Jim Phillips: ACC to meet about changing men's hoops narrative

[BreakingPitt]

Any thoughts on this, maybe go back to 18 conference games since non conference games mean soo much ?

Commish: ACC will meet to alter hoops narrative

After the ACC got just five bids to the men's tournament, commissioner Jim Phillips said he will met with his league's coaches and ADs to be more "proactive" about changing the narrative of the conference.

www.espn.com

 

[DC_Area_Panther]

Most recent image of the ACC to outsiders is of a conference with too many teams in total dominated by a few stronger teams at the top. That is the image that needs to be changed. How to do that is the questio.

 

[upj87]

Most recent image of the ACC to outsiders is of a conference with too many teams in total dominated by a few stronger teams at the top. That is the image that needs to be changed. How to do that is the questio.

most outsiders are wrong...8 out of the last 11 auto bids from the ACC went to different teams. Not sure how you "change" facts. .pretty sure no other P6 has that kind of diversity..

 

[TheWerewolfFromTwilight]

Seems like there are so many teams anymore that are similar in quality but play completely diverse schedules that selecting the field is nearly impossible.

I get the need for adhering to at least some standard of objectivity; I just think it needs tweaked. Quads are generic, subjective, and stupid. There is too much emphasis on point differential. And there needs to be more games between teams from different conferences throughout the entire season--not just in November and December.

 

[BreakingPitt]

there needs to be more games between teams from different conferences throughout the entire season--not just in November and December.

+1

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Seems like there are so many teams anymore that are similar in quality but play completely diverse schedules that selecting the field is nearly impossible.

I get the need for adhering to at least some standard of objectivity; I just think it needs tweaked. Quads are generic, subjective, and stupid. There is too much emphasis on point differential. And there needs to be more games between teams from different conferences throughout the entire season--not just in November and December.

Again the "quads" (I would think is short for "quadrants") is not evenly distributed. I said before, sure Louisville and Florida State had lousy seasons, but still winning at those facilities against those teams is much different than say beating Bethune-Cookman at home.

I am still piling through data and trying to determine where it falls down. UNC was preseason 1, one of only 3 teams from the ACC ranked in the preseason top 25 (Duke and UVa). The Big 12 had 5. SEC had 5. Big 10 only had 3. Kentucky fell almost as hard as UNC. I dunno.

SD State and Creighton were preseason top 25. UConn and Miami was 27 and 28th respectively.

It now looks with the portal like it is really impossible to have preseason rankings.

 

[TheWerewolfFromTwilight]

Again the "quads" (I would think is short for "quadrants") is not evenly distributed. I said before, sure Louisville and Florida State had lousy seasons, but still winning at those facilities against those teams is much different than say beating Bethune-Cookman at home.

I am still piling through data and trying to determine where it falls down. UNC was preseason 1, one of only 3 teams from the ACC ranked in the preseason top 25 (Duke and UVa). The Big 12 had 5. SEC had 5. Big 10 only had 3. Kentucky fell almost as hard as UNC. I dunno.

SD State and Creighton were preseason top 25. UConn and Miami was 27 and 28th respectively.

It now looks with the portal like it is really impossible to have preseason rankings.

Beating the #75 team on the road is the same "quad level" as beating the #1 team in the nation at home. I don't need to explain how stupid that is. It's like a bunch of kids with crayons just sat in a room and came up with this stuff.

 

[h2p_5150]

Again the "quads" (I would think is short for "quadrants") is not evenly distributed. I said before, sure Louisville and Florida State had lousy seasons, but still winning at those facilities against those teams is much different than say beating Bethune-Cookman at home.

I am still piling through data and trying to determine where it falls down. UNC was preseason 1, one of only 3 teams from the ACC ranked in the preseason top 25 (Duke and UVa). The Big 12 had 5. SEC had 5. Big 10 only had 3. Kentucky fell almost as hard as UNC. I dunno.

SD State and Creighton were preseason top 25. UConn and Miami was 27 and 28th respectively.

It now looks with the portal like it is really impossible to have preseason rankings.

Maybe. I think this might be an overreaction- this year might prove to be a fluke. Just last year we had a very predictable, chalky Final Four that was nothing but blue bloods.

 

[TheWerewolfFromTwilight]

Maybe. I think this might be an overreaction- this year might prove to be a fluke. Just last year we had a very predictable, chalky Final Four that was nothing but blue bloods.

I actually find that in college basketball, sometimes the preseason rankings are more reliable than the end of season rankings when it comes to predicting tournament success. That usually means they have more raw talent, which tends to rise to the top in tournament time, when a player or two can just take over a game. Like Creighton is damn near playing in the final four. It would have looked like a huge upset if they had made it, but they were preseason top 10.

I mean, it's not going to be perfect, because anybody can beat anybody is one given basketball game.

 

[Dointhatrag]

I actually find that in college basketball, sometimes the preseason rankings are more reliable than the end of season rankings when it comes to predicting tournament success. That usually means they have more raw talent, which tends to rise to the top in tournament time, when a player or two can just take over a game. Like Creighton is damn near playing in the final four. It would have looked like a huge upset if they had made it, but they were preseason top 10.

I mean, it's not going to be perfect, because anybody can beat anybody is one given basketball game.

other than UNC preseason #1 this year

 

[DC_Area_Panther]

most outsiders are wrong...8 out of the last 11 auto bids from the ACC went to different teams. Not sure how you "change" facts. .pretty sure no other P6 has that kind of diversity..

Correct or not: Perception = Reality

 

[Dointhatrag]

Maybe the NET rankings weren't so bad.

Net Rankings:
Final Four
8 Uconn
13 FAU
35 Miami
14 SDSU

Elite 8
6 Gonzaga
7 Texas
17 Creighton
24 KSU

 

[upj87]

Correct or not: Perception = Reality

If the premise is not true is how can you change that? Like saying the cast of The View is perceived to be thin women, how can we change that when they are actually Hugley like in build?

 

[Upg bobcat]

Maybe the NET rankings weren't so bad.

Net Rankings:
Final Four
8 Uconn
13 FAU
35 Miami
14 SDSU

Elite 8
6 Gonzaga
7 Texas
17 Creighton
24 KSU

The NET seemed to be correct in what it liked about FAU, SDSU, Gonzaga, and the Big East schools. It definitely seemed to over-inflate the Big 10 and SEC, and underinflate Miami. I think Miami looks to be significantly better than the 35th best team in the nation.

 

[DC_Area_Panther]

Sagarin's computer has Miami as the #16 team as of today.

 

[sonofabit]

Again the "quads" (I would think is short for "quadrants") is not evenly distributed. I said before, sure Louisville and Florida State had lousy seasons, but still winning at those facilities against those teams is much different than say beating Bethune-Cookman at home.

I am still piling through data and trying to determine where it falls down. UNC was preseason 1, one of only 3 teams from the ACC ranked in the preseason top 25 (Duke and UVa). The Big 12 had 5. SEC had 5. Big 10 only had 3. Kentucky fell almost as hard as UNC. I dunno.

SD State and Creighton were preseason top 25. UConn and Miami was 27 and 28th respectively.

It now looks with the portal like it is really impossible to have preseason rankings.

Bingo with your last sentence. Teams will now mesh later than normal if at all. Can’t look at a bunch of players gathered to compete and know chemistry before they’re… you know…actually coached.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

I actually find that in college basketball, sometimes the preseason rankings are more reliable than the end of season rankings when it comes to predicting tournament success. That usually means they have more raw talent, which tends to rise to the top in tournament time, when a player or two can just take over a game. Like Creighton is damn near playing in the final four. It would have looked like a huge upset if they had made it, but they were preseason top 10.

I mean, it's not going to be perfect, because anybody can beat anybody is one given basketball game.

I was reading something the other day that said that when the preseason and end of the regular season rankings are significantly different from each other that the preseason rankings actually do a better job of predicting NCAA tournament success than the end of season rankings.

It wasn't a huge difference, and you can surely quibble over what is a significant difference and all that. But I think that shows exactly the kind of thing that you are talking about. Creighton is a perfect example. Their end of season ranking includes the fact that they played, and lost, a bunch of games without their best player earlier this season. With everyone back and healthy they were a lot more like the preseason top ten team that everyone thought they were than the team that lost six games in a row in early December.

 

[hoclaw]

'Just win, Baby!"

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

'Just win, Baby!"

Yeah, it seems like what would help change the narrative the most would be for ACC teams to not lose to teams like Bellarmine, St. Bonaventure, Sienna and Maine.

 

[Jeffburgh]

They have the same issue w football and need to get w the times and develop their network of unabashed online and media schills like the Bigs and SEC, and develop talking points and themes to rally around.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

"We're paying too much attention to the NET. I'm just not there on that," Phillips said.

The commish doesn't agree with JoetheNETfan.

I am glad the ACC is taking this initiative. Something has to change. The biggest problem is the schools arent investing in coaching and arent as serious about winning (Beard, Pitino, Sampson, Miller) as other leagues. But lets forget that part of it. There's still ways to help maximize bids.

1. Understand NET. Hire some math nerds to reverse engineer it. Or just ask me. Scoring margin is vitally important. VITALLY IMPORTANT. Every possession for the whole season counts exactly the same whether you are up 30 or down 30. Coaches have to coach every possession the same. No putting in walk-ons. No dribbling out the clock. If you play a Q4 team, you better win by 40 or else you are an idiot for scheduling that game....which brings me to:

2. NO Q4 games. The MW doesn't schedule them. The ACC shouldn't. Way too much risk. You can really only lose 2-3 Q3/4 games and still make the tournament. And you dont just have to win those games, you have to win by a lot. The best way to avoid this tripping you up is by not playing these.

3. I would consider a flex scheduling policy to avoid a Pitt team having to play a Q3 road game late for example. The way NET works, a loss there can kill you. I don't know what was all available using that week as an example but perhaps Pitt goes to UVa or something like that instead of ND. Gives them a Q1 opportunity and a loss doesn't hurt.

4. I would definitely keep 20 games, maybe even go to 22. This cuts down on teams being able to schedule so many Q4 home games.

5. Play 2 ACC games before Thanksgiving, 1 of which on that Veteran's Day weekend making football/basketball doubleheaders. Pitt football plays at UVa at noon lets say and plays at UVa basketball at 8. Makes a fun road trip. Also makes teams get into mid-season mindset quicker so they arent effing around and losing Q4 games in November.

6. Dont play rivalry games in November. Early in the season in rivalry games, it can be a coin flip. Clemson's loss at South Carolina kept them out of the tournament. Pitt's blowout loss to WVU almost did.

 

[DC_Area_Panther]

Gaming ".NET" isn't the main answer. It's a more generic issue. Looking at the P6 leagues by another system still shows the ACC with a problem. As an example, using Sagarin's ratings (which do discount the margin of victory/defeat when it gets too high) you still get the following for 2022-23:

League/ # of teams/ #in top 25/ # in top 50/ % in Top 50

ACC ------------ 15--------------- 2---------------- 4------------26.7%
Big East 11 4 6 54.5%
Big 10 14 3 11 78.6%
Big 12 10 5 8 80.0%
Pac 12 12 2 4 33.3%
SEC 14 4 6 42.9%

So, playing fewer OOC games and more ACC games isn't going to fix the problem of a league with too many teams outside the top 50. Fewer in conference games and more OOC--especially vs P6 opponents would be a better answer--particularly if more ACC teams would win more of those games.

Fifteen teams and the unbalanced 20 game in conference schedule may be an inherent weakness and may also be hurting recruiting prospects for teams finishing outside the national top 50. Just a thought.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

Gaming ".NET" isn't the main answer. It's a more generic issue. Looking at the P6 leagues by another system still shows the ACC with a problem. As an example, using Sagarin's ratings (which do discount the margin of victory/defeat when it gets too high) you still get the following for 2022-23:

League/ # of teams/ #in top 25/ # in top 50/ % in Top 50

ACC 15 2 4 26.7%
Big East 11 4 6 54.5%
Big 10 14 3 11 78.6%
Big 12 10 5 8 80.0%
Pac 12 12 2 4 33.3%
SEC 14 4 6 42.9%

So, playing fewer OOC games and more ACC games isn't going to fix the problem of a league with too many teams outside the top 50. Fewer in conference games and more OOC--especially vs P6 opponents would be a better answer--particularly if more ACC teams would win more of those games.

Fifteen teams and the unbalanced 20 game in conference schedule may be an inherent weakness and may also be hurting recruiting prospects for teams finishing outside the national top 50. Just a thought.

2 things killed the ACC last season. FSU and Louisville's horrendous OOC schedules. For FSU, perhaps you can chalk that up to bad luck. For Louisville, it was a terrible coaching decision. Mississippi just hired Chris Beard. Louisville wasnt as invested in winning. They should be able to hire almost anyone.

Taking Lou and FSU out, the league wasnt a whole lot different than the others in the OOC. But they have to understand NET better. Have to understand that buying a Q4 win basically counts as an L for NET if you dont win by 40. They need to totally rethink how they schedule. The old days of sleepwalking through a Q4 win as a glorified scrimmage are over. You need to run up the score.

Using a political analogy, you hear analysts say that Democrats need to "run up the score" in the cities because they are going to lose the rural, lesser populated areas. Every vote counts. These teams are scheduling like "winning Philadelphia County" by 1 is all you need to do. No, you have to win by a lot. If you can beat Stonehill College by 50, that can really help your NET. If you win by 12, that's going to hurt. If you lose, you arent making the NCAAT.

 

[HailToPitt1985]

Beating the #75 team on the road is the same "quad level" as beating the #1 team in the nation at home. I don't need to explain how stupid that is. It's like a bunch of kids with crayons just sat in a room and came up with this stuff.

I think you're right about the kids with crayons making this quad nonsense. It has to be that. There just isn't any other logical explanation for it.

 

[HailToPitt1985]

Based on what we see now, the top 4 teams in the country are UConn, FAU, SDState and Miami. Everyone else lost when it counted.

 

[CaptainMurphy]

Maybe the NET rankings weren't so bad.

Net Rankings:
Final Four
8 Uconn
13 FAU
35 Miami
14 SDSU

Elite 8
6 Gonzaga
7 Texas
17 Creighton
24 KSU

Kenpom is even better:

1. UConn
14. SDSU
17. FAU
22. Miami

8. Gonzaga
5. Texas
12. Creighton
21. Kansas State

 

[TheSpecialSauce]

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

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The ACC is down. But its not worse than the MW and not much worse than B10. Its the SEC/B12. After that, they are similar.

 

[TheWerewolfFromTwilight]

I was reading something the other day that said that when the preseason and end of the regular season rankings are significantly different from each other that the preseason rankings actually do a better job of predicting NCAA tournament success than the end of season rankings.

It wasn't a huge difference, and you can surely quibble over what is a significant difference and all that. But I think that shows exactly the kind of thing that you are talking about. Creighton is a perfect example. Their end of season ranking includes the fact that they played, and lost, a bunch of games without their best player earlier this season. With everyone back and healthy they were a lot more like the preseason top ten team that everyone thought they were than the team that lost six games in a row in early December.

And here I thought I was probably talking about of my keyster. Ha, but it's a trend I kind of picked up on back when we were relevant and I was actually following the tournament. Injuries, like you said, were a big part of it. As were the natural lulls that come with the ebbs and flows of a season (complacency is always a possibility when you're not playing for all the marbles). And then sometimes it's a highly touted freshman-laden team trying to find its footing... come tournament time, usually one or two of them had figured it out and was talented enough to take over a game.

 

[CJsE]

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the 2nd half of that tweet, wow

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

1. Understand NET. Hire some math nerds to reverse engineer it.

There isn't anything complicated about the NET, no matter how much you want to pretend it's so. The one, and only, way to "game" the NET is to perform better on the court than the NET expected you to. That's it. That's the list. The whole list.

The fact that you keep saying that you can't play Q4 teams shows that no matter how many times you say it, you still don't understand what the NET is and how it is calculated. And you clearly still haven't figured out, even after another NCAA tournament showed you the truth, that the NCAA does not select the field based on a team's NET, and it does not seed the tournament based on team's NET. As the four teams in the Final Four perfectly illustrated. Compare how those four teams were seeded versus where their NET ranking said they "should have been" seeded. Or look at the seed we got as compared to where the NET said we "should have been" seeded.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

There isn't anything complicated about the NET, no matter how much you want to pretend it's so. The one, and only, way to "game" the NET is to perform better on the court than the NET expected you to. That's it. That's the list. The whole list.

The fact that you keep saying that you can't play Q4 teams shows that no matter how many times you say it, you still don't understand what the NET is and how it is calculated. And you clearly still haven't figured out, even after another NCAA tournament showed you the truth, that the NCAA does not select the field based on a team's NET, and it does not seed the tournament based on team's NET. As the four teams in the Final Four perfectly illustrated. Compare how those four teams were seeded versus where their NET ranking said they "should have been" seeded. Or look at the seed we got as compared to where the NET said we "should have been" seeded.

Part of gaming the NET is running up the score or making a concerted effort when you are down 30 to leave starters in and try to lose by 15 or so.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

Part of gaming the NET is running up the score or making a concerted effort when you are down 30 to leave starters in and try to lose by 15 or so.

So part of gaming the NET is playing the game for a full 40 minutes, like you are supposed to do.

Please enlighten us then, what is the rest of gaming the NET? Except this time actually come up with something that would involve gaming it, rather than just making stupid crap up.

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

So part of gaming the NET is playing the game for a full 40 minutes, like you are supposed to do.

Please enlighten us then, what is the rest of gaming the NET? Except this time actually come up with something that would involve gaming it, rather than just making stupid crap up.

Yes. You cannot put in deep bench guys. If you are down 20 with 2 minutes, you need to foul, press, trap, extend the game so maybe you can only lose by 12. Hit a 3 with 8 seconds to cut it to 20? Call TO. Foul. Get it back. Hit another 3. Coaches need to coach the full 40 minutes the same. NET doesn't care as much about the W/L result as it does scoring margin. Scoring margin is really important and coaches need to coach to that. If you play a Q4 team and you only win by 20, you are effed.

 

[Joe the Panther Fan]

Yes. You cannot put in deep bench guys. If you are down 20 with 2 minutes, you need to foul, press, trap, extend the game so maybe you can only lose by 12. Hit a 3 with 8 seconds to cut it to 20? Call TO. Foul. Get it back. Hit another 3. Coaches need to coach the full 40 minutes the same. NET doesn't care as much about the W/L result as it does scoring margin. Scoring margin is really important and coaches need to coach to that. If you play a Q4 team and you only win by 20, you are effed.

Trying to score points and trying to keep the other team from scoring points is in no way, shape or form "gaming the system". It's actually playing the game.

But I'm still waiting, other than actually playing the game, how can you "game the system"? You've said it so many times you should have the answer at the tip of your tongue. And yet so far, nothing.