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  1. #41
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    New York, NY
    I have historically avoided watching Carolina when they weren't playing Duke; it's painful to watch them win.

    This year, however, it's been a pleasure to watch several of their games.

    I'd guess they'll have to win at least one game against a top 50 team to make the tournament; without even a tiny signature win, it's just too easy to leave them out. But, even if tehy do get into the NCAA, I'll look forward to settling onto my couch that first weekend and watching them get blown out. Having said that, I kinda think they'll right the ship and easily get in...

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    Lets be clear-- the RPI attempts to judge in a numerical way how difficult your schedule was and how you did against that schedule. It does not weigh any one game above any other on your schedule. It makes no adjustments for home/road/neutral court. It does not know if you won 20 in a row or lost the last 7 in a row. It is merely a mathematical function of your record, your opponents' records, and your opponents' opponents' records.

    That is why many people find Sagarin, KenPom, and even the human polls to be a far superior method of ranking teams. It is worth noting that the selection committee, according to reports, relies on the RPI less today than it ever has and that they do look at Pomeroy's rankings as well as other methods of evaluating the teams when making decisions.

    Here's a question -- would the committee prefer a team that had shown it could beat the big boys but also lose to lousy teams or a team that consistently beat the bad ones but never really got over the hump versus teams in the top 50 of the RPI?

    Team 1 - 20-14 record, 8-11 vs. top 100, 5-7 vs top 50, 3-4 vs top 25
    Team 2 - 22-12 record, 9-12 vs top 100, 2-11 vs top 50, 0-6 vs top 25

    -Jason "which team would you rather see in the tourney?" Evans
    Jason, I'll play.

    Given the choice, I would rather see the team that won consistently over the teams that they should have beaten. I veiw the NCAA in some degree as a reward. I would rather reward teams that were consistent, so team 2 is my choice.

    Rewarding a team that gets up and plays hard at times but loses 3 games to teams out of the top 100 (if I am reading your example correctly) meaning that they must have played really below their potential (of course injuries, etc... could explain some of this and may change my opinion) is not my first choice.

    However, I fully accept the other arguement as reasoniable as well.

  3. #43
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    UNC's next 3 games are against 3 of the bottom feeders of the conference. I'd say these are 3 must-wins. After that stretch things could become dicey with Miami, Duke, and UVA. I would also say they have a very good shot in their rematch with State at home given that the Pack plays almost no defense.
    "Just be you. You is Enough."

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by jipops View Post
    UNC's next 3 games are against 3 of the bottom feeders of the conference. I'd say these are 3 must-wins. After that stretch things could become dicey with Miami, Duke, and UVA. I would also say they have a very good shot in their rematch with State at home given that the Pack plays almost no defense.
    UNC will win these games, I expect. BC, VT nor Wake will bring what it will take to beat UNC. Two of those games are at home and UNC has played well at home, even against Miami. Beating BC away, should be well within their reach.

    Of course I hope I am very wrong on this!!

  5. #45
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Charlotte, North Carolina
    Quote Originally Posted by oldnavy View Post
    UNC will win these games, I expect. BC, VT nor Wake will bring what it will take to beat UNC. Two of those games are at home and UNC has played well at home, even against Miami. Beating BC away, should be well within their reach.

    Of course I hope I am very wrong on this!!
    I think you're probably right.

    Interestingly, UNC's salvation probably came at the hands of the one team who's fanbase would most like to see them burn...NC State.

    UNC is, as has been mentioned, a young-ish team, at least one without obvious upperclassman leadership, and therefore is probably a little more pyschologically vulnerable to emotional ups and downs. Had State kept the pedal to the metal and really buried UNC, inflicting a truly devastating 30 or 40 point loss on them where UNC never had a chance, I think it easily could have sent UNC into enough of a spiral that they might have dropped one or 2 of those 3 very winnable upcoming games. Go 1-2 in this easy 3 game stretch, and they are done. But State let them off the mat, so UNC can gain a lot of confidence that they fought back to have a chance (albeit a slim one) of winning a game that they trailed, on the road, by 28 points, to a top 20 team. I think UNC's take-home from the State game is that they need to play hard, from the beginning, and that, if they do that, they can play with anyone in the ACC. If State had really stepped on their throats and humiliated them, as they could have done if they'd stayed locked in and focused, UNC's young players might have walked away feeling much more disheartened about their prospects this season.

  6. #46
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Los Angeles
    Quote Originally Posted by Olympic Fan View Post
    most of those 8-8 teams and teams with a losing conference record were in the late 1980s and early 1990s -- back when the ACC was unquestionably the strongest league.
    While you're right that there were more sub-.500 in-conference teams earning at-large bids in the late '80 and early '90's, even since 2005 the average has been 1 team per year. There have been just a small handful of years in which no such teams were invited. And of course there are a lot more teams right at .500 in conference (which is what I was responding to -- a 9-9 UNC) that have made it.

    The post to which I responded stated definitively that there would be "no way" a 9-9 UNC team would get an invite, and that simply isn't the case. They might not, or they might. As others have subsequently posted, it depends how they get to 9-9 -- who they beat and who they lose to -- as well as the resumes of the other bubble teams compared to UNC's resume. As I said, a .500 (or even sub-.500) conference record is by no means a disqualifier.

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Olympic Fan View Post

    most of those 8-8 teams and teams with a losing conference record were in the late 1980s and early 1990s -- back when the ACC was unquestionably the strongest league.

    In recent years, even 9-7 hasn't always been good enough.

    Of course, there are always outliers -- like the 1998 Florida State team, which made the Tournament with a conference record of 6-10, even after losing the play-in game in the ACC Tournament.* They had some big out-of-conference wins, though, including a win over defending national champ Arizona. They made the Tournament as a #12 seed and actually won a game (upsetting TCU), before losing in the second round to the Valparaiso team that had upset Ole Miss on Bryce Drew's buzzer-beating three-pointer in the first round.


    * This was during that three-year stretch in the late 1990s when the ACC experimented with a screwy two-game schedule on Thursday, with one game pitting the #1 against the #9 seed (with the winner getting a rest day on Friday), and the other game pitting the #7 seed against the #8 seed for the right to play the #2 seed the next day. Florida State was the #7 seed in the ACC Tournament and lost to #8 seed N.C. State.

  8. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    Lets be clear-- the RPI attempts to judge in a numerical way how difficult your schedule was and how you did against that schedule. It does not weigh any one game above any other on your schedule. It makes no adjustments for home/road/neutral court. It does not know if you won 20 in a row or lost the last 7 in a row. It is merely a mathematical function of your record, your opponents' records, and your opponents' opponents' records.

    That is why many people find Sagarin, KenPom, and even the human polls to be a far superior method of ranking teams. It is worth noting that the selection committee, according to reports, relies on the RPI less today than it ever has and that they do look at Pomeroy's rankings as well as other methods of evaluating the teams when making decisions.

    Here's a question -- would the committee prefer a team that had shown it could beat the big boys but also lose to lousy teams or a team that consistently beat the bad ones but never really got over the hump versus teams in the top 50 of the RPI?

    Team 1 - 20-14 record, 8-11 vs. top 100, 5-7 vs top 50, 3-4 vs top 25
    Team 2 - 22-12 record, 9-12 vs top 100, 2-11 vs top 50, 0-6 vs top 25

    -Jason "which team would you rather see in the tourney?" Evans
    I think the way they try to compensate with the RPI is using top 50 and top 25 RPI wins as well. But SOS is important to the committee hence why they try to reward that. That is why you have seen mid majors on the bubble usually rewarded for teams with a tough SOS over a team like Va. Tech who played nobody.

    As far as your hypotheses, I would go with Team 1 (team that can beat good teams) and I think the committee would as well. Lunardi and Co. usually cite these resume building wins and it seems the committee wants to know you are capable of beating another tournament team.

  9. #49
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Cary, NC
    There was also the year that UVA and UNC had identical 9-7 records, and UNC got in while UVA did not even though UVA had a better overall record and beaten them head to head. That made a lot of sense 8-)

  10. #50

    selection

    Just a few points:

    -- UNC's RPI is okay at the moment, but Jim Sukup, who does The RPI Report (Collegate Basketball News), just released a list of 48 teams that finished with an RPI of 42 or better, yet missed the tournament. The list includes such big names as Syracuse (No. 22), Oklahoma (No. 30), Notre Dame (No. 32) , Ohio State No. 35), Michigan (No. 40) and, most interestingly, Florida State in 2007 when the Noles were 20-12 overall with seven top 100 wins (No. 41 in RPI).

    -- You are right that UNC's RPI would be the same with a 10-8 ACC record without a win over a top team and 10-8 with a couple of wins over Duke/State/Miami. But absolute RPI rank is not how the committee uses the RPI (oh, they look at it, but it's not a huge deal). Where it really comes into play is in measuring top 25 wins, top 50 wins and top 100 wins.

    THAT is where UNC is hurting. The Heels are just 1-4 against the top 50 and just 3-4 against the top 100. At this moment, just six ACC teams are in the top 100 (No. 1 Duke, No. 3 Miami, No. 15 State, No. 65 Maryland and No. 69 Florida State). They have four more chances to get a second top 50 win -- at Miami, at Duke ... NC State and Duke at home. They have two other chances to get a top 100 win -- at Maryland and FSU at home.

    If they get to 10-8, that means that they have added at least one more top 100 win. But I suspect 1-8 vs. top 50 and 4-9 against top 100 would not get them in. So it IS important that they beat some of the top ACC teams left on their schedule.

    -- You are right that the committee likes to reward SOS. But what they reward is NON-CONFERENCE SOS -- since, they always say, that's the part of your schedule that you can control. Right now (and it's not likely to change much) UNC's non-conference SOS is No. 100 (for reference, Middle Tennessee, which is No. 35 -- one place ahead of UNC in the RPI -- has a non-co0nference SOS at No. 16.

    Strength of schedule is not going to help UNC if it's on the bubble.

    (BTW: Miami has the No. 1 non-conference SOS in the country ... Duke has the No. 2 non-conference SOS).

    I repeat what I said to start this thread. I think UNC's is improving enough that they'll make the field. But they have to work at it -- and at 9-9, I think they are a real long shot.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by davekay1971 View Post
    I think you're probably right.

    Interestingly, UNC's salvation probably came at the hands of the one team who's fanbase would most like to see them burn...NC State.

    UNC is, as has been mentioned, a young-ish team, at least one without obvious upperclassman leadership, and therefore is probably a little more pyschologically vulnerable to emotional ups and downs. Had State kept the pedal to the metal and really buried UNC, inflicting a truly devastating 30 or 40 point loss on them where UNC never had a chance, I think it easily could have sent UNC into enough of a spiral that they might have dropped one or 2 of those 3 very winnable upcoming games. Go 1-2 in this easy 3 game stretch, and they are done. But State let them off the mat, so UNC can gain a lot of confidence that they fought back to have a chance (albeit a slim one) of winning a game that they trailed, on the road, by 28 points, to a top 20 team. I think UNC's take-home from the State game is that they need to play hard, from the beginning, and that, if they do that, they can play with anyone in the ACC. If State had really stepped on their throats and humiliated them, as they could have done if they'd stayed locked in and focused, UNC's young players might have walked away feeling much more disheartened about their prospects this season.
    Dave, I am not so sure. I think UNC knows that NCSU could have and should have beat them by 30 points or more. Granted they did cut the margin, but those guys know that they came back due to NCSU knowing the game was in the bag and letting up. When they did get close when they actually could have won the game, NCSU stepped on the gas and ran the lead back up to 17. Then for some unknown reason, NCSU let up again. UNC got close again, but by then it really was too late and only a miracle would have changed the outcome.

    I am not to sure that UNC can logically conclude that they can play with NCSU from this game. I believe that UNC was playing hard to open the game. They were just overmatched at ALL positions. They really had no hope of winning this game, the only hope they had was that NCSU would find a way to lose it. A subtle, but signifcant difference IMO.

    The UNC players know that they were overmatched and I am not so sure that if NCSU plays "their" game that UNC has the ability to beat them this year. Anything can and has happened of course, but assuming that both teams play their best NCSU wins ten out of ten.

    I can recall a similar experience from my past. In HS we played Northern Durham in football my JV year (thank God that was the only year we played them). It was the only game in three years that I knew after the first series of downs that we could not win. We lost other games, but this was the only game where I knew we did not have the manpower to overcome a superior team.

    It really didn't impact our psyche so much, in fact we joked about it, but we knew we were not big time athletes either, so our egos were not threatened...

    Who knows how UNC will feel after that game. I suspect they will realize that for them to have a chance to win they have to play hard every game, but I think that if they feel they can play with NCSU after that smack down, they are misreading it.

    I feel that I need to say something about our loss at Miami. I think that although the outcomes were essentially the same (beat downs) our game was different in that we had a VERY unusual night shooting. We know that we will not shoot like that every night, but I don't believe our guys would come away from that game feeling like they could not win against Miami. I do think that our guys realize that it will take a special effort to beat them because they are a very good team, but we had open shots that just would not drop. That just snowballed and got out of hand...

    As always, I qualify everthing I say with I could very well be wrong!!

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Lar77 View Post
    I heard on the radio that either UNC or UK or both have been in the NCAAT every year since it went to 64 teams. Both are 13-6 with the tougher part of their conference schedules coming up. Assuming that they are .500 in their conferences, I think they will get in. Looking at KenPom, Kentucky is still in the top 25 and loooking at the mid-majors around UNC, do you see Mountain West getting 4 teams in (just to pick on a conference - their top 4 actually are pretty good)? Personally, I think the tournament is better with a mediocre UK or UNC than not. Both teams are clearly talented and thus dangerous in a one and done, but both teams have shown they are very beatable. Both situations make a better story.
    How quickly we forget! UNC didn't make the NCAA just a few years ago in 2010, being runner ups to Dayton in the NIT Finals. UNC was also in the NIT in 2003. You don't have to go too far back for Kentucky either, as they went to the NIT quarterfinals in 2009, Billy Gillespie's last year. The longest current streak is Kansas at 23. Duke has the second longest current streak at 17 (since 1996). UNC does, though, have the longest streak in history at 27 (1975-2001).

  13. #53
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Atlanta 'burbs
    Quote Originally Posted by oldnavy View Post

    As always, I qualify everthing I say with I could very well be wrong!!
    You're more positive than I am. I qualify my statements with "Well, I might actually be right this time, for a change". (It rarely turns out to be true. You can ask my wife.)

  14. #54
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by oldnavy View Post
    Dave, I am not so sure. I think UNC knows that NCSU could have and should have beat them by 30 points or more. Granted they did cut the margin, but those guys know that they came back due to NCSU knowing the game was in the bag and letting up. When they did get close when they actually could have won the game, NCSU stepped on the gas and ran the lead back up to 17. Then for some unknown reason, NCSU let up again. UNC got close again, but by then it really was too late and only a miracle would have changed the outcome.

    I am not to sure that UNC can logically conclude that they can play with NCSU from this game. I believe that UNC was playing hard to open the game. They were just overmatched at ALL positions. They really had no hope of winning this game, the only hope they had was that NCSU would find a way to lose it. A subtle, but signifcant difference IMO.

    I agree here. State showed a prime example of how to completely mis-manage a game. Many division one teams can score 50+ points in a half while facing zero defensive pressure. UNC's defense wasn't very good in the 2nd half either.

    So here is UNC's remaining sched with my prediction:

    currently 3-3

    @Boston College W
    vs Virginia Tech W
    vs Wake Forest W
    @ #14 Miami (FL) L
    @ #5 Duke L
    vs Virginia W
    @ Georgia Tech L
    #19 North Carolina State W
    @ Clemson L
    vs Florida State W
    @ Maryland W
    vs #5 Duke L

    This would put them at 10-8. I'd say they're in.

    The State and Duke games would be even bigger in this scenario.
    "Just be you. You is Enough."

  15. #55
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    New York, NY
    Quote Originally Posted by Bluedog View Post
    How quickly we forget! UNC didn't make the NCAA just a few years ago in 2010, being runner ups to Dayton in the NIT Finals. UNC was also in the NIT in 2003. You don't have to go too far back for Kentucky either, as they went to the NIT quarterfinals in 2009, Billy Gillespie's last year. The longest current streak is Kansas at 23. Duke has the second longest current streak at 17 (since 1996). UNC does, though, have the longest streak in history at 27 (1975-2001).
    You may be misreading the post. I think the poster was referring to either UNC or Kentucky. Not both.

    Or maybe I'm misreading the post, and you're just that good.

    - Chillin

  16. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by ChillinDuke View Post
    You may be misreading the post. I think the poster was referring to either UNC or Kentucky. Not both.

    Or maybe I'm misreading the post, and you're just that good.

    - Chillin
    Oh, perhaps. So, the post is simply saying that at least one of UNC or Kentucky has been in the tournament when looking only at a single year? That doesn't mean much to me - Kansas or East Tennessee St or both have been in the NCAA tournament every year since it expanded as well. Doesn't help East Tennessee St much though...

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by jipops View Post
    I agree here. State showed a prime example of how to completely mis-manage a game. Many division one teams can score 50+ points in a half while facing zero defensive pressure. UNC's defense wasn't very good in the 2nd half either.

    So here is UNC's remaining sched with my prediction:

    currently 3-3

    @Boston College W
    vs Virginia Tech W
    vs Wake Forest W
    @ #14 Miami (FL) L
    @ #5 Duke L
    vs Virginia W
    @ Georgia Tech L
    #19 North Carolina State W
    @ Clemson L
    vs Florida State W
    @ Maryland W
    vs #5 Duke L

    This would put them at 10-8. I'd say they're in.

    The State and Duke games would be even bigger in this scenario.
    You think UNC beats NCSU at CH? Even though UNC seems to play better at home, I just don't think they will beat State this year. State is too hungry for some lamb chops this year. Now they (NCSU) could go out and drop a game to VT or Clemson, but I think they have UNC's number.

  18. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by oldnavy View Post
    (NCSU) could go out and drop a game to VT or Clemson, but I think they have UNC's number.

    Oy, VT?! No way, Mr. oldnavy sir. That's a complete train wreck down there. I wish MD would take VT with them in their carry on bags.

  19. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by weezie View Post
    Oy, VT?! No way, Mr. oldnavy sir. That's a complete train wreck down there. I wish MD would take VT with them in their carry on bags.
    Yea, now that you mentioned it, that is a bit of a stretch.

    Just saying NCSU will slip, but I think they want to rub UNC's nose in it this year, and I don't see how UNC can stop them - talent wise. NCSU is stronger at Point (by a wide margin), Center, the 2, 3 and 4.... foul trouble could be the wild card however...

  20. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by TruBlu View Post
    (It rarely turns out to be true. You can ask my wife.)
    Probably only have to look in her direction to see the nodding...

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