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

buckets said:
i love forbes - but this is the time to pounce and get back in the top quartile of the ACC
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Yeah, I’m not really sure what’s holding us back. We’ve got to break through this year. Obviously Leonard and Larranaga’s reputations precede them, but I don’t think I would trade Forbes for any coach in the ACC this season.

Those losses to UGA and LSU are just haunting and I do not understand them. If we can’t get ready week in week out in the ACC, then we are going to lose to teams not named Duke, UNC, Clemson or UVA, and it will be equally as frustrating and damning.
 
buckets said:
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
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Definitely need to take at least 2 out of 3 of Duke/UVA/Clemson at home.

And for the first time in forever it feels like the road games @UNC, @Duke and @UVA are gettable.

Not because Wake is that good but simply because UNC, Duke, and UVA are far from juggernauts.

The road games @BC, @State, and @GaTech are scary.
 
georgia isn't too bad - 2nd game of the season, no efton, a true road game, and didn't sallis have a bum ankle?

that shouldn't be the game that keeps us out of the tournament if we handle our business

the lsu loss sucks though
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
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.
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we take a nosedive in rep, and one of our partners (ESPN) should be cheerleading the league more to get, you know, people excited to watch the games. and while what pundits say shouldn't and maybe doesn't matter, the committee members are watching games all year and are hearing these things over and over and it's bound to influence their thinking.

kinda like how FSU shit on the ACC constantly and then the CFP was like "you know what? they're right."
 
Yeah I feel like the UGA came really wasn't that bad and idk if it will be considered that bad of a loss down the road. The LSU one will sting all year long lol
 
Pilchard said:
UVA plays Memphis today; Duke plays Baylor and UNC plays Oklahoma tomorrow. Would help to sweep those three.
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Throw in a Florida win over Michigan (hopefully by a lot) and we start to look a little better, both in terms of conference rating and Wake-specific metrics.
 
thatguy2016 said:
"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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It's mind boggling how NC State got in last year. Their best noncon win was neutral site vs Vanderbilt and their best ACC wins were at home against Duke and Miami.
 
BigDeacEnergy said:
It's mind boggling how NC State got in last year. Their best noncon win was neutral site vs Vanderbilt and their best ACC wins were at home against Duke and Miami.
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Yeah, looking back on that it seems like NCSU, Clemson, & UNC should have all been left home with only 4 ACC bids.

NCSU - #45NET; 1-6 Q1
UNC - #46NET; 1-9 Q1
Clemson - #60NET; 4-4 Q1

Yikes

For comparison: Wake - #90NET; 1-9 Q1... So we weren't even close.
 
BigDeacEnergy said:
It's mind boggling how NC State got in last year. Their best noncon win was neutral site vs Vanderbilt and their best ACC wins were at home against Duke and Miami.
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State's Q1 win (1-6) against Duke was a blowout, 84-60. Their 24-point margin-of-victory against a Q1 opponent is larger than any Q1 win in the Forbes era.

State had 0 bad losses last season. 15-0 against Q3/Q4. That is what saved them. WF had 3 Ls last season, 2 in '22. WF already has more bad losses this season than State did all of '23.

State's Q2 record was decent (7-4). They beat a lot of solid teams and all of their mediocre-to-bad teams.

We need Florida to be Q1, Rutgers and Georgia Q2. And no more bad losses. Any sleepwalk game against GT/Louisville/ND/maybe FSU is a season-ender.
 
wasn’t able to find previous seasons net rankings, but I looked at the Ken Pom
Ratings of all the ACC teams that made the tournament for the past 6 years. The average for second lowest rated team was 33.8, the average for the lowest kenpom ranked team was 47.4. Our 2022 team ranked 35 was a major outlier for not getting a bid.

The Ken Pom ratings and ACC standings are pretty consistent regarding tournament status. The top 6 teams in conference are almost guaranteed to get a tournament bid, with the exception being if the 5th or 6th ACC teams have much lower Ken Pom ratings than the 7th ACC team, or some inconsistency like that.
 
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DeacsATS said:
Yeah, looking back on that it seems like NCSU, Clemson, & UNC should have all been left home with only 4 ACC bids.

NCSU - #45NET; 1-6 Q1
UNC - #46NET; 1-9 Q1
Clemson - #60NET; 4-4 Q1

Yikes

For comparison: Wake - #90NET; 1-9 Q1... So we weren't even close.
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Which one of Miami and Duke was not a Q1 win last season?
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
wasn’t able to find previous seasons net rankings, but I looked at the Ken Pom
Ratings of all the ACC teams that made the tournament for the past 6 years. The average for second lowest rated team was 33.8, the average for the lowest kenpom ranked team was 47.4. Our 2022 team ranked 35 was a major outlier for not getting a bid.

The Ken Pom ratings and ACC standings are pretty consistent regarding tournament status. The top 6 teams in conference are almost guaranteed to get a tournament bid, with the exception being if the 5th or 6th ACC teams have much lower Ken Pom ratings than the 7th ACC team, or some inconsistency like that.
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These guys have historical NET rankings...

https://bracketologists.com/
 
Yup - gotta be top 30 to be a Q1 win. Not to drive this into the ground again, but that's my major qualm with the way NET is interpreted by the committee (not the NET itself) I feel like they make a HUGE deal out of Q1/Q2 wins, but your NET ranking already takes all of those things into consideration, so why are they counting quad wins again to effectively "double" count them?

If you want to use it, then just use it like Pairwise and take the committee out of it entirely.

Also, the difference between 30 and 31 is miniscule overall, the fact that you get a Q1 vs. Q2 over that is absurd.
 
cville deac said:
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.
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JMU is a fraud. They beat Michigan State in OT in the opener when Michigan State sucked (IIRC, you questioned Wisconsin, and they pummeled Michigan State 70-58 at East Lansing early in the season) and JMU had a decent 2OT win over #103 Akron. That's it and they were fortunate to win both of those games. JMU barely beat a middling Radford team at home.

The Dukes have played nobody since and they don't play anybody for the rest of the season; their toughest game on the schedule is App State (think about that). One of JMU's best players is TJ Bickerstaff, who transferred from BC because of limited playing time; he's not a starting player on crappy ACC team, and now he is a leader on ranked team?

Before Sun Belt play starts JMU plays #361 Coppin State and #346 Morgan State. Pathetic. So, JMU will be 12-0 and will be favored its remaining 20 games except at App. Not because JMU is particularly good, but because the Sun Belt is particularly bad in basketball. So, JMU's record and ranking are fraudulent. The ACC is the lowest rated Power V conference, and JMU would be at best a .500 team in the ACC.
 
The initial stretch of ACC games for Wake Forest will tell us a lot AND will have a huge impact on the metrics.

From 12/30 (vs. VT) to 1/16 (@ NCSU) we play 6 conference games - 3 home and 3 away.

Here's how KP & Torvik project them:

VT - KP W 74-71; Torvik W 72-71
@BC - KP W 76-75; Torvik L 73-77
Miami - KP W 79-76; Torvik W 77-76
@FSU - KP W 75-74; Torvik L 73-75
UVA - KP W 64-63; Torvik L 61-62
@NCSU - KP L 73-75; Torvik L 72-78

That's essentially 6 toss-ups in a row... Would like to win at least 4 of them, but ideally 5 or 6. But regardless of W/L, you have to think the margin of victory will be greater than 1-2 points in each game. Win a few of those convincingly and keep whatever losses we have close... Wake Forest will move up significantly in the metrics.
 
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