I will beat this drum even if ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips doesn’t. Maybe he’ll chime in and defend his conference eventually, but I wouldn’t count on it, but basketball observers suggesting the ACC is a 2-3 NCAA bid league aren’t living in basketball reality. I won’t even give credence by naming the worst offenders. Doing so only brings attention to people with opinions if not much of a basketball IQ.
Let’s run through the numbers, because the 2-3 ACC bid projections didn’t make sense 2 weeks ago when we first brought it up, and they make even less sense now.
So we’ll get the mortal locks out of the way. North Carolina and Duke are in the top 20 of the NET with UNC 4-3 against the Q1 and Duke 3-1.
Now we do the deeper dive.
First, let’s look at the ACC as a conference.
The ACC in many projections has fewer NCAA bids than the Big 12, SEC, Pac 12, Big 10, Big East, and even the Mountain West.
Please explain how this is possible, when ACC teams are .500 or better against 4 of those leagues. They are impressive 9-3 against the Big 12, the highest-rated conference in the country, 3-2 against the Big 10, 3-3 against the Pac 12, and 3-2 against the Mountain West. That’s an 18-10 record against 4 leagues the ACC by bid count is worse than. Even against the SEC, the ACC is 12-18. Certainly, I’m not arguing there is a problem with the SEC getting more bids than the ACC, but 3 times as many in some cases doesn’t reflect the 30-game sample size. Shouldn’t the SEC have won the series with something closer to 22 or 23 wins?
What about the fact the ACC won nearly 72% of their nonconference games? That was only behind the Big 12 at 81% and just a few percentage points behind the Big 10’s 76% and the SEC’s 74%. The ACC was ahead of the Pac-12, Big East, and Mountain West OOC record.
If projections are Sunday, Clemson is in the field. While the Tigers seed is hurt by a 3-5 ACC record, they hold wins over the 1st and 3rd-place team in the SEC – Alabama and South Carolina. They also have a win over the Big 12’s 4th-place team TCU. Any suggestion they aren’t in the NCAAs is just dumb. Should they lose to Louisville at home on Tuesday, then we can entertain this.
Virginia and Virginia Tech are among several bracketologists’ next 4 out. That is barely on the bubble.
Virginia has OOC wins over Florida and Texas A&M and is 15-5 (6-3).
Virginia Tech 13-7 (5-4) has one of the best OOC wins in the ACC. They have a neutral site win over Iowa State. The Cyclones are 1/2 game out of first in the Big 12. They also have a win over bubble team Boise State (so does Clemson).
Both should be in the field. I’ll listen if one is in and out, but both out?
Other bubble teams teams that should be closer to the field than currently projected are Wake Forest 13-6 (5-3) and Miami 14-6 (5-4). Wake Forest has 5-6 against the Q1/Q2 and a 46 NET ranking. Miami is 6-4 against the Q1/Q2 and has a 63 NET ranking. I’m not suggesting those are NCAA resumes. What I am suggesting is those are legitimate bubble teams.
Florida State 12-8 (6-3) and Syracuse 13-6 (5-4) are not NCAA teams but should be on the radar.
That’s 8 ACC teams that should be considered for the NCAA field from a conference where 12 of the 15 teams are in the top 90 of the NET, and the ACC doesn’t have more than 3 bids?
I can’t take you seriously as a basketball observer if you don’t have the ACC with at least 4 bids in your next projections. I said the same thing 2 weeks ago, and it remains true at the end of January.
We really should be looking at closer to 5 or 6 bids, but we’ll leave some margin for error.
The real question is if head-to-head results aren’t the most obvious measurement tool then what are we doing here?
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