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

[Niastri]

Interesting, I would have thought it would have been 9, but you have it sourced. One of the variances between KP and NET, but in the whole scheme of things its not much of an impact. At the end of the day that 1 (or 8 point difference if looked at the other way) is not going to matter much.

What will matter more for our individual NET, is that a #35 type team would have about 60-70 point margin total against those teams (rough guess)... instead of the 7 points we have. So that's a 60 point variance or so Drastically hurts our individual NET.

That being said if we somehow start winning against good teams we can overcome our individual NET.
What is hurting us though is that we will be brought down by the overall quality of the ACC which will reduce Q1/Q2 win opportuniites.

Do you think, based on current results, that a significant number of ACC teams will be outside Q2?

If so, that's a disaster. The ACC really can't afford to be a 4 bid conference with 20ish (who bothers to count?) teams.

 

[M2MPrinciples]

Relatedly, in last week's McNeese-Bama game, Will Wade didn't play the foul game facing an 8-point deficit with a little under a minute left. In hindsight, he didn't want to risk a single-digit loss becoming a double-digit loss and damaging their NET. Pre-NET, most coaches would've tried to extend the game in that situation. Some still might today.

 

[jncuse]

Update after November 22 -- quite a few intra conference games the last few days, but it didn't really benefit the ACC... it fell back a bit.

At this point the SEC is the clear #1 conference - whether looking at margin (like above) or quality wins, per below.

Unfortunately, the ACC has fell down to the #5 conference. The BE schedule has been a few points easier (so that closes a fair portion of the margin gap), but its doing better in quality games. ACC is doing very poorly in quality games

Other Points
Record against other Top Conferences
SEC.. 17-6
BE,,, 6-5
B10.. 9-10
B12... 8-9
MWC,,, 4-6
ACC.. 8-16

Record against Q1+Q2
SEC 15-7
BE 6-4
B10 8-12
B12 8-12
ACC 6-17

Q1 Wins - SEC 8, B12 5, B10 4, ACC/BE/MWC all with 3
Bad Losses - SEC 1, B12 1, B10 1, ACC 4, BE 6, MWC 9

Game Quality
61% of games are still Q4 (BE high at 73%, SEC Low at 56%)

B12 is at 57%, but margin wise is still ahead at 29.1 (SEC 26.4)... it helps them stay clsoer metric wise, because SEC has been way better in quality games. ACC at 20.4 margin in Q4 games (now down to #5). They have a very similar trends to last year - they are not much better than the ACC in quality games, but crush them in Q4 games -- it will help their NET relatively. Again is this a league wide strategy (not the scheduling because all leagues doing it, but do they crush teams more than other leagues?)

 

[jncuse]

Do you think, based on current results, that a significant number of ACC teams will be outside Q2?

If so, that's a disaster. The ACC really can't afford to be a 4 bid conference with 20ish (who bothers to count?) teams.

I'd like to build a comp of this data for last year to see where exactly we are trending comparison wise. I did do it for the B12, and our gap is similar to last year.

I'm thinking it will end up close to last year ... certainly no better as of now. perhaps a bit worse. It does look like a 4-5 team league, as the middle of the conference isn't going to help each other out.

 

[jncuse]

At this point the SEC is probably more likely than not to hit the 10 team mark in the NCAA Tournament. They are clearly the best conference as of now -- look at the quality win records compared to others.

They will have the Q1 and Q2 wins build up in conference as the middle of the pack teams help each other out.

They will have strong OOC wins beyond the metrics.

 

[jncuse]

The ACC is currently 1-8 vs the SEC. It could be ugly in the ACC-SEC challenge.

Vs other top conferences the ACC is a more respectable 7-8.

 

[Lukeyloo]

How is it that our rankings, specifically talking KP, took such a dive when we performed worse than expected in the first 3 games (while still winning), but didn't improve at all when we performed better than expected in the two recent losses? I would think if we can go down, even in wins, then we should be able to improve in losses against good teams.

This leads me to believe we screwed up our analytics so bad in only 3 games that we'll be hard-pressed to make any impactful gains.

 

[DoctahLexus]

How is it that our rankings, specifically talking KP, took such a dive when we performed worse than expected in the first 3 games (while still winning), but didn't improve at all when we performed better than expected in the two recent losses? I would think if we can go down, even in wins, then we should be able to improve in losses against good teams.

This leads me to believe we screwed up our analytics so bad in only 3 games that we'll be hard-pressed to make any impactful gains.

Nahhh. Just win baby. If the ACC is indeed a poor conference this year then we just need to prove we can play towards the top. We just kept pace with two quality teams in the SEC and Big 12. If we make a statement in the ACC we can still get places this year.

 

[Sbucketball]

How is it that our rankings, specifically talking KP, took such a dive when we performed worse than expected in the first 3 games (while still winning), but didn't improve at all when we performed better than expected in the two recent losses? I would think if we can go down, even in wins, then we should be able to improve in losses against good teams.

This leads me to believe we screwed up our analytics so bad in only 3 games that we'll be hard-pressed to make any impactful gains.

I'm guessing the moves are smaller as there's more game data, kind of like calculating an average -- an outlier early in the count can skew it far whereas an outlier late in the count doesn't move it as far.

 

[MikeSU02]

Update after November 22 -- quite a few intra conference games the last few days, but it didn't really benefit the ACC... it fell back a bit.


View attachment 247022

At this point the SEC is the clear #1 conference - whether looking at margin (like above) or quality wins, per below.

Unfortunately, the ACC has fell down to the #5 conference. The BE schedule has been a few points easier (so that closes a fair portion of the margin gap), but its doing better in quality games. ACC is doing very poorly in quality games

Other Points
Record against other Top Conferences
SEC.. 17-6
BE,,, 6-5
B10.. 9-10
B12... 8-9
MWC,,, 4-6
ACC.. 8-16

Record against Q1+Q2
SEC 15-7
BE 6-4
B10 8-12
B12 8-12
ACC 6-17

Q1 Wins - SEC 8, B12 5, B10 4, ACC/BE/MWC all with 3
Bad Losses - SEC 1, B12 1, B10 1, ACC 4, BE 6, MWC 9

Game Quality
61% of games are still Q4 (BE high at 73%, SEC Low at 56%)

B12 is at 57%, but margin wise is still ahead at 29.1 (SEC 26.4)... it helps them stay clsoer metric wise, because SEC has been way better in quality games. ACC at 20.4 margin in Q4 games (now down to #5). They have a very similar trends to last year - they are not much better than the ACC in quality games, but crush them in Q4 games -- it will help their NET relatively. Again is this a league wide strategy (not the scheduling because all leagues doing it, but do they crush teams more than other leagues?)

SEC is going to dominate the CFP at large bids and the NCAAT at large bids, while the ACC may end up like zero at large for CFP and then maybe 3-4 in the NCAAT. I know this is the bball board, but, man, this is rough.

Just have to take care of business and own your own future as much as possible, but man this is a brutal hill to climb.

 

[orangecuse]

The ACC is currently 1-8 vs the SEC. It could be ugly in the ACC-SEC challenge.

Vs other top conferences the ACC is a more respectable 7-8.

Yeah, the ACC nowadays, and for some time now, has generally become what the SEC used to be (sans UK) and vice versa, sans Duke and UNC. The ACC is and has been such weak sauce, if hoops had the power ($$$) as football et al, it's likely both Duke and UNC would be pulling Florida State and Clemson type antics.

 

[jncuse]

How is it that our rankings, specifically talking KP, took such a dive when we performed worse than expected in the first 3 games (while still winning), but didn't improve at all when we performed better than expected in the two recent losses? I would think if we can go down, even in wins, then we should be able to improve in losses against good teams.

This leads me to believe we screwed up our analytics so bad in only 3 games that we'll be hard-pressed to make any impactful gains.

We were #106 after Youngstown St (went and checked archive.org) and we have only moved up to #100. You are correct in assuming we should have moved up further if it was purely based on this year's data as they were good margin losses. And in a "current year" data model we probably did move up quite a bit.

TLDR - Just see the bolded below
The reason the move up is not that quick is the "preseason weights" impact declines after each game which work against us. Our preseason rank of around #65, becomes less and less of a factor in our rank.

KP's model has some preseason weights for the first 8 to 10 games (per his own words), that roll up by game. How he rolls it off, I'm not sure but let's say he rolls off 12% per game. He has to do that to allow the system to run to start, and also doesn't want stupid ranks after 2 or 3 games. Because after 3 games if we used current year data only we were probably closer to #180-200than #100... just guessing here,

After Game 1: 12% current year, 88% preseason
Game 2 : 24/70
Game 3: 36/64
Game 4: 48/52
Game 5: 60/40

So after 3 games our current season data (which is worse than our preseason rank) was still only 36% of our KP.
But now after 5 games current season data to 60%..

So while we were improving our current season data by playing Texas Tech and Texas well, our preseason weight (which was keeping our KP ranking higher) was starting to decline in importance from game 3 to game 5. So the two factors together are the reason we didn't move up as high as one would expect.

 

[jncuse]

Nahhh. Just win baby. If the ACC is indeed a poor conference this year then we just need to prove we can play towards the top. We just kept pace with two quality teams in the SEC and Big 12. If we make a statement in the ACC we can still get places this year.

There are 2 ways to always look at these things.

1) If your conference does bad in OOC, it should be easier to do well in conference. Sort of what your implying. You still control your own destiny.

2) My observation has always been that the circular nature of NET and RPI perhaps ends up rewarding the top "major" OOC conferencs a bit too much and punishes the weakest "major" a bit too much.. Now don't get me wrong, the top conferences in OOC should absolutely get more reward and vice versa.

But if the ACC continues at its current path, you are asking league members to go 13-7 or 14-6 to get in versus the 10-10 of year's past.

 

[jncuse]

I'm guessing the moves are smaller as there's more game data, kind of like calculating an average -- an outlier early in the count can skew it far whereas an outlier late in the count doesn't move it as far.

That's part of it as well as the preseason weight I explained above. Our variances from expectation were lower in the latter two. If we were #68 (our startin point) we were expected to beat Lemoyne by 23 points... that was a 21 point fall. We have gained 5 or 6 points in each of the last 2 games.

 

[jncuse]

SEC is going to dominate the CFP at large bids and the NCAAT at large bids, while the ACC may end up like zero at large for CFP and then maybe 3-4 in the NCAAT. I know this is the bball board, but, man, this is rough.

Just have to take care of business and own your own future as much as possible, but man this is a brutal hill to climb.

If we are a top program it doesn't really matter... unfortunately that has been a while for us! Arguably being in a bad conference could make you be a #2 seed instead of a #1, a #4 or #5 instead of a #3, because you just can't get as many quality wins.

Unfortunately when you are in the middle of a conference (a bubble team), like we have become, it just demands you do much better in the ACC than before.

It's a tough hill as you say.

 

[Lukeyloo]

At this point the SEC is probably more likely than not to hit the 10 team mark in the NCAA Tournament. They are clearly the best conference as of now -- look at the quality win records compared to others.

They will have the Q1 and Q2 wins build up in conference as the middle of the pack teams help each other out.

They will have strong OOC wins beyond the metrics.

The SEC really is THE conference. They're the best in football and now basketball. Cash rules everything..

 

[jncuse]

Tracking the trends
Week 1-2: November 4 to November 17 (More creampuffs, hence the schedule # was higher ... i.e. less difficult

Week 3-4 (only half way done): November 18 to December 1 (More intraconference play, schedule is getting tougher.

NOTE - The Week 3-4 numbers are not TOTALS for the entire year. These are two splits to show who is trending up and down.

A few points here:
Trending Down ACC - After week 1 and 2, the ACC was about tied for 4th with the Big East. Margin was lower than BE, but schedule was tougher than BE. As games tougher, the ACC has struggled. In weeks 3-4 (so far) the ACC is clearly in fifth margin wise. They are only marginally ahead of the MWC in these 2 weeks.

Trending Way Down B12 - B12 did very well comparably in weeks 1-2, where schedules were more cupcake heavy for all conferences. In week 1/2, they were the clear #2 in margin. Now the schedule has gotten tougher, and they have had a mighty fall in these weeks. Worst winning % ... margin is clearly behind SEC, B10 and BE. Add to my theory that while everybody plays a heavy sched of cupcakes, the B12 has a strategy/mentality to really crush it in those games.

Trending up BE - Big East made the most improvement over the last few weeks. In week 1/2 it was either #4 or #5 with the ACC. In this period its the clear #3.

Trending up SEC - SEC continues to stay at the top, its margin overall widened with the fall of the B12 in this period.

 

[jncuse]

There are a lot of key games the rest of this week, so it will be interesting to see how much these change. If the ACC wants to turn it around this is probably the metric they could most improve. They are not going to get to the top, but close the margin. Also interesting to see how bad the B12 is doing in these games

These are head to head records against the other top conference
(Note - these records include Q1/Q2 games against schools outside of the top confernces)

SEC: 21-10 (68%)
Big East: 10-7 (59%)
Big Ten: 15-13 (54%)
MWC: 6-10 (38%)
B12: 10-17 (37%)
ACC: 11-22 (33%)

As an aside Q1/Q2 schools from outside the best conferences, are 16-9 when facing the best conference.