The ACC sent four teams to the NCAA Tournament in 2008, three less than 2007, the high water mark of the post-expansion era.
One month into the long push for the 2009 tournament, the ACC is on track for seven bids, although six may ultimately be the number.
While rankings are meaningless in college basketball, the ACC has three top 10 teams — UNC (1), Duke (6) and Wake Forest (10).
The relative strength of Duke and Wake is debatable, UNC's is not. The Tar Heels are the best team in college basketball and, as far as regular-season dominance goes, might be the best team in the sport since UNLV in 1990-91.
Barring suspensions, a mid-season NCAA ban or an epidemic, the trio of UNC, Duke and Wake will be in the field of 65.
On the next tier is Clemson and Miami, both tournament teams in '08. The two meet on Sunday in Miami in the first conference game of the season.
Clemson has been tested away from home by Temple (76-72), Charlotte (71-70) and Illinois (76-64) and is unbeaten through 10 games.
Miami's 7-2 with a neutral site loss to No. 2 UConn (76-63 at the Paradise Jam tourney at the Virgin Islands) and a bizarre home loss to Ohio State, which included Jack McClinton getting ejected 8 minutes into the game (he already had 12 points) for slapping an OSU player.
Miami will have to improve last season's 8-8 ACC record to get back to the tournament because its nonconference resume is not as strong as it was last season, despite winning at Kentucky.
After those five teams, it's a scramble. As Virginia Tech learned last season, 9-7 in the ACC is not an automatic NCAA bid anymore. What you do in November and December matters.
So far, Florida State and Maryland have least given themselves a chance to get into the tournament if they can finish the conference schedule at .500, which was Miami's NCAA formula last season.
FSU, while inexplicably losing at Northwestern, has three wins (Cincinnati, Cal and Florida) over power conference teams. The Noles host No. 3 Pittsburgh on Sunday. A win there and Leonard Hamilton's seventh team would almost certainly make its first NCAA appearance.
Even with a loss, a date with Western Kentucky, which has wins over Louisville and Georgia, on Dec. 28 might prove to be the RPI-builder the Noles really need to make their NCAA case.
Maryland was completely out-classed in a Thanksgiving tournament in Orlando by Gonzaga and Georgetown but beat Michigan State and then came home and beat Michigan. The Terps' impossibly small, four-guard lineup might be good enough to win the Big Ten, what will happen in the ACC is another question.
The improvement of junior wing Landon Milbourne, who's essentially the team's power forward at 6-7 and 201 pounds, and bonus shooting of Adrian Bowie have the Terps in position to think about the tournament despite the lack of expected contributions from forward Braxton Dupree and guards Cliff Tucker and Sean Mosley.
BC, Georgia Tech and N.C. State each lack a significant win. BC (at Saint Louis) and GT (Illinois-Chicago) each have a potentially damaging loss while the Wolfpack's lone loss was at Davidson, a Final Eight team in '08.
GT goes to Pepperdine and USC this weekend, which is its last chance to impress out of the league.
The only BCS conference team left for BC, which also lost to Purdue, is Providence (Saturday).
Of the three, N.C. State has the best opportunity to score an important nonconference win. State hosts Marquette (on Monday) and goes to Florida (Jan. 3).
Then there's Virginia Tech (6-4) and Virginia (3-3). The Hokies are the unluckiest team in college basketball. They lost in the final seconds to Xavier (in overtime), Wisconsin and Georgia.
They were left out of the tournament last year for their lack of wins against the top 50 of the RPI. Barring an ACC run against Wake, Miami, Duke and UNC, the Hokies are going to be in the same boat. That's if they can get to 9-7 in the league again. That's a pretty big if considering VT's luck.
Virginia has lost three straight (Liberty, at Syracuse, at Minnesota) and would have to beat Xavier (Jan. 3) just to get into position to get into position to get in the conversation.
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ACC best tourney conference of modern era?
Tue, 01/13/2009 - 20:03 — BracketpeteIf tourney supremacy were only measured by win/loss records and accomplishments, the ACC would definitely be the best conference of the 24-year 64-team tourney era. Their .669 winning rate is solidly ahead of the Big East’s .620 win percentage. And they own the most Final Four appearances (22 to the Big Ten’s 16) and championships (six to the SEC’s five).
Win-loss standings and bracket advancement aren’t the only ways to evaluate tourney performance, however. In fact, they can be misleading metrics for determining relative conference strength. The problem is that they don’t take into consideration seeding. If one conference is stocked with higher seeds, you’d expect its winning percentage to be better than its rivals. Consider the ACC: the average seed of its tourney entrants is 4.33. That’s more than one-and-a-half seed positions better than the SEC’s 5.85 average seed. No wonder the ACC has a better record. In fact, you could argue that the SEC’s win-loss performance is more impressive than the ACC’s. After all, it has a better winning rate despite lower seeding than the Big Ten (5.20), Big 12 (5.66) and Pac-10 (5.59).
So how do you remove the bias of seeding from tourney performance analysis? You do it with PASE, or “Performance Against Seed Expectations.” PASE compares the total number of wins a conference attains to the number its seeding dictates that it should achieve. PASE is calculated by tallying the positive or negative differences between actual and expected wins at each seed position. The total of these differences is divided by the number of appearances to arrive at an average number of games the conference either over- or underperforms per tourney. For instance, the average top seed wins 3.42 games while the average two seed nets 2.41 wins per dance. If a team appeared in the tourney once as both a top seed and a two seed, its expected win total would be 5.83 games. If it actually won eight games, the conference would’ve “overperformed” by 2.17 games—for a PASE of +1.085—more than one game per tourney above expectations
If we apply PASE analysis to Big Six performance, it doesn’t change which conference comes out on top, but it certainly tightens the race. Here are the PASE values of the Big Six since 1985:
1. ACC: +.160
2. Big East: +.148
3. SEC: +.102
4. Big Ten: -.045
5. Big 12: -.098
6. Pac-10: -.176
The ACC, Big East and SEC all perform above seed expectations. The Big Ten, SEC and Pac-10 all fail to meet the win totals their seed positions indicate they should achieve. The PASE race has actually tightened because the ACC, Big East and SEC have stumbled over the last decade.
That got me to thinking. How would the PASE values of each of the Big Six conferences look if the 24-year modern tourney era were divided into four six-year periods? Would trends emerge that changed our impression of the performance of the ACC, Big East, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-10? Well, I finished the analysis this evening. Here are the PASE values of each Big Six conference for 1985-1990, 1991-1996, 1997-2002, and 2003 to 2008
ACC: +.363 | +.371 | -.015 | -.130
Big East: +.234 | +.113 | +.100 | +.140
SEC: +.238 | +.529 | -.230 | +.006
Big Ten: -.263 | -.222 | +.221 | +.090
Big 12: -.158 | -.264 | -.094 | +.103
Pac-10: +.589 | -.373 | +.174 | -.093
One look at the bumpy rides of all these numbers is illustration enough that the Big Six conferences haven't exactly been consistent in their performance for the entire 24 years of the modern tourney era. Consider this: the ACC has owned the best PASE in one six-year period and the worst PASE in another. So has the SEC—in consecutives periods! Meanwhile, the Big East and Big Ten have been slightly more consistent, both winning the PASE race in one six-year period. (In fact, the Big East is the only conference to overachieve in every period.) The Big 12 has operated under the radar, never the best nor worst performer against seed expectations, while the Pac-10 basically bumbled through the first 12 years of the dance. For a more in-depth discussion of the numbers, check out my blog at www.bracketscience.com. Or you can check out the feature article on the site titled “Best Tourney Conferences.”