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

Back with another BOTG episode, this time getting ready for Wake Forest's ACC opener on the 30th. 40 minutes of pure Wake Forest-Virginia Tech discussion. Including: the critical battle coming in the paint, WF's high-octane offense vs VT's stout defense, the duo of Sean Pedulla and Hunter Cattoor, keys to the game, predictions, and more. Listen below, and as always, thanks!


 
@DeacsATS

As we head into conference play, here's a quick look at our resume to date and the opportunities to improve it. The NET also now has enough sample size that it's starting to mostly make sense (still a couple outliers but 80% of the way there) as it looks a lot like other efficiency metrics, with the quality of current resume layered in on top -- so I'll use it going forward.

Nonconference: One decent but not great win at home against Florida. Pull for them to move up to the top 30. Offsetting that is one bad loss - to LSU. Not much else noteworthy good or bad.

Current Quad 1: 0-1 (L - Utah(N)) 9 more chances (2 home, 7 away)
Current Quad 2: 1-1 (W - FLA; L - @UGA) 7 more chances (5 home, 2 away)
Quad 3-4: 7-1. Q3 loss to LSU (N). 4 potential land mines (Syracuse, GT, Louisville, @ND).

Wake Rank #77

Likely quad 1:

@ UNC (26), Mon Jan 22
@ Duke (18), Mon Feb 12
@UVA (37), Sat Feb 17
Duke (18), Sat Feb 24
Clemson (12), Sat Mar 9

Quad 1/2: Q1: Top 30 home, 75 away, 50 N
Utah (N) (25), Thurs Nov 16 L 77-70
Florida (46), Wed Nov 29 W 82-71

@BC (74), Tue Jan 2
UVA (37), Sat Jan 13
@NC St (70), Tue Jan 16
@ Pitt (39), Wed Jan 31
@VT (50), Sat Mar 2

Quad 2/3: Q2: top 75 at home, 135 away, 100 N
@ UGA (98), Fri Nov 10 L 80-77
LSU (N) (154) Sun Nov 19 L 76-70 (OT)
Rutgers (84), Wed Dec 6 W 76-57

VT (50), Sat Dec 30
Miami (61), Sat Jan 6
@FSU (124), Tue Jan 9
Syracuse (83) Sat Feb 3
@GT (114), Tue Feb 6
NC St (70), Sat Feb 10
Pitt (39), Tue Feb 20
 
Pathway to a bid, 9-1 home, 5-5 road in conference games.

Bolded are 65%+ win change at home, 45%+ on the road, using KP.

Home: VT, Miami, Virginia, Louisville, Syracuse, N.C. State, Pitt, Duke, GT, Clemson
Away: BC, FSU, N.C. State, North Carolina, Pitt, GT, Duke, Virginia, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech

Home: Taking at least 1-of-3 between Pitt/Duke/Clemson gets us to eight home wins if we beat all the other bolded. Eight home wins has to be the absolute floor for this team. State and Pitt were 11-seeds with 8-2.

Road: We can have one loss against one of the six bolded teams or win one at North Carolina/Duke/Virginia/Pitt to get breathing room. The last Wake team to be above .500 on the road was the '05 team at 5-3. '09 team and '22 team were .500.

9-1 home/5-5 road, gets us to 14-6, which should be top-4 ACC. That should be pretty safe since we would likely only have 1 bad loss from before the conference season, and we may get some credit for missing players early in the season if they are trying to find the "best" teams.

Last season, Clemson got left out with 14 conference wins, but they had four Q3/Q4 losses and zero Q1 wins. Pitt made the play-in in at 14-6 with two bad losses, zero Q1 wins. The path for us to get to 14 wins makes it unlikely that we would have either of those problems. But we definitely need to root for Florida.

15-5 in conference is a lock and should be a single-digit seed. 13-7 you are sweating again.
 
PaddyWF said:
Pathway to a bid, 9-1 home, 5-5 road in conference games.

Bolded are 65%+ win change at home, 45%+ on the road, using KP.

Home: VT, Miami, Virginia, Louisville, Syracuse, N.C. State, Pitt, Duke, GT, Clemson
Away: BC, FSU, N.C. State, North Carolina, Pitt, GT, Duke, Virginia, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech

Home: Taking at least 1-of-3 between Pitt/Duke/Clemson gets us to eight home wins if we beat all the other bolded. Eight home wins has to be the absolute floor for this team. State and Pitt were 11-seeds with 8-2.

Road: We can have one loss against one of the six bolded teams or win one at North Carolina/Duke/Virginia/Pitt to get breathing room. The last Wake team to be above .500 on the road was the '05 team at 5-3. '09 team and '22 team were .500.

9-1 home/5-5 road, gets us to 14-6, which should be top-4 ACC. That should be pretty safe since we would likely only have 1 bad loss from before the conference season, and we may get some credit for missing players early in the season if they are trying to find the "best" teams.

Last season, Clemson got left out with 14 conference wins, but they had four Q3/Q4 losses and zero Q1 wins. Pitt made the play-in in at 14-6 with two bad losses, zero Q1 wins. The path for us to get to 14 wins makes it unlikely that we would have either of those problems. But we definitely need to root for Florida.

15-5 in conference is a lock and should be a single-digit seed. 13-7 you are sweating again.
Click to expand...
I think more important than conference record is getting at least one win against the 4 games we have against UNC, Duke, and Clemson. Those are (likely to be) our only chances at marquee wins, and we currently do not have one (unless Florida does awesome in SEC).

This is where the ACC being shit really hurts. Imagine being told in 2013 that an ACC team would be playing 20 conference games and only 1/5 of them would be considered impressive wins.
 
deacon14 said:
I think more important than conference record is getting at least one win against the 4 games we have against UNC, Duke, and Clemson. Those are (likely to be) are only chances at marquee wins, and we currently do not have one (unless Florida does awesome in SEC).

This is where the ACC being shit really hurts. Imagine being told in 2013 that an ACC team would be playing 20 conference games and only 1/5 of them would be considered impressive wins.
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Yeah, I am not sure exactly what the path would have to be at 12-8 or 13-7. Let's look at State last season.

OOC schedule was super weak.

8-10 in Q1/Q2 games. 15-0 Q3/Q4 losses. They were 1-6 in Q1, but the one win was a 20+ point blowout of Duke.

Their resume actually is pretty similar to the '22 Wake team that missed the NCAAT. The only difference I really see is the record is Q3/Q4 games. There was nothing the committee could really point to as a blemish, and they had enough quality wins to get in with good (not great) metrics. '22 Wake team was 18-2 in Q3/Q4 and 5-7 in Q1/Q2.

Another similar ACC resume is '21 Syracuse. Same type of deal, lack of bad losses (one), about .500 in Q1/Q2 games and 40s in NET. They were also an 11-seed. That was before a 20-game ACC schedule, they were 9-7 in conference.

If we get to the end of the season at 12-8/13-7 with no more Q3/Q4 losses, we'd have a chance. Especially if we add 1 Q1 win. If we add one more Q3/Q4 loss at <14 conference wins, think we're toast.
 
NET:

Wake up 14 spots from 78 -> 64

Biggest jump in the top 100 yesterday

Kenpom:

Wake up 14 spots from 57 -> 43

Meanwhile Virginia gets punished by 23 from 31 -> 54 for an embarrassing loss to ND.

Top 4 and a double bye is looking more and more like an absolute must.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
lazydeac said:
NET:

Wake up 14 spots from 78 -> 64

Biggest jump in the top 100 yesterday

Kenpom:

Wake up 14 spots from 57 -> 43

Meanwhile Virginia gets punished by 23 from 31 -> 54 for an embarrassing loss to ND.

Top 4 and a double bye is looking more and more like an absolute must.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Based on our play the last 3 weeks, I'd say it's likely we do just that.
 
Since December 1, Wake is 17th in Torvik's unweighted statistics. This still adjusts for opponent strength but does not anchor for recruiting, preseason strength, etc. We are third in the ACC over this period. Clemson is 13th, Duke is 15th. The only other team in the top 50 in the ACC is UNC at 36th. Once again just another indicator that the ACC continues to lag behind most other power conferences (not you Pac 12).

This period also coincides with the five games we've had Reid back for.
 
lazydeac said:
NET:

Wake up 14 spots from 78 -> 64

Biggest jump in the top 100 yesterday

Kenpom:

Wake up 14 spots from 57 -> 43

Meanwhile Virginia gets punished by 23 from 31 -> 54 for an embarrassing loss to ND.

Top 4 and a double bye is looking more and more like an absolute must.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I know I joke about the #eyetest and the advanced metrics are surely better than nothing on selection Sunday, but they have a lot of work to do if VT is still ranked ahead of us after yesterday.
 
Yesterday is just sample size 73 (or so) possessions of roughly 750-800 possessions. Makes plenty of sense.

FWIW Wake is ahead of VT in most other metrics (which are more accurate because they do include preseason weighting). Also the NET matters on one day the entire year: Selection Sunday. It doesn't matter at all when or where anybody is today or next week or February.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Yesterday is just sample size 73 (or so) possessions of roughly 750-800 possessions. Makes plenty of sense.

FWIW Wake is ahead of VT in most other metrics (which are more accurate because they do include preseason weighting). Also the NET matters on one day the entire year: Selection Sunday. It doesn't matter at all when or where anybody is today or next week or February.
Click to expand...
But it ultimately matters more than almost anything.
 
Yeah it does. On selection Sunday. Today means nothing. NET gets closer to the other metrics as the season goes on
 
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