ACC tournament seeding

[DeepBlue70]

Admittedly, this is pretty premature, but I was wondering in the "what if?' category...Say we go undefeated in league play, including beating the Heels in CH on March 8. Then we are tied at the top of the standings. Now that we have an unbalanced league schedule does anyone know what the tie breakers would look like for the top seed in the tourney?

[pfrduke]

Admittedly, this is pretty premature, but I was wondering in the "what if?' category...Say we go undefeated in league play, including beating the Heels in CH on March 8. Then we are tied at the top of the standings. Now that we have an unbalanced league schedule does anyone know what the tie breakers would look like for the top seed in the tourney?

It will all depend on who finishes in second. If it's Wake, we'd have the tiebreaker. If it's Clemson, UNC would. If it's BC, it depends who finishes third. If it's FSU, I'm not 100% sure how it would work, because I don't know if the ACC treats 2-0 as better than 1-0 (in which case we would hold the tiebreaker) or just goes by winning %. As an aside, got to love the UNC ACC schedule this year - 1 game against Clemson, 1 against Wake, 1 against FSU, 1 against BC - the teams they play twice are Duke, NCSU, Miami, Virginia, and Maryland (or Duke and 4 of the bottom 5 teams in conference).

[JStuart]

got to love the UNC ACC schedule this year - 1 game against Clemson, 1 against Wake, 1 against FSU, 1 against BC - the teams they play twice are Duke, NCSU, Miami, Virginia, and Maryland (or Duke and 4 of the bottom 5 teams in conference).

Doesn't Swofford insist on UNC getting the best schedule every year? Seemed that way last year, too. You could look it up.

[CDu]

I'm less concerned about being the #1 or #2 seed. I'm more interested in not having to face UNC until Sunday (if we both get there).

That's one of the nice things about the win over Wake. We've now positioned ourselves such that if we beat Maryland, VT, and FSU we'll be assured of finishing in the top 3, regardless of how we do against UNC. It doesn't really matter to me if we end up #2 to UNC's #1 or #1 to UNC's #2 in the tournament seeding. Forcing UNC to have to go through at least one of Clemson, Wake, and FSU before facing us would be terrific. And of course, avoiding playing on Thursday is nice as well.

Ultimately, we're still going to have to beat a solid team and a pretty good team to get to the ACC finals. But it'd be nice to avoid having to beat UNC on Saturday and to increase the possibility that UNC doesn't face us at all.

[pfrduke]

Doesn't Swofford insist on UNC getting the best schedule every year? Seemed that way last year, too. You could look it up.

Actually, last season their schedule was pretty neutral - 6th in the league in difficulty.

Given that the unbalanced schedules are fixed several seasons in advance, it would take some kind of freaky prescience on the part of Swofford to fix it so UNC's was easiest every season.

[Olympic Fan]

Just for the record, with the unbalanced schedule 2-0 = 1-0 and 0-2 is equal to 0-1 as far as tiebreakers.

As mentioned above, the tiebreaker for any position is first head-to-head, then it is record against the top teams counting down until there is a resolution.

Let's assume today's standings are final.

UNC gets the No. 1 seed by basis of its 10-3 ACC record.

Duke, Clemson and FSU are tied for second at 8-4 ... First tiebreaker is head-to-head against each other ... but all three are 1-1 (Clem d. Duke, Duke d. FSU and FSU d. Clemson). Next tiebeaker is to check their records against No. 1 UNC -- but all three are 0-1 against UNC.

Next step is to check their record against Wake Forest, alone in 5th place. Well, Clemson and FSU are both 0-1 against the Deacs ... Duke is 1-1.

So that breaks the tie in Duke's favor and Duke gets the No. 2 seed.

The next step (and this is important) is to look at Clemson and FSU as a two-way tie ... and FSU is 1-0 vs. Clemson, so FSU gets the No. 3 seed and Clemson is No. 4.

Obviously, that's going to change (especially since we still have Clemson at FSU and FSU at Duke -- that means that the final standings CAN'T have all three with the same record against each other), but that's how the process works.

But keep one important point in mind -- tiebreakers are ONLY used to determine tournament seedings. If UNC and Duke tied at No. 1 and UNC won the tiebreaker, Duke and UNC would still be regular season co-champs.

If today's standings were final, Duke would be the No. 2 seed, but Clemson and FSU could rightfully claim to have tied for second place.