I might be in the minority here.
My view on any year Carolina wins the regular-season: Congratulations, Cliff Ellis is applauding; you have won a piece of cloth that says "winner." As we all know, however, that piece of cloth means about as much as a participant ribbon at the local Pinewood Derby.
That obviously means I still want to beat the hell out of them and win the the regular season for seeding purposes to the real show, the ACC men's basketball tournament. And, also as we all know, Duke has won the real ACC championship nine of the past 12 years. Carolina? Well, just two. But they do during that time span have a tomb full of participant ribbons. Oh wait, the same number of ACC #1 seeds as Duke. Five.
Upon closer look. Since 1991 (last 20 years)
ACC #1 Seeds
Duke 11, North Carolina 7
ACC Championships
Duke 10, North Carolina 6
National Championships (for good measure)
Duke 4, North Carolina 3
Head-to-Head (humiliation)
Duke 27, North Carolina 21
Pretty telling numbers, I think. Glad I decided to examine it all. Definitely makes me feel better about myself. :)
Warning: Dorky Discussion of #1 Seed
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Reilly
I'm not sure I understand your post. The odds of everything happening (Duke lose to VT, Duke lose to UNC, UNC win both of its other games) is 5%. That's not ridiculous; just compound probability. Just one of the things *not* happening (we win at VT, we win against UNC, UNC lose one of its other games) throws us into the 95% camp.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vincetaylor
If you were a betting man, would you honestly take the Duke side of that bet? Personally, I would give UNC more like a 30% of beating us outright. I'm pretty sure Vegas would be around 4:1 or 5:1, certainly not 20:1.
So, getting a bit confused by the discussion, I modeled all the possible outcomes of Duke and Carolina wins and losses over the final three conference games. There are 32 such combinations (dorky explanation: there are eight possible combinations of wins and losses over three games: w-w-w, w-w-l, etc. But Carolina and Duke play each other so, there are 32, not 64 total possible outcomes). Of the 32 combinations, 21 (66%) favor Duke and 11 (34%) favor Carolina. That implicitly assumes each game is a 50-50 proposition.
If one assumes (I never assume anything, so it must be someone else) that Duke (v. Clemson) and UNC (v. Maryland) hold serve at home, there are only eight (8) possible outcomes of the remaining games. Five favor Duke (62.5%), three Carolina. The only case in which the Duke-UNC winner is not the #1 seed is if Duke wins against VT and UNC loses at FSU.
So, it may be that Duke has a better chance of winning over VT, Clemson and UNC than UNC has of winning against Maryland, FSU, and Duke, but I don't see how jiggering those odds in any reasonable way produces a 95% chance of a Duke #1 seed.
sagegrouse