to 0.6 for home games. So Q1 away is the golden ticket. Last year the ACC’s pre-season ranked 9 teams in the Top 75 and 6 teams above 75 (and end of season NET had 7 teams outside of Top 75). This year’s pre-season ranks 12 teams in the Top 75 and 6 teams above 75.

Here’s the guideline for the quadrant system:

• Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
• Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
• Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
• Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353

Now, while we hope for the conference to be better than last year, it’s still last in average pre-season KenPom rating out of the major conferences. However, KenPom basically takes data from the previous year, so of course the ACC was going to start out worse than the other conferences. The ACC needs to perform well in the non-conference in order to get a respectable NET before the teams only play each other.

Other conference average kenpom pre-season:

• SEC – 38
• Big 10 – 43
• Big 12 – 43
• Big East – 54
• ACC – 66 (see chart above)

I’ll update and track this once we have meaningful data.