More Bids, And How To Get Them

[gw67]

Based on their article on the front page, Julio and Boswell would be a demanding management team. They would immediately fire 25% of the ACC basketball coaches and put two of the remaining nine coaches on notice. I understand some of the thoughts. The natives are restless at Maryland and Virginia, and Hewitt has done little with good talent. I admire Skinner as a coach but it is not clear why the DBR boys are being easy on him. He didn’t do well last year and the upcoming year doesn’t look promising. On the other hand, it appears that Florida State may have a good incoming class. As some have pointed out, there are 96 wins and 96 losses every year. When you have UNC and Duke mopping up, it is difficult to get 6 teams into the NCAAT. IMO, the formula for getting teams into the tournament is as follows:

• Schedule a decent OOC schedule with very few teams expected to have RPI’s above 200 and with a handful of top major and competitive mid-major teams.
• Win a high % of your OOC games and don’t have any bad losses.
• Win at least half of your league games.

I found DBR’s suggestion that Brey be Maryland’s coach interesting, particularly, since they later suggest that former Terp assistant, Patsos, be considered for Florida State job. I like Brey who has deep roots in DC area but he hasn’t recruited the area for many years and may have lost his old contacts. Besides, I doubt the he would leave ND. Patsos was well liked at Maryland and has the local contacts and energy to do well on the recruiting trail. If Williams retires or is fired, it will be very interesting. A number of Maryland alums have no confidence in the AD making a good decision on his successor.

gw67

[ugadevil]

I find the talk about the Ga. Tech job to be interesting. If UGA's season hadn't ended the way it did, Ga. Tech probably would have had the opportunity to go after Dennis Felton because he wasn't going to last in Athens. Ironically, if Ga. Tech wanted to pursue someone who's familiar with recruiting in this area, they could talk to Tubby Smith. I think Tubby's still looking to return to the south.

[Dar95]

Swofford's reaction to this is somewhat baffling - the quotes about considering "conference affiliation" as a criterion make it seem like he doesn't really understand the process. The only way that you could consider conference affiliation in a way separate from how it is considered today would be to give a team credit just for the fact that they are in the ACC, which hardly seems fair.

The way to get lots of teams in is to have multiple teams with significant accomplishments out of conference, and then to have those same teams perform well (i.e., at least .500-ish) in conference. Adding more conference games would seem to tend to have a negative impact on both of those. If you take away two non-conference games, in the majority of the cases the cupcakes aren't the ones getting removed - it seems like most of the time when you hear a coach grilled on his non-conference schedule you'll get a reference to how many tough conference games you have to play. For example, Sendek mentioned the extra Pac 10 games a number of times when asked about his SOS this year. Plus, if Greenberg and other coaches are already talking about getting "beat up" in conference, adding more games isn't going to help that.

[hurleyfor3]

Let's review the additions to the ACC over the last 30 years, shall we?

1. GIT = football school (has done well in hoops for sure, but follow along with me here)
2. Florida State = football school
3. VPI = football school
4. UMiami = football school
5. BC = football school

And it comes as some surprise we're not getting as many bids as we were in the 1980s as an eight-team league?

[Bluedawg]

very good points, especially the ones on Ga tech "Another year out and Paul Hewitt will get some heat. Tech should be in every year" and State "Team chaos. Who knows? State has a lot of work to do." [http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=24958]

I've had the same thoughts about tech, they have been so close for a while but haven't been able to take the next step up. My friends at State tell me the same thing. The best comment I've haeard about State is from Caulton Tudor. he pointed out that Sidney treats the players like men while he should treat them like kids. this is not the NBA.

[Classof06]

I find the talk about the Ga. Tech job to be interesting. If UGA's season hadn't ended the way it did, Ga. Tech probably would have had the opportunity to go after Dennis Felton because he wasn't going to last in Athens. Ironically, if Ga. Tech wanted to pursue someone who's familiar with recruiting in this area, they could talk to Tubby Smith. I think Tubby's still looking to return to the south.

I think Paul Hewitt deserves more time. When he made the schedule for last season, he had no idea both Javaris Crittendon and Thaddeus Young wouldn't be there and the Jackets stuggled accordingly. This is a guy that had GT in the national championship game in 2004 depsite losing Chris Bosh just the year before. And he's made the tournament 3 out of the past 5 seasons. Not spectacular, but he's earned another year or two, IMO.

Then again, I'm not a GT fan..

[ugadevil]

I think Paul Hewitt deserves more time. When he made the schedule for last season, he had no idea both Javaris Crittendon and Thaddeus Young wouldn't be there and the Jackets stuggled accordingly. This is a guy that had GT in the national championship game in 2004 depsite losing Chris Bosh just the year before. And he's made the tournament 3 out of the past 5 seasons. Not spectacular, but he's earned another year or two, IMO.

Then again, I'm not a GT fan..

Hewitt might be punished for his surroundings more than anything else. He has to deal with the fact that he's at an institution that isn't really succeeding in their main sports right now. In this state, the Jackets continue to underachieve and the fan base is getting anxious. I think Tubby Smith will coach in Georgia again. Now, whether it's in Atlanta or Athens remains to be seen.

[davekay1971]

Let's review the additions to the ACC over the last 30 years, shall we?

1. GIT = football school (has done well in hoops for sure, but follow along with me here)
2. Florida State = football school
3. VPI = football school
4. UMiami = football school
5. BC = football school

And it comes as some surprise we're not getting as many bids as we were in the 1980s as an eight-team league?

I would give you a hearty amen, except that those football schools have performed as well as (or better than) some of the traditional ACC basketball powers lately (UVa, State, Maryland, Wake). Even Clemson, the longstanding bastion of ACC football schools, managed to outperform most of the basketball schools this year. Perhaps if Va Tech, Miami, and Florida State had turned out to be the basketball creampuffs that they were thought to be, the 5th and 6th best basketball teams in the conference could pad their record with 4-6 easy wins each year, and would have a better chance of getting in the big dance (a la SEC and Big East schools).

At any rate, I don't care much for the griping our conference is doing about getting more teams in. I don't think the ACC can make a plausible argument about getting more teams into the NCAA tournament after our (the conference's) performance this last year. Back in the day (ie: a few years ago), the ACC tended to get an excellent proportion of teams invited to the tournament into the sweet 16, and we had every right to claim that one or two more teams from our conference should have gotten in. Nothing will help the ACC to get additional teams invited to the NCAAs more than good performances from the teams that do get in.

[phaedrus]

I don't like the idea that the committe should somehow "quota" the number of spots based on overall conference strength. It seems like the ACC has been exceptionally strong in the RPI in recent years not because of the strength of its bubble teams (i.e., those placing 4th through 7th or 8th in the conference) but because the very worst teams in the ACC are better than the very worst teams in other conferences. Should an 8-8, 5th place ACC team with a mediocre OOC record be rewarded because our 12th place team is better than the SEC's 12th place team? I don't think so.

[gw67]

Should an 8-8, 5th place ACC team with a mediocre OOC record be rewarded because our 12th place team is better than the SEC's 12th place team? I don't think so.

On the face of it, I agree with the above statement. However, the argument by ACC coaches and school officials is that a 19-12 overall record and an 8-8 or 7-9 record in conference could possibly be 21-10 and 10-6/9-7 and much more attractive in the eyes of the NCAAT committee if the bottom rung teams in the ACC were as weak as the Big Ten and Big East. I think that the coaches and officials are correct but I don't think that they will get far with this argument. The teams need to have a strong OOC record and a .500 or better record in conference to get a bid. That is just the way it is.

Most Duke and UNC fans have no idea what it is like to worry about a teams' OOC and ACC records, bad losses and good wins. We Duke fans are very fortunate to have an outstanding team year after year, IMO. Fans of other ACC schools are not nearly so lucky and their schools sometimes pay a price in the NCAAT sweepstakes for the league being relatively stronger at the bottom.

gw67

[Matches]

Tech has rarely been an "in every year" type of program. Cremins had a nice run there but even he didn't get in every year, and was missing pretty regularly by the time his run ended. I'm not a huge Hewitt fan by any means but if I were the GT AD I wouldn't be looking to make a change unless I knew I could hit a home run ala Tubby.

Likewise, Maryland has rarely been a perennial power. Clearly there are some problems there right now but they've got a guy who has proven he can win and has a NC to his credit. Again - I'm no Sweaty fan - I think he's an odious little man - but firing him seems a bit harsh.

NCSU is in trouble. Lowe gave that program a lot of energy in his first season but he is not a good game coach at all. He looked completely lost last season. Not sure where State goes from there, though - they didn't exactly have a line around the block for the job last time through.

Duke, UNC, Miami, Clemson, VaTech and probably BC are set for the immediate future. Too soon to tell on Gaudio at Wake. UVa might need to make a change within a few years.

Expansion was a bad idea from the get-go as re: basketball, as it loaded down the conference with okay-but-not-great programs like VT or Miami - adding them to some of the existing mediocre programs really makes the whole conference look like a sea of mediocrity.

[PumpkinFunk]

Regarding Gary Williams and Maryland:

Word around the DC area is that he's made what could be a career-killing move with Tyree Evans. Maryland is going downhill fast from the 02 championship, and they have been pretty bad. Yes, they always get the 1 or 2 shocking wins a season, but their team is full of players who don't close out a game so well. Vasquez, as much as I hate him, at least has the heart that Gary's teams need to succeed. That 02 team wasn't particularly amazing, they just played hard and won that way.

The biggest thing for Maryland is that they have a terrible reputation with local recruits because of their fans. I'm a Duke freshman now, and since I can remember, their fans have rioted and burned things every game. 02 was perhaps the worst, but when they crossed into DC, destroyed a lot of property and had mass arrests, they truly ruined the little reputation that Maryland had. There's a lot of good recruits in the DC area, but Gary just cannot get any of them.