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If you recall the 2014 NCAA Tournament, you will remember that North Carolina State was the last at-large team in the field. The first team left out of that tournament was SMU. The Mustangs were the team — there is usually one every year — which won plenty of games but had no calories on many of them. SMU was still getting organized by Larry Brown. The program was frankly ahead of schedule at that point. Brown scheduled a lot of easy non-conference games with the intent of developing his players and building their confidence. SMU definitely built its confidence… but with a paper-thin resume which needed to avoid stumbles in conference play in order to secure an NCAA bid.
When SMU was ambushed by Houston in the quarterfinals of the 2014 AAC Tournament, a team ranked No. 25 in the final pre-Selection Sunday poll tumbled all the way to the NIT.
The weak non-conference strength of schedule is what did in the Mustangs. North Carolina State benefited.
Now, five years later, we are left to wonder if N.C. State will be stabbed in the back, due to a very low strength of schedule in non-conference games. It would be painfully ironic for the Wolfpack to be left out.
Do I think State will make it? First of all, whatever I say means as much as the number of home runs I hit in Major League Baseball, or the number of presidential elections I have won. Second, we have to wade through this river of results over the next few days and reassess the landscape on Selection Sunday morning. Keep in mind that the Atlantic 10 and Pac-12 Tournaments could easily shrink the bubble by two teams. N.C. State might be inside the cut line, but pretending it’s obvious is the only true mistake. The honest answer: We don’t really know after the Wolfpack were blitzed by Virginia in Thursday’s first ACC Tournament quarterfinal.
Plenty of people will say that State deserves to be in. Plenty of others will just as furiously disagree. The Pack will be a major discussion point on Sunday, whether for good reasons or bad ones. Let the litigating commence!
You can do that.
I will instead offer a very brief note which should be agreed upon by people on both sides of this issue: Next season and beyond, Kevin Keatts needs to upgrade his non-con slate.
Much like Larry Brown in 2014 at SMU, Keatts was still getting adjusted to his program. He didn’t feel the acute need to schedule an imposing set of non-league games. It makes sense. It is understandable, just as it was for Brown with the Ponies.
However, now that N.C. State is left to sit and wait until Sunday at 6 Eastern time, we should be able to form a broad consensus on the point that the Pack must play people next season.
North Carolina State was unlucky that Vanderbilt — a team with multiple ballyhooed recruits — didn’t amount to much this season. Other than that and the Big Ten-ACC Challenge game against Wisconsin (which is on the schedule as a product of structure more than choice), State didn’t schedule a single game it knew (or had a right to expect) would be difficult.
Next season, that kind of scheduling won’t fly. Not one bit.
We might not agree on North Carolina State’s resume or level of NCAA Tournament worthiness, but we SHOULD all be able to agree on the claim that this program should aspire to do more in non-conference games.
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