You just made this more difficult but after careful deliberation..I take the split with the ACCT..
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Thanks for the discussion all, just caught up. I would rank things this way, noting it's only personal and it could change year by year:
1. National title
2. Final Four
3. ACC regular season
4. ACCT
5. Brown
6. In-season tourneys
Just kidding on the last two, but first four are legit. One interesting thing I've found looking at March Madness is that teams that win ONLY the regular season conference title are more likely to make Final Fours than teams that ONLY win the conference title. Not surprisingly, teams that win both are the most likely of all, but if it's one or the other, the regular season is a better predictor of NCAAt success.
I move that this thread be immediately closed for jinxing our team tonight.
Controls path to 1 seed
Louisville, by virtue of win over duke
Controls path to a share of the title
Duke, having the same record as UL
Eliminated from everything as their best possible record is 10-10
wake
miami
UNC
Also note that KP projects UL to lose 2 more games, having the following toughies:
away at clemson (68%)
away at uva (58%)
away at FSU (45%)
Duke's schedule is much more comfortable, with only
away at NCSU (73%)
away at UVA (68%)
in the uncomfortable range. Kp predicts one more loss.
FSU has the hardest schedule of the bunch:
away at NCSU (56%)
home against UL (55%)
away at clemson (62%)
away at ND (55%)
With a projected record of 15-5.
Given that, it's unlikely FSU will be in the running down the stretch IMO. The polls have consistently overrated them relative to their performances due to their "luck" of games in closer fashion than their record would suggest they should.
This particular banner is there for the taking. We must take care of business the rest of the way.
Thanks for posting this, oh_no. Things look good for Duke to claim the best record in the ACC. Still, I am expecting a dog fight at NC State for the same reasons Duke struggled at UNC. That game matters immensely for the State fans and their teams have given Duke a stiff challenge in recent years. For some reason, I am less concerned about UVA even though they are the better team than NC State. Duke and Coach K have a record of success against UVA and has the shooters to counter the pack line defense this year. UVA lacks the firepower on offense. Still, it would not be a surprise to drop that game. The Cavaliers are in need of a signature win, against either or both of Louisville or Duke, to get into the NCAA Tournament.
Personally, I want Duke to win out for the NCAA Tournament seeding implications rather than the conference record. Duke has had an easy path this year with home games against both Louisville and FSU. It's possible this season could end up with Duke having the best conference record since 2014-15 based on losses and the most conference wins ever thanks to the expanded schedule. But that's more a function of the rest of the league and the schedule of teams we played than a true indicator of how good this team is, in my opinion. What I really hope is that, if Duke runs the table the rest of the regular season, it will result in getting the 1 seed in the East bracket of the NCAA Tournament.
Are these 3 teams eliminated from the "double bye" in the ACCT yet? Mathematically, UVA sitting in 4th place with the last "double bye" has 8 wins so they could still end at 8-12. However, practically some other team should finish with 11 wins (besides UofL, Duke and FSU).
Too many possibilities to do the probability calculations.
I am more interested when these 3 teams (one in particular) is locked into the "no bye" scenario and would have to win 5 games in 5 days to win the ACCT. Considering the unnamed team has only won 4 games in the past 2 and 1/2 months, 5 wins in 5 days seems undoable.
Interesting, but other than the FSU game, UL and Duke have pretty similar remaining schedules. If UL wins @FSU, they're likely to be the #1 in the ACCT, with all the mythical/non-mythical/technically/technically-not honors that come with it.
We have to take care of business, regardless, for NCAA purposes.
UL has 3 games as hard as or harder than duke's hardest remaining game.
2011 uconn had lost 4/5 and was 9-9 in conference, and had won 4 games since the middle of january. Obviously that uconn team was a lot stronger than this unnamed team...and the big east that year was far stronger than the ACC this year, but it's never undoable.
There’s an interesting wrench that could come into play here. Georgia Tech is appealing a postseason ban and while there is unlikely to be a final decision before the season ends, GT has a ton of juniors and they aren’t exactly heading towards a postseason bid this year. If GT has the appeal denied and is banned next season, you could see a potential exodus as all of those juniors would be allowed to transfer freely. Every day that goes by makes it less likely that GT will go this route. For comparison Syracuse and Louisville both self-imposed bans in early February when they went through it, and those teams were also preempting the original NCAA punishment, not dropping an appeal. But if GT does drop the appeal, that lowers the bar significantly as you only need to finish 10th out of non GT teams rather than 9th overall.
As far as the actual purpose of this thread, I won’t start to take stock of Duke’s chances for winning until after the next two. Tomorrow has the hallmarks of a letdown game after the emotional win last weekend and tough turnaround win. And then midweek, Duke has to go to Raleigh, where they’re only 2-4 vs State since 2010, and the wins were not by the teams you’d expect. They won in 2011 with no Kyrie and 2016, and lost in 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2018. If Duke can buck that trend, I think there’s a real shot for hanging a regular season banner.
I was about to come here and say "I believe it's time to bring this thread back to the top," but glad to see it already happened yesterday. However, things have changed a bunch in just a day, Duke now controls its own destiny with a one-game lead in the loss column on both Louisville and FSU, and has an easier schedule than both. At this point, the odds favor us completely. It's been a decade since we had a share of the title and 14 years since we won one outright, and I for one am psyched for all the reasons mentioned above.
I'll put myself out there so everyone can get mad if I jinx it: I think people are a little too wrapped up in history on this one. We match up well, and I think we're peaking just in time for the road game, which should be the hardest by far. I like us to win both. I'm also not worried about our "difficult" game against Virginia, I don't think they have a prayer to enforce their style on us, we'll be happy to out-D them. Only game that scares me is Carolina at home.
I think matchup-wise, this is tougher than it looks on paper. Duke’s biggest weakness has been turnovers and transition D. One of the big things that helped today was ND not being a team that forces turnovers and not being a team that pushes the ball. State does both. They had 21 fast break points against Syracuse this week and that was with Cuse doing a decent job not giving up steals. State only got 7 steals in the game, but got 21 fast break points. You don’t need to turn it over out at the point for them to get fast break points.