Tracking the ACC OOC vs Other Leagues (24/25)

[jncuse]

I'll provide some more context behind the tracking (See Post #2 and #4 - I will try to keep that as the extent of my "theory posts" on this topic. See post #5 for what I will try to limit this thread to.

I have created a spreadsheet with various links, data pulls, that make it fairly easy to track - I just need to update the scores. I will be updating about 5 various tables as the season progresses related to OOC win%, margin , record against top 6 conferences, % of games by quad, and the summary table below.

Here are the initial results through the end of last night. Difficulty is based on Average KP for now (which I am using to approximate NET as they run under similar principles) until the NET first get released and I will replace that as the source.

The lower the "difficulty" number the harder the schedule The average KP is pretty high right now for everybody as leagues play cupcakes for the most part. 82% of games to date would be classified as Q4, if we equate KP to NET. Only 7% Q1, 1% Q2, 9% Q3, and 82% Q4. Until more games get played in the tougher quads not going to bother showing those.

Results to Date (about 15% of total OOC games played)

Lots of games to be played especially competitive ones instead of the largely cupcakes to date.

B10 has clearly the best in the short sample of games so far. Difficulty is about average, and they have a clear lead in margin.

Very early for the ACC. but I would suspect we are more in line with others at this point in 24 vs 23 and 22. But that is a guess. The ACC has played the easiest of the schedules, although for the most part they are all easy. 72% of ACC games are against bottom half Q4 Teams.

B10 has clearly the best in the short sample of games so far. Difficulty is about average, and they have a clear lead in margin.

ACC, B12, and SEC are hanging close which is better than last year anyway. Would probably rank them as B12 #2, SEC #3 (despite the losses) then ACC #4, but they are close/

Real tough start for the Big East. They haven't played anybody above Q3 -- and their margins show a clear lag.

Only the MWC and Big East have lost two Q4 games.

I'm tracking the MWC because they have been relevant in # of bids the last few years. They had a great Q2 performance (W/L) wise last year. We will see how they do. Right now its not so good. That being said they had an impressive road win last night (New Mexico at UCLA)

 

[jncuse]

More of an explanation behind my tracking

General Things - You might not like the system (and there are flaws and holes), but its the way it is and need to be analyzed within the context

1) Why does Conference OOC Performance Matter?
20 of Syracuse's 31 total regular season games will be against ACC teams - which represents the majority of our competitive games. And those teams, will have 20 of its games against ACC teams that you play. Creates a circular effect. Its similar in all conferences - there is a circular effect caused by how well you do. But the conference that will benefit the most from this circular effect is the one that did the best in OOC... or vice versa if you didn't do well.

How the ACC does in OOC (good compared to the top 6 or bad compared to the top 6), could really matter if we are a bubble team
- It will make our NET better if it does good... or vice versa
- Q2 wins could sneak into Q1's, Q3's could sneak into Q2 if it does good... but vice versa if it does bad.
- Conference does good not much potential for Q3 losses... (and vice versa)

2) NET is heavily influenced by margin as its based on efficiency (points per possession for/against)
Margin relative to schedule strength drives NET much more than pure Wins and Losses. The quality of wins and losses drives your selection, which is why NET is not a direct "in" to the tournament --- but at the same time NET will drive the ability to improve how your wins look.

Its somewhat based in the fact that the only way you can effectively rank 365 teams with massive difference in schedule is to bring in margin.

Don't have to like it, but it is what is.

 

[hoopsupstate]

Tennessee is crushing Louisville at the YUM Center. Horrible defense and can’t rebound.

 

[jncuse]

ACC vs B12 (Why was the gap so huge in terms of metrics last year)
I never tracked margin by "quad" until this year (after looking at last year's results). And there is a reason for that as you will see below.

As we are all aware the B12 has dwarfed the ACC in terms of seeds to the NCAA tournaments for the past 2 years. Has done much better in terms of AVERAGE or MEDIAN NET by its members.

- Despite some resistance by some here, in 22/23 the B12 absolutely crushed the ACC in OOC performance in terms of wins and losses. Just had to look at Q1 and Q2 games (wins and win%), and bad losses (which the ACC had lots) and the B12 did so much better in OOC. It was easy to see by simply looking at quality of wins and losses in Q1/Q2 and bad losses. A league with 10 teams (B12) had 30 good wins... the ACC with 15 teams only had 21 good wins. The Big 12 had 2 bad losses... the ACC had 18 bad losses (coming from 8 different teams)

- In 2023/2024, it wasn't clear by win/loss performance in Q1 and Q2 games why the B12 was so positively viewed compared to the ACC by NET. I would try to run W/L analysis at times like the prior year comparing the two, to quell the concerns, and it was not successful like the prior year. The B12 was a tad better in quality games... they had less bad losses, but nowhere near as big a gap as the earlier year. So why were they so positively viewed by NET compared to the ACC - almost to the same extent as the prior year? See below.

Comparing the ACC/B12 in 2023/2024

To better understand what happened in 23/24, so I can apply things better moving forward, I dug deeper in to quad games and margins. Not just wins and losses.

The first big misconception I found is that the B12 was benefitting because of garbage scheduling compared to the ACC. Fact is the ACC and B12 both play a cupcake heavy schedule. The B12 played 54% of its games against Q4 - the ACC 48%. In terms of the real "cupcakes" sub 260 NET, the ACC actually played more at 32% vs 28%.

But in a margin system, if 50% of the games are against cupcakes, then about 50% of the possessions OOC by both leagues are against cupcakes. As flawed as it is performance in these Q4 games, due to the sheer number of them, they become the most important factor in determining which league played best in OOC under NET. And every conference wins these games (ACC 95%, B12 96%). It comes down to margin as the separator.

So here is what happened margin wise Q4 games last year.
Q4 (260-365)
Big 12 - 30.6
ACC - 23.4

Q4 (160-260)
Big 12 - 20.8
ACC - 15.0

Basically a variance of about 6 points per game in Q4 games between the B12 and ACC. Might think 6 points is nothing, but its about 8.5 points / 100 possessions. In terms of KP, which largely parallels NET, that is the difference between a team that is #30 and #90 last year.!!!!

Part of that 6 points is probably because the B12 was better (you will see from the Q1-Q3 they were somewhat better). But part of this could be running up the score which is not good for basketball at all, but that is another discussion for getting rid of NET. Either way, it becomes clear that margin in Q4 games becomes really important for the ACC or any conference

So here is the data in Q1 to Q3 games. You will see the gap in performance between the conferences is much lower. Not like it was in the year before

Q1 Top Half
Big 12 (26 games) - 38% wins, -4.1 margin
ACC (39 games) - 33% wins, -7.3 margin

Q2
Big 12 (23 games) - 52% win, 1.0 margin
ACC (21 games) - 52% wins, 0.5 margin

The differences in win% in Q1 and Q2 are not significant between the two. You can see the B12 is better, but not much. The gap starts to really get wide in Q3 where the margin becomes 14.6 for the B12 vs ACC was 9.1. And then it becomes significant at Q4 - in part sure the B12 was better - but were they better at running up the score as well inentioanlly?. Maybe. But at the end of the day the ACC plays half its games against cupcakes like most of the leagues. It has to do well in these games compared to others. It makes NET very flawed, but it's necessary to monitor Q4 margin, as well as Q1+Q2 performance, to see how well you are doing. Again not arguing the merits for it, but just saying what it is.

 

[jncuse]

Anyway post #2 and #3 were the theory. And that will be the extent of those type posts in this thread by me anyway. I'll tend to refer to them and that;s about it.

Really the focus of this thread will be posting results tables (like in post #1) and analyzing them and that is it.

Game discussions or posting of results are always welcome. That being said Orange Extreme monitors that well and has consistent concise threads each week for ACC games, so that will probably get more eyeballs there.

 

[Cheriehoop]

St John’s vs Quinnipiac 48-43 with 17 minutes left in the 2nd half after the Johnnie’s scored 5 points straight when it was tied.

 

[jncuse]

St John’s vs Quinnipiac 48-43 with 17 minutes left in the 2nd half after the Johnnie’s scored 5 points straight when it was tied.

St Johns did end up pulling out a comfortable win, but I’m sure did not want to be tested like that.


That being said the Big east had another tough result. Seton Hall also lost to Fordham. A q3/q4 type loss. The tough start for the Big East continues.

Seton Hall, Butler and Nova with bad losses already . Add DePaul who will inevitably lose some bad games.

 

[jncuse]

END OF WEEK 1 UPDATE

Here is the updated summary table at the end of the first week of play. You will see how margins have gone down across the board since my last update (post #1) as well as difficulty. Teams tended to test themselves a "bit" more in their second games.

Reminder - The lower the "Difficulty" number, the harder the schedule is. The difference between 209 and 251 is about 3 points.

My current ranking from a "NET" perspective, which is primarily margin.

#1. B10/SEC... B10 is 21.7 margin. But a "209" team is about 2 points better than a "231" team, so that makes them close. Practically one could argue this ranks the SEC too high, and this would seem fair, but again relative margin really matters for the NET.
#3. B12.
#4. ACC
#5. Big East
#6. MWC (well back)

I could snip a whole bunch of tables relating to Win% by Quad, Margin by Quad, % Games by Quad, performance against other top conferences (head to head), but those samples are still all very small to have any meaning since 75% of games are "Q4".

Tidbits
- Majority of games are still Q4. Went down from 82% in post 1, to 75% now. Will be about 50% by OOC end so quality games are coming. ACC is currently at 79%
- The Big East has yet to play a Q1 or a Q2 game. Every other conference has had at least 3.such games.
- Q4 margin rankings (relevant since best base for comparison as of now)
B12 - 28.1
B10 - 26.9
SEC - 24.9
ACC - 22.9
Big East - 16.6
MWC - 11.8

- Quality Wins (Q1 as of now) per conference - Big 12-3, SEC -2, B10 - 1, ACC-1, MWC-1, Big East - 0.

Looks like we will have a barrage of Q4 type games to start the week again. Looking forward to the better matchups.

 

[jordoo]

jncuse, Thank you for tracking this!

 

[jncuse]

jncuse, Thank you for tracking this!

As I mentioned above margin has such an impact on NET and teams plays so many cupcakes, that the only way to really track OOC play is by tracking margin -- instead of quality games.

And one can more than validly argue that this is a not a great way (in fact a bad way) to rank teams or the downward impact from OOC into conference play. But that's the system, so that is why I am monitoring it.