2024-25 College Basketball Thread

Everything has to run through Dickinson. Eventually, it stops working.
They have one weird resume. Wins over Duke and Iowa State suggest they're good. Watching them play tells you they're not.

 

Duke can lose at Carolina by 20 on Saturday and still have a +20 ppg scoring margin in regular-season ACC play.
Second-best in ACC history. The record is held by the 1998-99 Blue Devils at +24 ppg. In order to catch their predecessors, the current Devils will have to win by 66 on Saturday.

 

I would be slightly concerned about Duke playing in the weakest ACC that I can ever remember and how it may affect the Blue Devils when they need to turn it on for the second weekend of the NCAA tournament. But then I remember they went up to MSG and absolutely eviscerated an Illinois team that's ranked 16 in the NET.

Someone posted on BlueSky the other day about Virginia Tech, and how Mike Young has somehow coaxed eight ACC wins out of a team with an Atlantic 10 roster. Pretty accurate. That's how rough it's been outside of Duke, Clemson and Louisville in the league this year. SMU is decent, I guess. But the rest of the conference is dreck.

 

Random thoughts:;
* Wake Forest looked decent until it failed to take care of business against FSU, NC State and Virginia. Two years ago, the committee looked at a Clemson team with a 14-6 conference record and snubbed them because they lost to a woeful Louisville team. One bad loss doomed them. The Demon Deacons now have three bad Ls and nearly had a fourth, Notre Dame, last Saturday. They played their way out of contention. Again.
* It's amazing that a power conference can have 18 members but hit March with only three NCAA tourney locks and only one fence-sitter. Two-thirds of the league's teams have known for weeks that they have no at-large hopes.
* Georgia Tech is at best a .500 team but has managed to beat Louisville and Clemson. Those are the only aberrations.
* The problem is that nobody has enough decent non-ACC wins. The goose was cooked by mid-December.
* SEC is 30-4 against the ACC. That's staggering, and it helps explain why the SEC is going to occupy every corner of the bracket.
* Hokies have a chance to do a number on Carolina's NCAA tournament hopes. But I'm guessing UNC will prevail and set up a high-stakes showdown in the Dean Dome on Saturday. If the Tar Heels win, they'll make it. There's no way a blue blood with its AD as chair of the selection committee beats Duke and doesn't get in. They would end up "stealing" the SEC's 14th bid. I think the committee can survive any Trumpist extortion threats from the SEC commissioner if the crime is the theft of the SEC's 14th bid.

 

Pitt went from 12-2 and ranked to they may not even finish with a winning record.

 

That is crazy

 

2025 Duke is loads better than 2014 UConn, but the Blue Devils winning the national title would feel like the Huskies winning it all b/c the ACC, like the American back then, is basically just a glorified mid-major. I don't know how the ACC gets out of this....or where the decent hoops schools can go.

 

I thought it was because it just means more.

 

Tate Frazier brought up a really good point on his recent podcast ... the ACC's biggest problem is that it had an exodus of elite coaches almost all at once. Duke has been able to navigate it. Louisville seems back after a rough couple of years. But Virginia and Syracuse have gone off a cliff. Stanford hasn't been nationally relevant in two decades. Nor has Georgia Tech, Pitt, Wake, or Notre Dame. There's a lot of dreck in the league (my school included, though it seems like we've found some NIL money to help Mike Young going forward...) and I don't know if it gets better. Syracuse and BC have always been odd fits in the league. N.C. State has the occasional moment of brilliance. SMU and Cal? Who the fuck knows. Florida State was pretty good for a spell there but I don't know if it continues with a new coach. Miami seemingly doesn't have much NIL money to spend. Just hate, hate, hate these bloated leagues for basketball.

 

ACC will not be down forever. UNC has gotten religion on the need for NIL and if Hubert Davis doesn’t make it next year they’ll have the pick of the litter without “family” constraints after next season. Virginia won’t be saddled with a last-second interim coach who already proved he wasn’t ready at Charlotte. And at least one of Wake, N.C. State or Georgia Tech will get its life together.

 

Missed it by that much.

 

Where did Miami's money go? Two years ago LifeLock got them into the Final Four. And are we sure the second and third tier of teams are going to get their shit together? Wake Forest and Georgia Tech haven't won an NCAA game since 2010. Before last year, NC State hadn't won a tourney game since 2015. They've only gotten to the second weekend five times this century. Virginia Tech's won three tourney games this century (three more than my school, @Cosmo!). I don't know how it happens, but I can totally see the handful of good hoops schools exiting and leaving the ACC as a hodgepodge of dreck.