Has the men's basketball program now, finally, hit ROCK BOTTOM?

We’re still in the ACC. This isn’t close to the bottom.

Deaconblue said:

So an NCAA tournament appearance and putting a player in the first round of the NBA draft constitutes "worse shape?" Really?
Maybe it isn't "good enough" but an NCAA tournament appearance is improvement over not being in the NCAA tournament.

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Read knowells post. I’m not defend his position but I do believe his argument has some merit on a macro scale. Mostly I am just saying RC107 asked a dumb question.

birdman said:

Read knowells post. I’m not defend his position but I do believe his argument has some merit on a macro scale. Mostly I am just saying RC107 asked a dumb question.

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He's entitled to his opinions. Fact is Wake was in the NCAA tournament a year ago.

Is "macro scale" simply wins and losses over four years? Or???

coredeac said:

Oh look, here comes cancer to yet another thread! You're full of shit.

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Lol. I’ve always assumed that y’all hate my posts on here so much because 1. You know I’m right and 2. That upsets you because you come to these boards to vent and wallow about Wake Forest basketball rather than engage in rational discourse on the subject. I never thought y’all would confirm that by starting a thread solely for that purpose and then try to kick me off of it.

And I get it. The last thing you want when you are trying to vent and wallow in misery is some asshole pointing out how irrational you are being. If you change the threads title to the “Let’s bitch about Wake Basketball” and keep your bitching on that thread I promise to leave you to it.

birdman said:

This is a really interesting question, especially considering knowell laid out exactly why he thinks we are in worse shape now than were we 4 years ago in the post that you quoted.

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Where?

At best he made a poorly framed attempt at the following argument:

1. 8 years of unabated losing leaves a basketball program in worse shape than 4 years of unabated losing.
2. Manning added 4 years of unabated losing to [Redacted]’s 4.

Therefore

3. We are worse off basketball wise.

It’s a valid argument. Unfortunately, premise 1 isn’t true (unless losing is very narrowly defined) and premise 2 is demonstrably false.


Pretty strange definition of exact.

Free of Rchill March 2019, but if we didn’t suck he wouldn’t have to leave.

RChildress107 said:

Where?

At best he made a poorly framed attempt at the following argument:

1. 8 years of unabated losing leaves a basketball program in worse shape than 4 years of unabated losing.
2. Manning added 4 years of unabated losing to [Redacted]’s 4.

Therefore

3. We are worse off basketball wise.

It’s a valid argument. Unfortunately, premise 1 isn’t true (unless losing is very narrowly defined) and premise 2 is demonstrably false.


Pretty strange definition of exact.

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Not a strange definition of exact, that is exactly why knowell thinks we are worse off. You think he is cherry picking the data on which to base an opinion but that doesn’t change the fact that he laid it out right there in the post. So your question “how?” Is a dumb question.

From a Marco scale, ie people not close to the program and familiar with the season by season performance, they’d see the win loss total, the road record, etc. and could conclude that Wake hasn’t done shit since they fired gaudio 8 years ago.

Look RC, you put a lot more weight on the one successful season and the KenPom ranks than some other people do. That’s fine, your free to do that. Your repeated arguments with everyone are a matter of data weighting though not unassailable facts. Some of us weight the fact that our w/l record under Manning is essentially identical to [Redacted] very heavily, some weight the fact that we won 19 games in year three very heavily. They are not invalid they are just different views on which data are more important.

One 19-15 season surrounded by three 20 loss seasons is the definition of a power 5 bottom feeder. Add to that massive defections, a broken locker room and JV level in-game tactics.

Throw in a 2019 class that looks dim. The program has continued on the path BZ set.

Had Wellman not been so dense, and let Manning go at the end of last year, you could have pointed to a program upgrade. There was some talent coming. Wake likely would have retained some of the disgruntled talent that left for Israel or other college programs.

Ryan Odom or another smart, young, enthusiastic coach would have been perfect timing. Wellman is always the last to realize he has bet it all on a losing hand.

birdman said:

Not a strange definition of exact, that is exactly why knowell thinks we are worse off. You think he is cherry picking the data on which to base an opinion but that doesn’t change the fact that he laid it out right there in the post. So your question “how?” Is a dumb question.

From a Marco scale, ie people not close to the program and familiar with the season by season performance, they’d see the win loss total, the road record, etc. and could conclude that Wake hasn’t done shit since they fired gaudio 8 years ago.

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I have a higher opinion of knowell’s logical reasoning skills than you do. Which is why I asked the question.

People not close to the program aren’t looking at Manning’s overall win loss record, season by season performance, road record, Kenpom, etc. If you asked them about Wake Forest they’d say “That’s where Chris Paul went, right? WTF happened to them? Don’t they have some new coach? What’s his name again? Oh, yeah that’s right, he’s the dude who played for Kansas. They were in the tournament a year ago, right? Who’s that dude who played for them? Oh he’s in the NBA now? Cool. Well, I hope Manning can turn it around?”

Have you ever had that conversation? I have several times. People don’t know Manning is the coach. They definitely don’t know about Collins and making the First Four.

LOL, a casual college basketball fan doesn't know Wake made the First Four 2 years ago.

Ayo said:

LOL, a casual college basketball fan doesn't know Wake made the First Four 2 years ago.

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True. All my buddies know about Wake is that they have been bad for a while now. I used to tell them that we just had one really bad hire and Wake would be back soon.

Nothing really to say now. Best just to reminisce about the sort of good ole days.

PhDeac said:

Have you ever had that conversation? I have several times. People don’t know Manning is the coach. They definitely don’t know about Collins and making the First Four.

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I won a bet with a Duke guy about Collins. I told him Collins would be a beast in the NBA. He did not even know who Collins was despite having played wake twice in the previous season.

They just look at Wake as a "W" on the schedule and not really a game they have to pay attention to.

birdman said:

Look RC, you put a lot more weight on the one successful season and the KenPom ranks than some other people do. That�s fine, your free to do that. Your repeated arguments with everyone are a matter of data weighting though not unassailable facts. Some of us weight the fact that our w/l record under Manning is essentially identical to [name redacted] very heavily, some weight the fact that we won 19 games in year three very heavily. They are not invalid they are just different views on which data are more important.

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25% is indeed a lot more than zero.

Different views on which data are important are fine. Just be willing to support those views.

Kenpom is a good system for predicting outcomes. It�s an above average system for weighting several factors that go into evaluating how good a team was in a given system. A more accurate ranking would be one where Kenpom accounts for w/l record. Basically what would the Kenpom ranking be of a team expected to go exactly 11-20 against our schedule.

I�ve yet to see an argument for heavily weighting or solely using cumulative win/loss record to evaluate a college basketball team�s performance. I certainly haven�t seen anyone willing to consistently apply that standard.

I think most people view a 30 point win over a Kansas team ranked in the top 5 as better (and more enjoyable) than a 7 point win over Hampton at home. If that�s true, then at a minimum those people should be using RPI (or some similar system) when using win/loss record to evaluate a team.

I also think many people view a 25 point beat down of Carolina as more enjoyable and better than a one point win. If so, they should be using a system that also factors in margin of victory.

If those �advanced� numbers were relatively close between Manning and [name redacted] I would understand using w/l record as a proxy. They aren�t, however, meaning that throwing out w/l record with zero context doesn�t add much, if anything, to the discussion.

I don�t have a problem with people valuing different things or weighting certain measures differently. But I�m going to call out cognitive dissonance and illogical reasoning where I see it.

PhDeac said:

Have you ever had that conversation? I have several times. People don’t know Manning is the coach. They definitely don’t know about Collins and making the First Four.

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Yes. With informed fans of other ACC schools.

I agree that casual fans or fans of non-ACC schools have no idea that we made the NCAA tournament two seasons ago.

But, if the main support for the conclusion that Manning has left the program worse than he found it is that a casual basketball fan who knows nothing about awake Forest basketball has a vague notion that we used to be kinda good but have sucked for a long time, then you are in even worse shape than I thought.

I'd argue people who follow college bball pretty closely couldn't on-the-fly name every team in the Elite 8 from 2017. I sure as hell couldn't. There's only so much memory space in the ol' noggin and it's really just not that important. A First 4 participant? Lol.

RChildress107 said:

Yes. With informed fans of other ACC schools.

I agree that casual fans or fans of non-ACC schools have no idea that we made the NCAA tournament two seasons ago.

But, if the main support for the conclusion that Manning has left the program worse than he found it is that a casual basketball fan who knows nothing about awake Forest basketball has a vague notion that we used to be kinda good but have sucked for a long time, then you are in even worse shape than I thought.

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If only knowledgeable fans know details about your program, your program is in bad shape. I find it weird you don’t understand this.

If your life is in shambles and you lose your job, get divorced, post crazy conspiracy theories all day, your kids hate you, you are 200,000 in debt, lose all your friends, live in some rural shithole, and get addicted to opioids your life sucks. You get a new girlfriend your life sucks just a tad less, that new girlfriend helps you only be 150,000 in debt but all the other factors remain, your life still sucks. The fact that your life has remained sucking for almost a decade of time may add a multiplier to the suck and despite some positive metrics like new gf and 50,000 less debt your shitty life is or at least feels like the same shitty life it has been for the last decade.