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2023-24 Wake Forest Basketball Season - 21-14 (11-9) - KP#29 / NET#43

DeacsATS said:
KP has us 10-10 in ACC play, but if you eliminate the % math and look at the individual game results, it is 12-8.

I think 12-8 is more likely. And I know it matters who you beat to get there, but I think 21-10 (13-7) would be strong enough for a bid (understanding it depends on a lot of external factors).
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I checked out Lunardi's bracketology for the 1st time this season. He has VT in his 1st 4 out, and VT's KP is 55, just 2 higher than ours. Given that they weigh not having injured/ineligible players for some losses, I think we're in decent shape at 13 ACC wins or 12 plus 2-3 ACC tourney wins. Looking at the schedule, that is very doable. I'm more optimistic about our chances at this point in the season than I've been in recent years.
 
I’d be more sympathetic to the “system is bad for rewarding big wins” if there wasn’t plenty of data showing that even large(r) margin wins are predictive. That said, I would be in favor of implementing a “garbage time” metric if possible to scrap possession data for NET purposes. I believe there was an article a few years ago suggesting that teams up by 20 with 5 minutes left provided diminishing returns for predictiveness over the last five compared to when they played a team later that season. This would “solve” the walk on issue too and also not limit sample size for really good teams hitting an SP+ garbage time analysis for football (where game could enter it in the second quarter).

And while KP doesn’t have anything to do with the NET, a team’s KP does appear on their sheet that the committee sees
 
DCDeac said:
I'm sorry but there is an understandable amount of NET-hate from teams that have been particularly harmed by it, and Wake is one of those teams. The Alondes/LaRavia team won 13 conference games with a Kenpom top 40 ranking and didn't get a bid, arguably the best ACC team in history not to get an invite. And the ACC sent two teams to the Final Four that year, one of which we'd recently blown out and the other we lost by 2 on the road, plus we'd just won our only matchup against the 3rd team that got a bid. Also it wasn't just the no-bid, it was the messaging that even if we'd won another ACC game in the tourney we still definitely wouldn't have gotten in because the NET dictated there was no value in the win. 37 teams with worse Kenpom rankings made the tournament. I remember when we hit 13 ACC wins Jay Bilas saying we were a lock and all the analysts with him agreeing, so it's not like that was a "semi-legitimate" claim. That was just straight bullshit, especially when the retrospective showed we potentially slipped a few critical spots thanks to not running up the score in blowouts.

Obviously last year's team ran out of gas down the stretch and didn't deserve a bid, but at 9-6 in conference the messaging was we had to win out to have a chance because our remaining games all fell in the wrong quad buckets. Of course NC State with a worse record and Kenpom than us the previous year gets a bid despite losing 3 of their last 4. Including twice to a Clemson bubble team that didn't get a bid.

To be fair, the hate is more for how the Net and quad system is applied at the expense of common sense, of metrics over wins. Over time the NET is as decent a measure as any. But it's not like every program is getting equally screwed over the past few years and everyone should just shut up and accept the nonsense.
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Yeah not this isn’t a NET complaint. We were solid in the NET for a bubble team. We just didn’t have very many good wins and played a really easy OOC. And finishing around 40 on KP/NET is close to the bubble anyways.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
The excuses get lame and old. We simply just have to win those games.

I'm tired of not making the tournament too, but it's not the NET's fault. We just aren't winning enough games against good teams to make our resume look good.

I think we have a pretty good team this year - now we have to make the body of work at the end of the year reflect that. To this point, it does not.
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+1
We have to change the old mindset that a .500 record in the ACC will get us in the tournament. With our unimpressive OOC record we probably need to finish top 5 in the conference to have a shot. In the last 3 seasons the average conference winning percentage for last tournament bids from the ACC was 63.5% which is 13 wins.

Obviously in 2022 we had 13 conference wins and didn’t get an invite, last season Clemson had 14 wins and didn’t get in. With our OOC record we will need between 13-14 conference wins, we will need some impressive wins and we will need to avoid bad losses. If we end the season outside the top 5 of the conference, with less than 13 conference wins, there is very little chance we make the tournament.
 
I would be more comfortable using a longer data set to feel accurate about my predictions, but the ACC got 9 freaking bids in 2018, and 7 in 2019 & 2020. I don’t know what happened during the pandemic but the conference has taken a complete nosedive in reputation (and regular season results).

At the moment we look like a 6 bid league: Duke, UNC, UVA, Clemson are probably locks. That leaves Miami, VT, State, Pitt, Syracuse, Wake to fight for those remaining 2 bids.
 
Comparing this year to the previous five years in terms of team that's expected to go .500 in conference play by KenPom rating:

2019 - 15.33 adjusted EM (38th/39th)
2020 - 11.45 adjusted EM (61st/62nd)
2021 - 13.22 adjusted EM (59th/60th)
2022 - 10.69 adjusted EM (78th/79th)
2023 - 8.58 adjusted EM (87th/88th)
2024 - 11.37 adjusted EM (68th/69th)

So a team in 2019, an ACC team would basically have to be in the top 40 in KP to go .500. Last year you had to be top 90 to go .500 (truly terrible), and this year is basically top 70.

That's just a steep dropoff from the conference overall. For a reference point, this year's big 12 is 17.42 adjusted EM to go .500 in conference play, which means you have to be basically play like a top 30 KP team all year.

The (lack of) depth of the league is really crushing us. Last year we 6 teams sub 100 in KP and 2 sub 200 (Louisville at 290!!!). That just kills a conference overall unless the teams in the middle/bubble are beating those bottom 2-3 by like 25-30 points, which is hard to do consistently.
 
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MichDeac25 said:
I don't know. He's a shooter. I guarantee that timing and touch are going to come back fast for him. At a minimum, he'll be able to launch 3s. The rest of the game requiring movement and running may take a while to come back.
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Can confirm open 3 pointers are like layups for Mondanto, but lateral movement could take a while.
 
I think 2022 is the only possible gripe I see. Looks like we went into Selection Sunday with the following quadrants records:

Q1 - 3-4
Q2 - 2-4
Q3 - 9-1
Q4 - 9-0

We won 2 Q1 road games and 1 Q2 road games, while playing the 350th hardest non-conference schedule. To me, that looks like a team that feasts on bad teams and is ok against good teams, but nothing special. I would have to go back and look to see the specifics, but we basically did exactly what a bubble team SHOULD do, however nothing to stick out. 5-8 against good to great teams, and 18-1 against bad teams. That's just leaving you in a bad place overall when you have that many chances and come out with a 38% win rate.
 
L'ville and Notre Dame are awful, and that just kills the ACC. In addition, there are a handful of good ACC teams, but no great ones this year, which also hurts. UNC is currently KP's 2nd best ACC team. They are #20. UNC has lost on a neutral court to Kentucky, Villanova and UCONN. There are 5 Big 12 teams rated ahead of UNC; there are three SEC teams rated ahead of UNC, and none of them are Kentucky, who just beat UNC. The ACC has performed a little better in OOC play this season, but by any objective metric, the ACC is clearly behind the Big 12, the Big East an the SEC. WF played a role in this; can't lose to two bottom tier SEC teams, and then wonder why the ACC is rated below the SEC.

UVA plays Memphis today; Duke plays Baylor and UNC plays Oklahoma tomorrow. Would help to sweep those three.
 
I'm not trying to throw shade, but objectively, I just don't think the people who complain about where the ACC is ranked the past few years watch a ton of other leagues play. It isn't normal to lose so many Q3/Q4 games like the ACC has done the last few years, and on top of that, perform pretty poorly against the other conferences in marquee OOC events/games early in the season overall.

It's just become normal for us to think that every other P5/6 league is like the ACC, and that's just not really true.

Depaul (216) and Georgetown (178) are awful for sure, but the Big East has three top ten KP teams. The ACC has 0 to offset Louisville (172 - jumped up 32 spots after a 22 point win over Pepperdine on Sunday) and Notre Dame (183). Also, Depaul beat Louisville pretty handily when they played a couple of weeks ago, and Notre Dame lost at home to Georgetown this past weekend. Our worst teams can't even beat their worst teams.
 
Almost all of our griping comes back to the ACC being really down for the last few years. We love to watch UNC/Duke lose and laugh haha but it ends up screwing the league as a whole come selection sunday. ACC being 5/6th fiddle in conference rankings means there just aren't that many bids avaialable in our league. Gotta go finish top 4-5 to expect to get in.
 
Pilchard said:
L'ville and Notre Dame are awful, and that just kills the ACC. In addition, there are a handful of good ACC teams, but no great ones this year, which also hurts. UNC is currently KP's 2nd best ACC team. They are #20. UNC has lost on a neutral court to Kentucky, Villanova and UCONN. There are 5 Big 12 teams rated ahead of UNC; there are three SEC teams rated ahead of UNC, and none of them are Kentucky, who just beat UNC. The ACC has performed a little better in OOC play this season, but by any objective metric, the ACC is clearly behind the Big 12, the Big East an the SEC. WF played a role in this; can't lose to two bottom tier SEC teams, and then wonder why the ACC is rated below the SEC.

UVA plays Memphis today; Duke plays Baylor and UNC plays Oklahoma tomorrow. Would help to sweep those three.
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agreed

which is why there's no excuse for wake not to finish top 5

if we can't do that, we probably don't deserve the tournament anyway

i think if we ball out from here, the early losses without efton will carry less weight
 
Losing Roy, K, Boeheim and Brey all in short succession and at the worst possible time for the ACC really hurt. Leonard and Larranaga will also be gone soon. It’s early, but none of those first 4 schools went out and made a splash with their replacement hires. Meanwhile the other major conferences, especially the SEC, are buying every up and coming coach there is. The ACC needed big new blood but mostly chose to hire from within at a time when we needed to be establishing ourselves as THE basketball conference. Davis, Scheyer, Shrewsberry and Autry may prove to be fine hires, but they have no reputation and it will take time the ACC may not have for them to develop it.

Louisville falling flat on its face in every capacity is its own story. Just an embarrassment.
 
it looks like Duke, Clemson and UVa will probably be at the top

next tier is crowded - Wake will need to find itself at the top of UNC, Miami, VT, NC St, and Pitt with Syracuse and BC creeping

Would LOVE to see us going on a winning streak leading up to Jan 16 @ NC St in Raleigh
 
Demonwolverine said:
Losing Roy, K, Boeheim and Brey all in short succession and at the worst possible time for the ACC really hurt. Leonard and Larranaga will also be gone soon. It’s early, but none of those first 4 schools went out and made a splash with their replacement hires. Meanwhile the other major conferences, especially the SEC, are buying every up and coming coach there is. The ACC needed big new blood but mostly chose to hire from within at a time when we needed to be establishing ourselves as THE basketball conference. Davis, Scheyer, Shrewsberry and Autry may prove to be fine hires, but they have no reputation and it will take time the ACC may not have for them to develop it.

Louisville falling flat on its face in every capacity is its own story. Just an embarrassment.
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i love forbes - but this is the time to pounce and get back in the top quartile of the ACC
 
Deacsfan27 said:
I'm not trying to throw shade, but objectively, I just don't think the people who complain about where the ACC is ranked the past few years watch a ton of other leagues play. It isn't normal to lose so many Q3/Q4 games like the ACC has done the last few years, and on top of that, perform pretty poorly against the other conferences in marquee OOC events/games early in the season overall.

It's just become normal for us to think that every other P5/6 league is like the ACC, and that's just not really true.

Depaul (216) and Georgetown (178) are awful for sure, but the Big East has three top ten KP teams. The ACC has 0 to offset Louisville (172 - jumped up 32 spots after a 22 point win over Pepperdine on Sunday) and Notre Dame (183). Also, Depaul beat Louisville pretty handily when they played a couple of weeks ago, and Notre Dame lost at home to Georgetown this past weekend. Our worst teams can't even beat their worst teams.
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I agree with everything you and Pilch are saying, though I don't get Pilch's hatred of JMU. I've been whining since 2020 that the ACC is down. That said, it's not like there is a cap on the number of teams that can make the tourney because the conference is relatively down. If Miami tanks, and Wake, VT, State, Cuse, Pitt and GT all finish within a couple games of .500, we might only get 4 in. Whereas, if Miami finishes okay and 2-3 of those middling teams can get to 13-14 wins, we could still get 7-8 in. We'd just have a lot of 7-11 seeds. I'm still more optimistic this year, but we just have to get it done in ACC play, and I think we can do that.
 
"Top 5 in the ACC" is a little less clear than it was back in the double round robin days

Given our league schedule, getting a double bye (having played is almost certainly a better than average league schedule) should do it, but then again, Clemson finished two games ahead of NC State last year and beat team three times by 65 points. Apparently NC State losing by six to Kansas trumped all that
 
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