As predictable as moving forward one’s clocks in March, the ACC has once again surprised and dismayed a growing number of its detractors by surpassing predictions in the NCAA tournament. It can be used to set your calendar. For the third time in the last 20 years, all three of the Triangle’s teams are in the second weekend; the previous two times, UNC and Duke, took home national titles. The ACC, on the other hand, only managed to get five teams into the tournament, but still managed to account for a quarter of the Sweet 16.
When it mattered most, the league delivered and demonstrated that nothing had changed from the previous season, despite the fact that national analysts had taken to criticizing the ACC’s general strength. for the consecutive second season.
It’s necessary to separate fact from fiction, given the disparity between the ACC’s perceived strength and its play during the last two games.
THE ACC WAS NOT SEEDED AND SELECTED PROPERLY
ERroneous The truth is that the teams that were deserving of a spot were admitted, and those that were were seeded within a margin of their best-case scenario. Without a doubt, Pittsburgh would have been a more formidable squad than Virginia, but that isn’t how teams are chosen, and nobody should want it to be. Virginia was deserving of a spot in the tournament based on NCAA criteria.
In addition to their ACC achievements, Virginia and Clemson enjoyed impressive nonconference victories. Pittsburgh and Wake Forest had shortcomings in both areas, and they had the chance to do better. This portion can be easily fixed by increasing your game winnings. Pittsburgh is an intriguing example as there’s no denying that the Panthers were a superior team in March as opposed to December. However, the committee has stated that it considers the entirety of the body of work, and Pitt did not meet that threshold.
Is the selection process flawed at this point? Indeed, and Bubba Cunningham, the athletic director of UNC and the chairman of the selection committee for the following year, has the chance to correct it by doing away with quadrants or, better yet, switching to a metric-based system that will provide us with a real, updated bubble that is practically the best thing that could happen to college basketball in February. To eliminate the motivation to completely outplay teams in games that have already been decided, the efficiency components of the NET also need to be adjusted. (There are methods for doing this that virtually completely remove the margin of victory from the equation and evaluate teams only on the basis of their victories.)
However, the ACC was fairly treated given the predetermined criteria that were all known ahead of time, save for the precise formula that is used to calculate the NET. and has made the greatest use of it.
THE ACC CONTINUES TO OUTPERFORM EXPECTATIONS IN MARCH
ACTUAL If anything, more research is needed to determine why ACC teams have fared in the postseason according to both their predictive ratings and seed expectations. The real cause is difficult to identify. Does an arduous ACC schedule better prepare teams for the demands of postseason competition? Is there a particular quality about ACC teams that makes them appear undervalued by every single metric that reasonably predicts every other league? Or could it simply be the result of random noise in a tiny number of games, a sample size fluke? That may all be true, or none at all.
Coach Brad Brownell of Clemson stated, “I’ve been outspoken about disagreeing with some of the metrics and how the way teams are judged.” “I’m not sure how to approach this the best. I don’t possess the solutions.
With the departure of league legends like Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, and Jim Boeheim, Brownell confessed that he felt compelled to speak out for the league, and an NCAA tournament run is the best bully pulpit there is. (Jim Larranaga utilized his final spring to the fullest.) But even he is aware that there are many moving parts to this phenomenon. In any case, no one else but the ACC will judge you on your performance in March and April; despite the league’s 20-year evolution, that remains unchanged.
THERE ARE SEGMENTS OF THE NATIONAL MEDIA OUT TO GET THE ACC
ERroneous Though it may appear that way, the reason for people’s actions isn’t so much that they want to harm the ACC as they are jealous of its success and will do whatever it takes to make it look bad in the end. The ACC hasn’t been winning as many big games early in the season as it once did, even a few years ago, so if you’re a Big East flunky or just sick of hearing about Duke and North Carolina, Duke and North Carolina, Duke and North Carolina, these past few winters have been a great opportunity to get your shots in. That is true.
When the ACC won a national championship and three No. 1 seeds in 2019, things were relatively calm. However, the long-simmering animosity that existed even then has reached a boiling point, and once the door is open, the social media lemmings pour through. A significant issue facing the ACC from a narrative standpoint is the dearth of spokespersons for the organization. In the football-poisoned national media, there aren’t as many ACC toadies as there are for the SEC, and the custom in traditional ACC markets has always been to cover the league critically, fairly, and saturately without shilling. This also applies to the majority of ACC members who hold national platforms.
While a healthy debate about what’s best for the ACC used to be one of the league’s strengths, that has been beneficial for the league overall over time. However, in today attention-driven sports market, the loudest voices—rather than the smartest ones—tend to rise to the top.
Joe Lunardi, a throwback to a bygone era when he built out a niche for himself doing this, is currently ranked 118th among bracketologists at Bracket Matrix for the last five years. Even if he’s not very good at it, his position on ESPN allows his progressively false conclusions to seep into the conversation and inevitably sway the selection committee. More than anything, his ex post facto condemnation of the ACC sounded like an animal in a corner lashing out. Lunardi, at least, isn’t as mentally indolent as some well-known morons who believe ridiculing the ACC is equally humorous as repeatedly tweeting the same things on Twitter. Being cynical and envious need not be malevolent. It simply seems odd that way
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