Tracking the ACC vs Other Leagues (2025/2026)

[jncuse]

Some early season tracking of the ACC vs the other "P5" conferences.

If you want to see some rationale for this, the why, the importance of doing well in Q4 games, whatever, it might be covered here at some point, but you can read my first few posts in last year's thread linked below.

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

Nov 9, 2024

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...

• jncuse
• Replies: 94
• Forum: Syracuse Men's Basketball Board

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[jncuse]

It's been a good start for the ACC so far, but in a very small sample.

(Note - For difficulty below, the higher the number the easier the schedule - most are in the same range, except for the B12 who has played less bottom feeders)

In terms of NET impact so far it would go.
1. SEC
2. ACC
3. B10
4. B12
5. BE

B12 margin of 18.6 is a bit understated because they have played the toughest schedule of the bunch. But they would still be 4th.

Not tracking "quality" and "head to head" matches yet which matter too. Too small a sample.

In last year's thread, I seem to have something that would have been up to the end of the first weekend, so I'll compare the two after the games tomorrow.

 

[jncuse]

This was the final tally when I stopped tracking around December 20th last year. So about 85% of the total OOC games.

On similar schedule difficulties we were comfortably in 5th place in win% and margin. The SEC was absolutely dominant last year, and we were bad. Let's hope things change this year.

 

[jncuse]

After the first week of games the argument can be made that the ACC had the top week when we look at performance, and mostly margin at this point because everybody mostly starts soft.

My rankings would be #1 ACC, #2. SEC, #3 Big Ten, although the three are all tight in the margin game... I'll give the tie-break to ACC because of doing well in a small sample of head to head, and SEC struggling in those. There is a gap then, B12 is in 4th and BE is 5th. Tables will be posted tomorrow.


- From a margin perspective and impact on NET, right now the ACC has the best margin at 25.9 per game. (SEC is at 23.7 and Big 10 is at 23.5). That being said the SEC and BIG played tougher schedules so far, so when you consider that they are all about equal. I use a ratio of margin to difficulty to try to equate sched's and have SEC at 10.2%, ACC at 10.1%, and BIG at 9.8%... then there is a gap with B12 coming in at 8.0% and BE at 6.6%.

ACC has played the softest schedule to date.

- In a very small sample. ACC is also doing well in head to head between the 5 conferences (I also add Q1+Q2 games against other conferences.

ACC is 3-1
B12 4-2, B10 2-2, SEC 2-5, BE 1-4.

Its very early, but SEC won over 75% of head to head matchups last year, so 2-5 is indicative that they will not have that same level of historic year again in OOC. To be fair the SEC has played a lot of head to head road games, which most others have avoided.

I'd say after this week (and 3-4 games per team) trends are going to form that may well hold.

 

[jncuse]

I have updated for games played up to end of tonight.

I'll try to explain the why I ranked them this way tomorrow. but here are my current rankings.
#1-#3 are very close, and could go either way, but I have it as follows.

#1. ACC
#2. SEC
#3. B10

#4. B12

#5. BE

BE is way back.
B12 is doing the opposite (early) of what they did in prior years. They are doing well in quality and head to head games against other conferences (6-3), but Q4 margin is a little sub par.

By this point last year ACC was already clearly #5, and kept heading in the wrong direction. So big improvement.

 

[jncuse]

I'll also note that the ACC has now played 23% (50 of 216) of its OOC games as a conference.

A small enough sample where they could fall out of the top tier by the end of December.

BUT, 23% is also a large enough sample to conclude they will do much better in OOC than the last 3 years. The question is how much.