uva loses, syracuse barely scrapes by bryant, and louisville barely scrapes by seton hall (each 1 point wins)
Obviously don't want to judge by couple games in this kind of environment, but looking to be an...interesting...year in the ACC this year.
Yeah, during that conversation, I mentioned that GaTech was going to miss their ACC All-Defensive center James Banks, who graduated. Welp, GaSt's guards had their way driving to the rim, and overall, GaSt shot 55% from two-pt range, a higher mark than ANY opponent of GaTech achieved last season with Banks roaming the paint.
GaTech will need a big to step up because they are not deep enough in perimeter talent to play smallball well enough to get an NCAA bid.
uva loses, syracuse barely scrapes by bryant, and louisville barely scrapes by seton hall (each 1 point wins)
Obviously don't want to judge by couple games in this kind of environment, but looking to be an...interesting...year in the ACC this year.
April 1
Longwood tied with Wake at the half.
"This is the best of all possible worlds."
Dr. Pangloss - Candide
Ga Tech, a team I really thought would be a bit of a contender in the ACC this year, is now off to an 0-2 start after dropping a game to Mercer today, 83-73.
Now, in fairness to Tech, both Ga State (who beat Tech 2 days ago) and Mercer are fairly strong mid-majors, both ranked in the top 150 by KenPom, but these are still two bad bad losses for a senior-laden team that had its eye on a NCAA bid this season.
Here is an actual photo of Josh Pastner's seat on the bench during the game...
-Jason "I'm ready to declare Clemson a contender now... that cool with all ya'll?" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Oh it’s been a tough year for algorithms and predictions, and even in a normal year it’s too early for these to have any real predictive power. I just happen to appreciate the relative movement of probabilities based on early season performance - even if those probabilities are built off of a system with flawed assumptions they are still an interesting frame of reference to me.
The particular frame of reference being that we might have been looking a little too far south on I-85 when discussing NCAAT contenders in other threads. I suppose you’re right, we didn’t really need a stat to tell us that, the eye test will do in this case.
For an NCAA bid, sure. What's striking to me is how relatively few minutes Simms, Newman, and Dawes have played so far (Simms due to foul trouble). Pre-season I would've called them Clemson's "big three" that needs supporting players to step up to get an at-large bid. And yet, Clemson appears to be very deep as Brownell has gone with an 11-man rotation in two competitive games so far. And overall, they rank #7 in the nation in bench minutes according to kenpom
Down goes Nova. To VT??? Wow!
Kinda makes up for UVA pooping the bed.
“Coach said no 3s.” - Zion on The Block
And a ridiculous ending in regulation. VT made a shot and got fouled with 1.3 seconds left to go up one. He tried to miss the FT intentionally but accidentally banked it in (a la RJ) to go up two. Then, on the ensuing inbound possession, Villanova drew a charge call (I assume using the oldest trick in the book by having someone stand still near the baseline while inbounder runs along baseline and defender doesn't pay attention and runs into person standing still). Oddly, the 2 minute highlight video on ESPN doesn't show the play, what?! Nova sinks both FTs to send to OT. Then, Va Tech dominates OT. Pretty good win for scheduling it last minute.