Running 2022-23 NCAA Basketball Thread

And then there was this:

 

RPI is way worse. That incentivized teams to play nobody even more, because raw wins ultimately mattered more. (IIRC, the rough formula for RPI was 50 percent your winning percentage, 25 percent opponents' WP, and 25 percent opponents' opponents' WP.) It's still kept in some places, and teams like Clemson, Fordham and Charleston are all 10 to 50 spots higher than in NET or KenPom.

 

Doesn't help that some of the teams in the ACC that were expected to be decent just aren't, my Hokies included. Add in a historically bad year for Louisville and you get what you get this year. ACC will still probably get six (maybe seven) in but I doubt anyone outside of UVA will be seeded higher than 6.

 

ACC is sixth in conference RPI right now. Last year it finished seventh, before that eighth, before that sixth. Before that you have to go to 2011-12 to find the last finish outside the top 5. Whatever is wrong now, it isn’t just a one-time blip.

 

And it's probably not going to get better soon.

Boston College has been a black hole for more than a decade.
Louisville is in an unprecedented hole that will probably take a few years to dig out of.
Georgia Tech has been terrible for more than a decade, outside of that COVID-year blip.
Syracuse can't be far away from going through the post-Boeheim transition.
Duke isn't Duke right now and Scheyer may be out of his depth, jury's still out.
Notre Dame is about to go through a coaching transition.
Larranaga is in his 70s. Will he stick around Miami for Wong's seventh redshirt senior year?
Florida State will be OK, I think.

Pitt, VT, Wake, Clemson, NC State ... a sort of soft middle where you don't know if they're going to underachieve or overachieve. None can really be counted on to carry the league.

Really, Virginia and North Carolina are the only programs you can count on right now, and UNC has underachieved pretty massively this year.

 

No arguments. But it has been a long time since none of them looked really good going into February.

Virginia and Clemson have the best shot. We'll see.

 

None of the teams I care about is going to make the NCAA tournament. It hasn't even started and I've already lost interest, unless another St. Peter's comes along.

 

It's going to be an extremely power conference heavy tournament this year. I think the Big 12 is going to get at least eight bids, if not nine. Big Ten will probably get seven. Looking at some of those other leagues:

AMERICAN -- Houston is No. 1 in the NET, Memphis 42. Two bids max.
A-10 -- It's going to be a one-bid league this year, no doubt. VCU and Saint Louis have both stepped on themselves too much. VCU has a hideous home loss to Jacksonville, though I got to enjoy that game from the president's box and drink free whiskey so I was fine with it.
CAA -- Charleston is a nice story but the bottom of the league is really dragging them down, thanks to three newcomers (Stony Brook, Hampton, Monmouth) and Elon all being in the 300s in NET. I don't think the Cougars get in without winning the tournament. Currently 61 in NET.
CUSA -- FAU is probably safe thanks to that win at Florida, provided the Owls keep it going. Maybe two bids here?
MISSOURI VALLEY -- Back to one-bid territory here. Best team is Bradley (74).
MOUNTAIN WEST -- Good year for this group. Could see five bids.
PAC-12 -- UCLA is 5, Arizona 10, Utah 50, everyone else is outside of the top 50. Maybe three bids here, or more if someone like Stanford steals the tournament.
WEST COAST -- Saint Mary's and Gonzaga are locks. Only way they get a third is if someone else wins the tournament.

RANDOS -- Liberty and Oral Roberts are both inside the top 45 in NET but neither have a Q1 win and each only has one Q2 win, and their leagues won't allow for any resume bolstering, so I'm afraid it's win the tourney or in for both. ORU did beat LU earlier this season.

 

I'm biased, of course, but I really think you guys are too low on my Wahoos. They're still prone to lengthy droughts, but they've shown enough strong offensive performances this year to make them a low-end contender.

The other issue with that is that the NCAA is no doubt licking its chops to get another UVA-Purdue matchup in the Elite 8. So they're going to run into the Edey buzzsaw if they can get there.

 

I’ve started paying a little more attention to this league with Belmont and Murray State coming in. After last night there is a four-way tie for first place at 9-4 and four more teams a game back at 8-5. That’s nuts.

 

Long-term ACC thoughts: I think it's instructive to look at the league like you would look at a fixer-upper house. Does it have good bones? I'd evaluate the "bones" on the following criteria:

Do they have a history of success?
Do they have generally decent fan support even in down years?
Do they have an institutional commitment to basketball and do they back that up financially? (facilities, salaries, etc.)
Is the school a football school where basketball will always play second fiddle?

Using that lens, I'd assess the ACC programs as follows:

Strong bones: UNC, Duke, UVA, Louisville, Syracuse, NC State
Reasonably strong bones: Wake, VT, GT, FSU
Not good bones: BC, Pitt, Miami, Notre Dame, Clemson

Reasonable people can disagree on how I allocated those schools, particularly between the last two tiers. Some of that is certainly based on vibes - for instance, from the "football schools," I think VT and FSU care more about basketball than Clemson and Miami, but it's certainly open for debate. I could also get behind putting Cuse and NC State in a sort of "group 1B."

If the "strong bones" group can all get it going (a tall order given the current state of Louisville and Boeheim's coming retirement) and a couple of the "reasonably strong" teams chip in at times, the ACC will be good enough. There will always be basement teams, but we won't see the current conventional wisdom around the league as long as 5-6 teams are in or around the top 25 (bonus points if UNC and Duke are among those teams, since the league's strength is usually assessed based primarily on how those two are perceived).

 

I had thought the decade of success Pitt had under How-Dixon would have moved them from bad bones to at least respectable but Goddam, did this fanbase run screaming when the bottom fell out in 2016. Part of that was due to the idiocy initiated by shithead Scott Barnes lowering Dixon's buyout to allow TCU to snag him for nothing while he replaced him with his old friend Kevin Stallings who went 0-for-ACC in his second year. The other part is that they were flat out unwatchable for half of a decade. Either way, Capel appears to have used the portal to right the ship for now and I'm just gonna enjoy the ride.