Mudville Analytics

26. 1987 North Carolina

Record: 32-4, 14-0 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Elite 8
Final AP Ranking: 2
All-ACC Players: Joe Wolf (1st), Kenny Smith (1st), JR Reid (2nd)
All-Americans: Kenny Smith (1st)

North Carolina in the 1980s is probably the greatest decade that any ACC team ever had. If we’re allowed to cheat a little bit and look at just the nine-year period from 1981 to 1989, the Tar Heels:

were ranked in the Top 10 in the final AP poll every year
made the Sweet 16 every year, nine-for-nine
went 101-25 in the ACC (this is mind-boggling considering how good the ACC was)

And yet… after 1982, the Tar Heels had very little to show for all that regular season excellence. They lost in the regionals every single year, and until the 1989 team finally broke through, they couldn’t win an ACC Tournament either.

I’ve written about this era before. I don’t think there was anything particularly wrong with these teams. It was just one of those things. They got upset a few times, they ran into other really good teams a few times… suddenly in 1991 they started getting to Final Fours again, without really doing anything differently.

Two of the teams from this decade of underachievement are particularly notable: the 1984 team, which we will come to later, and this 1987 team.

They were preseason #1. Kenny Smith was the senior point guard par excellence. Joe Wolf and Dave Popson, both seniors, provided size, skill, and experience on the interior. Sophomore Jeff Lebo was a deadeye shooter. JR Reid was one of the best freshmen in the country. There was quality depth with Ranzino Smith, Scott Williams (trick shoulder and all), Curtis Hunter, and Steve Bucknall coming off the bench.

They are one of the best offensive teams in the history of the league. They are one of only seven teams, and the only UNC team, to average 90 points per game. They have the ACC record for highest Effective FG% at 58.4%. (Effective FG% accounts for the fact that threes are worth more than twos.) They averaged 21.7 assists per game, a mark that has not been equaled in the 37 years since. The starting guards, Smith and Lebo, both shot over 60% from two and 40% from three. Wolf, Reid, and Popson were all over 54%. I could go on.

The only blemishes on a 26-2 regular season were an early December loss at UCLA and Reggie Miller and a midseason loss at Notre Dame. They were barely challenged as they romped to a 14-0 ACC regular season record. Their only close game was a one-point victory over a tough, experienced Virginia team.

But the ACC championship was snatched from their grasp by their old rivals from Raleigh. NC State had somehow emerged from a turbulent regular season to make the ACC Tournament final after overtime wins over Duke and Wake. Conjuring up some classic Jimmy V magic, the Wolfpack played a nearly perfect game in the final, with the Vinny Del Negro free throws providing the final one-point margin.

The Tar Heels rebounded quickly in the NCAAs, scoring 113 in an opening round blowout of Penn and 109 in a similar dispatching of Glen Rice and Michigan. The Sweet 16 brought an opportunity to avenge their regular season loss to Notre Dame, and the Tar Heels seized it, shooting 65% from the field (15-for-18 from JR Reid) to put away the Irish.

The regional final brought a matchup against Syracuse, and it was here that North Carolina met its match. In Sherman Douglas, the Orange had someone who could kinda-sorta keep up with Kenny Smith. And going up against Derrick Coleman and Rony Seikaly, the Tar Heels were in the rare position of not being dominant inside.

It was a tremendous battle. Kenny Smith was terrific, and the front line of Reid, Wolf, and Popson didn’t play badly on offense. But this team, for all its virtues, was not particularly tough defensively on the interior, and the Orange took advantage. Coleman and Seikaly dominated the offensive glass, and that was ultimately the difference as Syracuse outlasted the Tar Heels 79-75. It was a disappointing ending, but Syracuse was outstanding. They came within a Keith Smart jumpshot of being national champions.

Effective FG% > 57%, 3-point era (since 1987):

UNC 1987, 58.4%
Notre Dame 2015, 58.3%
Clemson 1987, 58.3%
UNC 1988, 58.0%
Duke 1992, 57.7%
Virginia Tech 2018, 57.7%
Duke 1999, 57.4%
UNC 1995, 57.3%
Virginia Tech 2017, 57.0%

ACC Teams Averaging 90 Points per Game:

NC State 1973, 92.9
NC State 1975, 92.7
Duke 1965, 92.4
Duke 1999, 91.8
NC State 1974, 91.4
UNC 1987, 91.3
Duke 2001, 90.7

27. 1998 Duke

Record: 32-4, 15-1 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in final
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Elite 8
Final AP Ranking: 3
All-ACC Players: Roshown McLeod (1st), Trajan Langdon (1st), Steve Wojciechowski (3rd)
All-Americans: None

The 1995 season was a disaster for the Duke program. The narrative is well known. Coach K had back surgery, tried to come back too soon, and had to be shut down for the season. The team was turned over to Pete Gaudet. Unfortunately for his reputation, they fell apart, finishing last in the ACC regular season.

We’ll never know what their record would have been had K been healthy, but make no mistake: this team wasn’t very good. This was not a Top 10 team that Pete Gaudet ran into the ground. Our memories tend to craft narratives that are tidier than reality, and a common one about this team is that 1995 was a one-year aberration. Not exactly. The 1996 team was 18-13, 8-8 and lost to Eastern Michigan in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. There were real problems in the program, and some rebuilding was in order. Give Coach K credit for recognizing this. I’m sure it would have been easy to tell himself that his return would solve everything. But he understood that the program had slipped since the Laettner/Hurley/Hill days. They had to look at the kids they were recruiting.

So starting in 1997, and for the next several years, he went on one of the great multiyear recruiting runs in college basketball history. Let’s take a look at the major recruits and transfers during that period and classify them as All-American, All-ACC, major contributor, or non-impact players or transfers.

Year	All-American	All-ACC	Major Contributor	Non-Impact/Transfer
1997	Chris Carrawell	Roshown McLeod Nate James		Mike Chappell
1998	Elton Brand Shane Battier	William Avery		Chris Burgess
1999			Corey Maggette
2000	Jason Williams Mike Dunleavy	Carlos Boozer		Casey Sanders Nick Horvath
2001		Chris Duhon		Andre Sweet
2002		Dahntay Jones Daniel Ewing
2003	JJ Redick Shelden Williams		Shavlik Randolph Sean Dockery	Michael Thompson
2004			Luol Deng

So in this stretch, K signed 24 big-time players. A full 14 of those players – 58% – were All-ACC players. Seven (29%) were All-Americans. Two others, Maggette and Deng, were one-and-done players who almost certainly would have reached All-ACC level had they stayed. So basically over an eight-year period, 2/3 of the players K brought in were All-ACC level players. He was bringing in an average of one All-American and one other All-ACC caliber player per year.

Don’t you wish your coach could do that?

In terms of sheer volume of really good players, it may not equal late 2010s Duke, when K was reloading his team with a handful of elite one-and-done guys every year; but in the context of the time, that’s about as good a recruiting stretch as anybody ever had.

Now, to bring it back to 1998. The 1997 team had been very good, but you get the sense that the hangover from 1995 had not worn off completely. Jeff Capel and Greg Newton were still around, and they were (perhaps to an unfair degree) strongly associated with 1995’s failure. Despite winning the ACC regular season, it was somehow unsurprising when the Blue Devils fell to 4-12 NC State in the first round of the ACC Tournament and were upset by Providence in the second round of the NCAAs. It would be left to the 1998 team to finish the task of restoring Duke to the top of the college basketball world.

Notice was served in the Maui Classic when the Blue Devils toppled #1 Arizona and usurped that ranking for themselves. This was a team that could absolutely bury you. They beat Virginia by 44, Villanova by 28, Maryland (which was ranked) by 32 and 27, Wake by 36 and 31, #12 UCLA by 36.

One team they didn’t bury was Carolina. In fact, they got buried over in Chapel Hill, 97-73, and suffered a similar if less embarrassing fate in the ACC Tournament final. Of course, that 1998 Carolina team with Jamison and Carter was itself a great team that would go on to make the Final Four.

Duke got a tough draw in the NCAA Tournament with eventual champion Kentucky being in their region. The Wildcats were the strongest of the #2 seeds and had a good argument for a #1 seed themselves. They had nearly won the national championship the previous year and had breezed through the 1998 SEC. The game was a classic. Duke led by 17 with 9:30 to go, but sparked by a flurry of threes and a flagrant foul on McLeod, Kentucky stormed back and pulled out an 86-84 victory.

Though they didn’t win the ACC Tournament or reach the Final Four, this was the team that erased any lingering memories from Duke’s mid-1990s mediocrity and re-established them as one of college basketball’s elite programs.

28. 2008 North Carolina

Record: 36-3, 14-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Tyler Hansbrough (ACC POY), Wayne Ellington (2nd)
All-Americans: Tyler Hansbrough (National POY)

This was the forerunner to the 2009 national championship team. In fact, the core of that team – Tyler Hansbrough, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, Danny Green, and Deon Thompson – were together for three seasons from 2007-2009. All three teams were ranked in the Top 5 and each could have won the national championship. The 2007 team, despite its youth, had a tremendous year, winning the ACC regular season and tournament and reaching a regional final. Despite the one-and-done departure of freshman Brandan Wright, expectations were sky high for the 2008 team.

They opened with 18 consecutive wins and stormed to a 32-2 record, ACC regular season and tournament titles, and a #1 national ranking. The offense was overwhelming. The Tar Heels were the best offensive rebounding team in the country, bar none. They made free throws a huge competitive advantage, leading the nation in free throws made. Hansbrough, Ellington, Green, and Lawson all shot over 80%. They led the nation in two-point field goals made and led the ACC in two-point FG%. Like many of Roy Williams’ teams, they didn’t shoot many threes, but when they did, they shot them well. They were the most efficient offense in the country according to kenpom.

There were some minor vulnerabilities lurking. They were a good defensive team, but not a great one. They gave up 80+ points an awful lot for a great team. On the interior, they lacked a real shot-blocker (this is where Wright would have come in handy), and Hansbrough was never a great defender.

It was also an unusually easy schedule for a Carolina team. They scheduled Ohio State and Kentucky on the road, which sounds tough, but those programs were having down years. Their toughest nonconference game was probably the opener at Davidson with Steph Curry. The ACC was a bit down that year; after Carolina and Duke, Clemson was pretty good, and that was about it. Carolina was the only ACC team to make it to the Sweet 16 that year. So the gaudy record was a little bit deceiving. They weren’t quite as battle-tested as you might expect a 32-2 ACC team to be.

But nitpicking aside, this team was clearly a strong contender to win the national championship. They cruised through the East region without much of a challenge, setting up a showdown with fourth-ranked Kansas in the Final Four. What followed was one of the strangest games I can ever remember watching. Kansas got out to a shocking 40-12 lead in the first half. Carolina cut the lead to all the way to five with eight minutes left, and Danny Green had a good look at a three that rimmed out that would’ve cut it to two. From that point, Kansas dominated the last eight minutes and won going away.

But it doesn’t take away from a tremendous year for this group. 36-3, ACC champions, made the Final Four, stopped only by the best team in the country and eventual champion. And with no seniors and no underclassmen leaving early, it set them up perfectly for what was to come in 2009.

29. 2018 Virginia

Record: 31-3, 17-1 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in round of 64
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Kyle Guy (1st), Devon Hall (2nd), Ty Jerome (3rd)
All-Americans: None

We may as well begin by acknowledging the elephant in the room. There is no consideration of 2018 Virginia that does not begin with their historic loss to UMBC. That is what most people will remember about this team: one game that overshadows everything else they accomplished. There has never been a game like that game, and perhaps there never will be. For a team like UMBC to score 53 points in the second half against the best defensive team in the country, in a game when they had everything to play for… I don’t typically look for psychological explanations for sporting events, but I don’t think this is explainable otherwise.

Even the psychological explanation is problematic. Typically when I think of sports psychology in basketball, I think of shooting under pressure. Perhaps we can all understand a poor shooting performance in a high pressure situation. But how do you explain a complete defensive breakdown in a high pressure situation? And don’t tell me it’s because De’Andre Hunter was out. I know he was an excellent player, and it hurt them, but he played only 20 minutes per game that year. They were still playing great defense when he wasn’t on the floor.

I can’t explain that game. But I do know that before that game, Virginia went 31-2. I know they played 21 games against ACC competition and won 20 of them. That record is simply too good to leave off this list.

There’s been a lot said over the years regarding Virginia’s style of play and whether it hurts them in March. It’s not just Virginia; a team’s style of play and how that affects their postseason prospects is a frequent topic of debate for sports pundits. You’ll notice that no two authorities ever seem to agree in their assessment of what particular style of play leads to postseason success. Defense wins championships, offense wins championships, the Yankees are too reliant on the home run, etc. These debates tend to be long on unsubstantiated assertions and conjecture, and short on facts.

In general, I think this kind of argument is a lot of hooey. The game is the game, and it doesn’t suddenly become a different game after the regular season. There is no particular style of play that works in the postseason.

However, there is some evidence that balanced teams tend to overperform in the postseason, and by extension, unbalanced teams tend to underperform. Balanced in this context means balanced between offense and defense. 2018 Virginia was relatively unbalanced. Kenpom had them ranked #1 in defensive efficiency and #30 in offensive efficiency.

So I don’t buy that Virginia’s style “doesn’t work in the postseason”. They won the national championship the next year with the exact same style. The difference is, the 2019 team was just better offensively and therefore was better balanced. Balanced teams are harder to game plan for, better able to compensate when something isn’t working, and therefore harder to upset.

30. 1977 North Carolina

Record: 28-5, 9-3 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national final
Final AP Ranking: 5
All-ACC Players: Phil Ford (1st), Walter Davis (1st), Tom LaGarde (2nd)
All-Americans: Phil Ford (1st)

This team is often remembered for what might have been, but what they did accomplish was impressive enough. In case you’re unfamiliar with the details, All-ACC center Tom LaGarde injured a knee in mid-February and missed the rest of the season. Sweet-shooting Walter Davis broke his finger in the ACC Tournament against NC State. He was able to come back and play, but the injury may have hampered his effectiveness. And All-American guard Phil Ford hyperextended his elbow in the round of 16 win over Notre Dame and did not seem to be himself after that. In spite of all that adversity, the Tar Heels advanced to the national championship game before losing to Marquette.

It’s an interesting narrative, but the funny part is, Carolina won all those games, except the last one. From the time that LaGarde got hurt, they won twelve in a row. So if you’re lamenting what might’ve been, the only thing there is to lament is the national championship game. Would the Tar Heels have won it with a healthy group? I have no idea. I do think they were a better team at full strength than Marquette, but the better team doesn’t always win.

If you look at the game as it was actually played, Walter Davis played well. It’s not obvious from his stat line that he was hampered in any way. Ford, though, did not play well after the injury, and it seems likely that he was affected. The other thing this game is remembered for is Dean’s decision to go to the Four Corners midway through the second half with only a slim lead. They had used the same tactic to good effect in prior games, but this time it didn’t work. Marquette regained the lead and salted it away from the line in the last few minutes, going 23-for-25 for the game.

The attention on what might’ve been shouldn’t detract from the tremendous run this team made. In succession, they beat a really good Purdue team, #10 Notre Dame, #3 Kentucky, and #4 UNLV. The Tar Heels trailed at half in three of those four games. Davis, freshman Mike O’Koren, and senior guard John Kuester played extremely well. Ford gutted it out in spite of his elbow, and Rich Yonakor filled in admirably for LaGarde.

From the Weird Scheduling Department: Carolina’s last regular season game was a non-conference game on Sunday against #10 Louisville. Not only is it odd to have a non-conference opponent for your last regular season game and Senior Day, but they played at Duke just the day before. Why in the world would you schedule games on back-to-back days like that to finish the season? There must be a story behind that. In any case, it didn’t bother the Tar Heels, who ran away from Louisville in a game that wasn’t as close as the 96-89 score indicated.

31. 1966 Duke

Record: 26-4, 12-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 2
All-ACC Players: Bob Verga (1st), Jack Marin (1st), Steve Vacendak (2nd, ACC POY)
All-Americans: Bob Verga (2nd), Jack Marin (2nd)

After a hiatus of a couple of months, I’m ready to restart my countdown of the 50 greatest ACC teams ever. We continue the series with the 1966 Duke team.

Duke’s teams from 1962-1966 represent arguably the best five-year run in league history. I wrote about this previously in my Jack Marin post. If pressed, I would probably give the edge to Duke 1998-2002, but it’s close.

After reaching the Final Four in 1963 and 1964, Duke’s 1965 team had dipped just a bit. They still won the ACC regular season and were ranked in the Top 10 all year, but they were beaten by NC State in the ACC Tournament final and did not get the opportunity to make another Final Four run. But Verga, Marin, and Vacendak were all underclassmen. With the addition of big man Mike Lewis, it set the Blue Devils up for success in 1966.

After an early loss at #10 South Carolina, the Blue Devils faced defending national champion and top-ranked UCLA twice on back-to-back nights. Duke whipped the Bruins in both games and promptly jumped to #1 in the polls where they stayed for most of the season.

They dropped only two more games the rest of the way, finishing with a full three-game lead over second-place NC State. In the ACC Tournament, the Blue Devils put up 103 points in an opening round blowout of Wake Forest. In the semis, they edged North Carolina in the infamous 21-20 slowdown game. In the final, Duke topped NC State for their third ACC title in four years and avenged their loss to the Wolfpack from the year before.

In the regionals, the Blue Devils defeated fifth-ranked St. Joe’s and a Syracuse team featuring Dave Bing and Jim Boeheim to advance to the Final Four, where #1 Kentucky awaited. In a tight, tense game that wasn’t decided until the end, the Wildcats prevailed 83-79. Unfortunately for Duke, Bob Verga was suffering from the flu (or strep throat, depending on whom you ask) and scored only four points. Kentucky went on to fall to Texas Western in that classic 1966 final that is remembered for its racial and civil rights implications as much as for the action on the court. Had Verga not come down with something, it might have been Duke (who was just as white as Kentucky) playing in that game.

An interesting fact is that Steve Vacendak was the ACC Player of the Year in 1966 despite making only second-team All-ACC. At the time, the All-ACC vote was taken before the ACC Tournament, the ACC POY vote after. Vacendak’s tournament performance made such an impression on the voters that they voted him Player of the Year.

Bubas’ teams consistently had tremendous size and dominated the glass. The 1963 and 1964 teams started two 6’10” guys, which was pretty much unheard of in that era. The 1966 team was not quite so big, but Marin was an excellent rebounder at 6’6″ and Lewis is one of the best rebounders in league history. The net of it was a rebounding margin of +12.8.

Lowest ACC Tournament Scoring Averages for Winners of Everett Case Award (Tournament MOP):

Steve Vacendak, Duke, 1966 – 10.0
Dudley Bradley, North Carolina, 1979 – 12.5
James Worthy, North Carolina, 1982 – 13.3
John Kuester, North Carolina, 1977 – 13.5
Lou Pucillo, NC State, 1959 – 13.7

College Basketball Wrap-Up 2024

A collection of thoughts and reflections on this season and the future.

UConn

UConn 2024 is probably the best college basketball team since Duke 2001. When you consider the totality of their accomplishments – overall record, win quality, margin of victory (especially in the tournament), offensive and defensive efficiency, balance and completeness in all phases – I think that statement is justified. I am not going to say they are better than Duke 2001.

Dan Hurley asserted that UConn’s back-to-back was more impressive than 2006-2007 Florida and 1991-1992 Duke, because those teams had essentially the same team coming back whereas UConn had to replace a lot of minutes. He’s right, and I think he has a point.

NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player

With all due respect to Tristen Newton, who is a terrific player and was great in the tournament, the best player in the tournament was clearly Zach Edey. I find it hard to believe that anyone who actually watched the tournament would disagree with that. Why, then, are we beholden to an unwritten rule that the MOP must be from the team that wins the tournament? Is it possibly because that would mess up the made-for-TV moment where the MOP is awarded and interviewed while the championship team is being celebrated?

Well, that’s a dumb reason. Give the MOP to the MOP. If that makes for awkward TV, so be it.

The State of the ACC

It has been well-publicized that the ACC has performed well in the past several NCAA Tournaments, despite being down in the NET and receiving relatively few bids. Other leagues are accused of “manipulating the NET” to boost their conference’s profile.

The truth here is very hard to untangle. I take as much pride as anyone in the ACC’s NCAA Tournament success, but it is a relatively small sample size, and it is dangerous to generalize that the conference is as good as ever based strictly on that. Regarding charges of NET manipulation, I haven’t seen compelling evidence either way. It is true that margin of victory matters in the NET, and I don’t doubt that certain teams, and possibly leagues, are trying to exploit that to their advantage. How much that is actually impacting the NET, I don’t know, because the formula is a secret. And how much weight the selection committee is giving to the NET is also hard to say.

With my bracketology hat on, I don’t see any evidence that the selection committee is considering conference affiliation. They aren’t giving special dispensation to the ACC or to any other league so far as I can tell. They are considering each team individually as best they can, which is really the only fair way to do it.

My general opinion is that there is scarcely a dime’s worth of difference between the ACC and the other Power 5/6 conferences. (Something weird is going on with the Mountain West, but I don’t want to get sidetracked on that right now.) If the ACC has an intangible advantage, I think it’s coaching. A few years ago, you had Roy, Coach K, Boeheim, Bennett, Larranaga, Hamilton… Brownell is an outstanding coach, Mike Young is a very good coach, Capel has shown himself to be a quality coach, Steve Forbes appears to be a good coach, and I guess you can now add Keatts to that list. I don’t think any other conference can match that depth of coaching ability.

Obviously the retirement of K, Roy, and Boeheim changes things somewhat. It remains to be seen whether those programs will be able to maintain their level. Early returns for Scheyer and Hubert Davis are mostly positive, but the shoes they have to fill are so big, it’s much easier for those programs to get worse than it is to get better. Boeheim’s program had already slipped and it’s anybody’s guess what Adrian Autry will be able to do.

Hamilton and Larranaga are both in their mid-70s and have to be nearing the end of the line. Neither of those programs has great tradition to fall back on. You could see them falling back if they don’t make the right hire. Virginia and Tony Bennett also seem to be at a crossroads… he does not seem to have figured out how to build a roster that can execute his style at a high level in the new transfer portal era. Clearly he is a great coach and I would bet on him to figure it out.

Louisville will bounce back. Obviously there is nowhere to go but up from this year, but they have so much tradition, it seems highly probable that they will rebound to at least competitiveness if not excellence. I like what I saw of Damon Stoudamire at Georgia Tech this year although that seems like a tough place to win. I’m also betting on Micah Shrewsberry to succeed at Notre Dame.

Then there’s the addition of Stanford, SMU, and Cal. None of those programs brings great tradition to the league. It’s tempting to think the ACC will “lift” them, but that hasn’t happened with other programs historically. The Andy Enfield hire at SMU is promising, and he said explicitly that he wouldn’t have come had SMU not been going to the ACC. But in general, it seems more likely that these additions will bring the league down than lift it up.

Then there’s the specter of conference realignment, with FSU and Clemson suing the league and rumors abounding about other potential changes.

So for all those reasons, it seems like an unusually unstable and uncertain time for the league. After Duke and Carolina, the second-tier coaching is strong, and between Bennett, Brownell, Capel, Young, Keatts, Forbes, and maybe now Enfield, you’re going to have some teams emerge from that pack and have great success from time to time, as Miami did in 2023 and NC State did this year. But a return to the ACC’s status as the premier basketball conference probably depends on whether Duke and Carolina can continue to be among the top five or so programs in the country, and to a lesser degree, whether Louisville can rebound.

NC State’s Place in History

You knew I would have to talk about the Wolfpack. A lot of superlatives have been sent their way, deservedly so. Jay Bilas described their run as “the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in college basketball”, which is very strong language, but I don’t think he used that phrase loosely, I think he meant it.

Let’s start with the ACC Tournament. Was NC State the most unlikely champion ever? I think, all things considered, they probably were. The contenders would be:

Virginia 1976 (13-11/4-8 going into the tournament, 6th of 7)
NC State 1983 (17-10/8-6, tied for 3rd of 8)
NC State 1987 (17-13/6-8, 6th of 8)
Georgia Tech 1993 (16-10/8-8, 6th of 9)
Maryland 2004 (16-11/7-9, 6th of 9)
NC State 2024 (17-14/9-11, 10th of 15)

Narrowing it down further, 1983 NC State, 1987 NC State, 1993 Georgia Tech, and 2004 Maryland were all teams that were nationally ranked during the season and had excellent non-conference wins; they were just beaten down by the ACC meat grinder and, in some cases, injuries. This year’s NC State team never sniffed the Top 25, had no good nonconference wins, was never thought of as even being on the NCAA Tournament bubble, and had no injuries to blame it on. So I think the competition really comes down to 1976 Virginia vs. 2024 NC State.

You could make an argument for either of these teams. That Virginia team’s run was no less unexpected than NC State’s run this year, partially because of Virginia’s dismal history in the ACC Tournament. But that was a sneaky good team. They had lost five games to top 10 teams during the season by an average of 3.6 points. It was the type of team that, if kenpom had existed, would have been a Top 40 team with a very bad Luck rating.

Like NC State, 1976 Virginia had to beat the #3, #2, and #1 seeds to win the championship. Of course, NC State had to win two additional games to even get to that point. I think the fatigue aspect of “five games in five days” is probably overblown. The more significant aspect is that those two additional games are two more opportunities to lose. Just to get to the same starting point as Virginia 1976, NC State had to beat a talented if underachieving Louisville team that played its best game of the year followed by a pretty good Syracuse team that had already beaten them twice in the regular season.

In any event, both teams have a case. In terms of win probability, I think NC State 2024 probably had the lowest going-in win probability of any eventual tournament champion in the history of the event. But if you want to argue that Virginia 1976 is the most unlikely champion, I won’t quibble with you. Either way, NC State 2024 is at worst the second-least likely tournament champ in the 70-year history of the tournament.

Then there is the Final Four run. Where does the Wolfpack rank in terms of most unlikely Final Four teams? Well, they were the sixth #11 seed to make it, the others being 1986 LSU, 2006 George Mason, 2011 VCU, 2018 Loyola, and 2021 UCLA. 1986 LSU was a very talented team that was ranked in the Top 25 for a lot of the season. 2006 George Mason, 2011 VCU, and 2021 UCLA received at-large bids, which NC State most definitely would not have. 2018 Loyola received an automatic bid; it’s unclear whether they would have received an at-large bid as they were considered to be on the bubble. So one way to look at it is, the Wolfpack are the only team ever to make the Final Four who was not at-large worthy.

Looking at kenpom rankings going into the tournament, 2011 VCU was #84, 2018 Loyola was #41, and 2021 UCLA was #45. 2024 NC State was #56, and that was after winning the ACC Tournament. Kenpom doesn’t go back to 1986, but there is no doubt whatsoever that LSU would have been much higher than #56, and the same is true for 2006 George Mason.

On the basis of this evidence, I would probably say that 2011 VCU is the most unlikely Final Four team ever. They lost four of their last five regular season games, they didn’t win the CAA Tournament, they were #84 in kenpom, and they were in the First Four, meaning they had to win five games just to make the Final Four. On paper, there was nothing in their record to suggest what was about to happen. What’s more, they didn’t have an easy road, having to beat the #3 and #1 seeds to make the Final Four. (I don’t think it was the most unlikely NCAA Tournament run ever; I would award that to the 15-seed St. Peter’s team from 2022 that made the Elite Eight.)

2021 UCLA was similar. In the First Four, had to win five games to make it, had to beat #2 and #1 on the way.

2018 Loyola got a couple of breaks. They were in the same region as the Virginia team that lost to UMBC. #2 seed Cincinnati also lost in the second round, so the best team the Ramblers had to beat was #3 Tennessee.

To summarize, I don’t think NC State is the most unlikely Final Four team ever, but I would throw them in with 2018 Loyola and 2021 UCLA and say they were one of the four most unlikely.

It’s really the combination of the two highly unlikely events that makes the Wolfpack’s run completely unique in the history of college basketball. You heard lots of comparisons to 2011 UConn, but that UConn team was a much better team. They were ranked in the Top 25 all year. They were #26 in kenpom. They had four wins over Top 10 teams in the regular season. They had a first-team All-American in Kemba Walker. They finished ninth in a 16-team Big East, which is why they had to play five games in five days.

I’ve been working on a series of the 50 greatest teams in ACC history. Yesterday I thought, wait – do I need to stop in midstream and put NC State 2024 on the list? In a sense that seems ridiculous for a team that lost 14 games, but consider this. There are 25 other ACC teams that won the ACC Championship and made the Final Four. Of those 25, all are on my list but one (1997 North Carolina, and they would probably be #51).

It underscores the uniqueness of this team. There isn’t another team like this in the history of college basketball, and there may never be again.

NC State – Other Learnings and Observations

Defense – The most surprising aspect of this run was the improvement on defense. In State’s last nine games, their average adjusted defensive efficiency was 89.5. Extended to a full season, that would have been the third best defense in the country after Iowa State and Houston. The players themselves frequently cited their “connectedness” on defense when asked what sparked this run.

How do you explain this seemingly sudden improvement? I think it was a combination of several things: 1) A tighter, more stable rotation with the same seven players getting all the minutes. They really started to anticipate and trust each other. 2) Exceptional effort. This was visible especially with the perimeter defenders such as Morsell and O’Connell. They were defending max effort on every possession in the postseason. 3) Diarra and Middlebrooks. It’s extremely valuable to have big guys who can protect the rim but are athletic enough to switch onto a guard without creating an obvious mismatch. In the postseason, State really figured out how to turn that into an advantage. 4) Great coaching. Great offense can happen in spite of bad coaching if you have great individual offensive players, but great team defense never happens by accident. 5) Luck with opponents not shooting well. There were a lot of open threes during this run that did not go in.

Intangibles and the Eye Test – I’m a pretty analytical guy. My general approach to trying to analyze basketball tends to start with looking at offensive and defensive efficiency, the Four Factors, kenpom, all that.

If ever there was a testament to the limitations of that approach, this team was it. It was almost laughable as State marched through the NCAA Tournament to see the so-called experts, game after game, pick them to lose. Or reseed the remaining teams and put them at the bottom. And when you peeled back their logic, it was usually based on kenpom.

But when you actually watched the games, it was obvious they were better than the teams they were playing. They completely controlled the games against Texas Tech and Marquette. They were down at half against Duke, but they still looked better, and once they started making shots in the second half, Duke was powerless to do anything about it.

At that point, State’s kenpom ranking had become irrelevant. They bore no resemblance to the team from December and January that compiled a lot of the numbers that went into their kenpom. Especially in the transfer portal era with so much roster turnover, it takes time for a team to come together, and the March team may look very different from the December team. Once State started playing so well in March, suddenly everyone could see what Kevin Keatts had probably seen in his mind’s eye when he put this roster together.

I’m not going to throw away analytics; I’d have to change the name of my blog if I did. There is still a lot of great information embedded in the data. For example, State’s improvement on offense in the second half of the season was evident in the analytics, even if it wasn’t reflected in their win-loss record. But the reductionist analytics approach (which I have been guilty of) that reduces a team to its kenpom Efficiency Margin is a lazy way to analyze basketball, and it cannot accurately assess a team like NC State.

The Mojo– one of my favorite things in sports is watching a team get on a postseason run where they are playing with absolute, 100% confidence, belief, and trust. I call it The Mojo. It’s something intangible, but you know it when you see it. Psychologically, I think it equates to something like ultimate confidence. It’s what happens when a team’s confidence becomes so deeply rooted and unshakable as a result of repeated success that no matter what happens, they maintain complete belief and commitment. The 2023 Braves had The Mojo. 2022 North Carolina got The Mojo. And that’s where I think 2024 NC State got to in the postseason.

One of the characteristics of a team with The Mojo is that it raises individual players to play above themselves. How did DJ Burns and Michael O’Connell suddenly get better in the postseason, 120+ college basketball games into their careers? It’s The Mojo.

The Mojo doesn’t happen overnight. It’s always the result of sustained success. For this team, I think the second half of the Syracuse game is where you started to see it. State dominated that half in an unexpected manner, and that performance set them up with a lot of confidence going into the Duke game. That confidence continued to build with each win. The Virginia game, with the way it ended, gave them a sense that perhaps they were destiny’s team. By the time they got to the Carolina game, they had crossed the threshold from mere confidence to The Mojo. In that sense, I think the five games helped them. Had they just showed up to play Duke without the first two games against Louisville and Syracuse, I doubt they would have won.

Luck – Did State get lucky to win the Virginia game? Well, yes and no.

I think sometimes we confuse improbable with lucky. When Stephen Curry hits a 60-footer, it’s improbable, but it’s not lucky. In fact, it’s actually the opposite of luck. If Curry makes that shot it’s because he’s a great basketball player. Luck would mean that the outcome is essentially random, that a bad player and a good player would have an equal chance. That’s obviously not the case here. Yes, it’s improbable, he probably wouldn’t make it more than one out of twenty, but it’s not lucky.

That’s how I think of the Michael O’Connell shot. It wasn’t lucky. It was a great if improbable shot by a good basketball player. What was lucky was McKneely missing the free throw.

The Margin – I am constantly amazed at how slim the margins are between success and failure at the highest levels of athletics. If the O’Connell shot doesn’t go in, none of this happens. Kevin Keatts wouldn’t be any worse a coach if that shot hadn’t gone in, but think how different the perception would be. How many potential 2024 NC States have there been over the years whose Michael O’Connell shot just didn’t go in?

The Future – What does this run mean for the program going forward? Here are a few thoughts and observations.

Expect State to be overrated going into next year. There is a long history of that with teams that make unexpected postseason runs. Look at Carolina after their 2022 run, or Georgia Tech after their 2004 run, or Duke after their 1978 run, or any number of other examples. It always happens.

I have no idea who will come back. Burns, Horne, and Morsell have no more eligibility. Diarra, Middlebrooks, Taylor, O’Connell, and Dennis Parker have eligibility left, but in this day and age, you really never know. Brandon Huntley-Hatfield from Louisville looks like a good addition. If Diarra and Middlebrooks return, their frontcourt seems set, but they need shooting and scoring in the backcourt.

What State did this year is obviously not repeatable. You can’t count on runs from 9-11 in the ACC to the Final Four to sustain your program. If they continue to hang around .500 in the ACC, they will remain what they had been under Kevin Keatts before this run: a middle-of-the-pack ACC team that is hanging around the NCAA Tournament bubble most years.

The real question is whether Keatts either a) has figured some things out and become a better coach and/or b) can leverage the positive energy created by this run to take the program to another level.

I think we have to acknowledge the possibility that Keatts has just become a better coach, not that he was bad to begin with. He has shown he can construct rosters that can win in the transfer portal era. He has shown he can take a bunch of new guys and make a team out of them. He has shown he can put together a really good defensive team, which he had never done before this year. It has always bothered me that his teams don’t have an obviously recognizable style, but this team shows the positive side of having a versatile team that can win in a lot of different ways. He showed the ability to adapt his style to the personnel he had, most obviously in how they used DJ Burns.

Clearly this run has generated a tremendous amount of positive national attention for the program. Keatts is a likable guy, a players coach. Their team played hard, had fun, and mostly behaved themselves. It certainly looked like a program a lot of players would want to be a part of. They have a level of national prominence at this moment they haven’t seen since the Jimmy V era. The fan base is highly energized. There will be more butts in seats next year. There will be an infusion of NIL money. It seems like a golden opportunity to get and keep higher level players, whether freshman recruits or transfers.

But the window will not stay open for long. Our memories are short. If they revert back to the pre-2024 NC State for the next season or two, all that positive energy will dissipate, and this season will become an anomaly, not the new and improved NC State.

What, specifically, do they need to do? It’s hard to say with exactness, but in general, it needs to feel like the program is elevated above the pre-2024 Keatts-era level. That probably translates into some combination of making the NCAA Tournament (preferably without being on the bubble) and winning a game or two, being in the Top 25 some of the time, and making some noise in the ACC Tournament (which I define as semifinals and beyond).

And with that, I will wrap it up for this college basketball season. I will soon be resuming my march through the 50 greatest teams in ACC history.

How to Pick Teams for the NCAA Tournament

When it comes to NCAA Tournament selection, we seem to be having a moment.

Coaches are up in arms about metrics they don’t understand. Teams who feel they were unfairly left out are spurning NIT bids. Everyone has a suggestion for how to improve the process – change the metrics, change the composition of the selection committee, expand the tournament, stop giving automatic bids… the ideas are flying.

I don’t claim to have final and definitive answers to all that. No matter what system is adopted, a line must be drawn, and teams on the wrong side of the line are not going to be happy about it. But I do think some changes could be made that would increase transparency, increase the perception of objectivity, and thereby reduce the noise. I’m going to group my thoughts under two headings. First, the structure of the tournament as it relates to size and automatic vs. at-large qualifiers; then second, I will dive more deeply into the selection of at-large teams and how that should work.

Structure

The system of awarding automatic bids to conference champions has been in place since the very beginning. Prior to 1975, all Division I conference champions qualified for the tournament, and then there were a few spots reserved for Independent teams. There was no such thing as an at-large bid for a team in a conference; if you weren’t the conference champion, either by winning the regular season or the tournament, then you didn’t make the NCAA Tournament. At this time, there was no seeding. Instead, teams went into predetermined slots in the bracket. So, for example, the West region bracket might have specified that the Pac-8 champion received a bye, and the WCAC champion played the Big Sky champion in the first round.

Starting in 1975, the tournament went through a series of changes that resulted in the current system. The two most fundamental changes were the introduction of at-large bids in 1975 and the introduction of a seeding system in 1979.

The introduction of multiple bids for a single conference is typically associated with the 1974 ACC Tournament in which Maryland, acknowledged by everyone to be one of the best teams in the country, fell in the final to the David Thompson-led NC State team in the “greatest game ever played”. The Wolfpack went on to win the national championship while the Terps went home. The seeming injustice of that for Maryland was the impetus for an expansion of the NCAA Tournament field from 25 teams to 32 and the addition of an at-large bid for certain conferences.

The next major change was the introduction of a seeding system in 1979, along with a further expansion of the tournament field to 40 teams. The expansion to 40 teams necessitated the addition of another round, meaning that some teams would have to play six games to win the tournament, as most do today. Once this step was taken, it was inevitable that the tournament would eventually expand to 64 teams, thereby filling out that first round and ending the practice of teams getting byes. This happened in a series of steps between 1979 and 1985, which was the first 64-team tournament.

The seeding system introduced in 1979 brought an end to the practice of predetermined conference matchups in the bracket and essentially brought the structure of the tournament to its modern form. Since then, the only thing that has changed is the number of teams. From 2001 to 2010, there were 65 teams which resulted in a single play-in game. In 2011, the current number of 68 teams was adopted along with the First Four round in Dayton.

Expansion from 68 teams has been brought up innumerable times over the years, and there is a wide variety of opinions on the topic. The Bigger is Better crowd argues that March Madness is an amazing event, and therefore wider participation would bring more joy to more people. The Status Quo crowd is concerned that diluting the participant pool would diminish the value of the achievement. Expansion would also bring a number of practical challenges – extending the overall length of the event; where and when you would hold the additional games; are fans going to care about and show up for the first round games among teams that aren’t very good; who would get the additional bids; and so on.

One thing that is important to point out about the NCAA Tournament is that most everyone recognizes what an amazing event it is. It generates a tremendous amount of revenue for both the NCAA and for the participating schools, and everyone is leery of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. This explains why the low-major conference champions continue to have a spot in the tournament – because the participation of these teams and the Cinderella narratives that arise generate intense fan interest and therefore money. Otherwise you can bet that the power conferences would cut them out in a heartbeat and have their own tournament.

Over the past several days, I’ve heard a number of half-baked ideas put forward. Eliminate automatic bids? Not going to happen. Conference tournaments are too compelling and too exciting with the “Championship Week” brand and all that. Provide a certain number of guaranteed slots for the major conferences? I don’t see that happening either. Who decides how many slots each conference gets? What happens when the 8th place team from the ACC is better than the 7th place team from the SEC, yet they don’t get in? How would teams be selected within the conferences? With imbalanced conference schedules, that might require a selection committee within each conference. There are just too many issues.

I do think the field will eventually be expanded, but my guess is that it will be done in small increments that won’t fundamentally change the structure of the event. For example, it would be easy enough to go from 68 teams to 72. The First Four would become the First Eight, and you would need a second site in addition to Dayton. Those aren’t radical changes. If you were to go to 80, or even 96, now you’re talking about a lot of additional games. Where would they be played? Would you need to add a fourth weekend to the tournament? Is that too much of a good thing? Again, the tournament is so perfect as it is that you have to be very careful about making changes.

How At-Large Teams Are Selected

Now to get on to what I really want to talk about. This is where the real controversy lies. It seems to me that it boils down to two things: 1) the committee needs to decide and communicate what matters; and 2) the analytics they are using need to measure what matters. All the disagreements can be put under one of those two headings. Either they are disagreements about what matters, or they are disagreements about how what matters is being measured. Let’s take these two in turn.

What Matters

This is where at all starts. Quad 1 wins? Road wins? Bad losses? Non-conference strength of schedule? NET? kenpom? Early-season games? Late-season games? All these are different ways of getting at what matters to the committee.

I would like to suggest that the various views on what matters can all be aligned to one of two fundamentally different views, the Resume View and the Best Teams View. The differences between these two views are quite subtle, but they are crucial nonetheless, and they lie behind a lot of the differences and debates that we hear. Let me try to describe the two views.

Factor	Resume View	Best Teams View
The Essential Question	Who has earned the right to a bid as a result of their wins and losses?	Who are the teams most likely to be successful in the tournament?
Main Direction	Looking backward at what you have done	Looking forward at what you will do
Margin of victory	Doesn’t matter	Matters
Metrics	Results-based (e.g. Quad 1/2/3/4 record, Strength of Record)	Predictive (kenpom, BPI, etc.)
Timing	All games count the same	Recent games matter more
Eye Test	Irrelevant	Relevant
Injuries, Roster Changes	Irrelevant	Relevant

Do you understand the difference? Read it again, because this is the vital point. One thing that may be confusing is my assertion that the Best Teams View is essentially forward-looking. But I stand by that. Think about it, when you say that Team A is better than Team B, what do you really mean by that? Well, I say that a statement like that is essentially a prediction. What you really mean is that if Team A and Team B played tomorrow, all other things being equal, you would expect Team A to win. Perhaps they played last week, and Team B won. There is not necessarily a contradiction there, because you are making a forward-looking statement. Of course you are looking backward in the sense that you are drawing upon what Team A has already done, but you are doing so in an attempt to predict what they will do in the future.

Do you see how this shapes the debate? Are we using kenpom, or not? Well, that depends. If you take the Resume View, kenpom becomes irrelevant. If you take the Best Teams View, it may become very relevant, depending on your ideas on how to pick the best teams.

Are recent games more important than November and December games? In the Resume View, the answer is no. It’s about who you played and who you beat, nothing more. In the Best Teams View, recent games are more important, because they are more relevant to how good a team is right now and how they will fare in the tournament.

Best player just tore his ACL? In the Resume View, that doesn’t matter at all. It doesn’t change what you’ve already done. It doesn’t change what you’ve earned by your wins and losses. In the Best Teams View, it matters a lot. You may have been one of the 36 best teams before, but you aren’t anymore.

I hope you can see where I am going with this. Our collective thinking about this topic is so muddled primarily because we have failed to be clear about this distinction. Think about the talking heads and the variety of opinions about the Eye Test, about injury status, about the predictive metrics. What I am saying is that at the root of all that lie presuppositions, maybe unconscious but no less real, that when examined will turn out to be either the Resume View or the Best Teams View.

And I go on to assert that these two views are fundamentally incompatible, and that the selection committee’s basic problem is that they are trying to have it both ways. Either you can take the Resume View or you can take the Best Teams View, but you cannot take both. If the Resume View is right, then throw out the predictive metrics; banish all talk of the Eye Test; weigh every game the same. If the Best Teams View is right, then… well, good luck with that.

Which gets to my own position. I feel strongly that the Resume View is the correct one when it comes to picking at-large teams. Why? Well, it really comes down to this. In the immortal words of Herm Edwards, you play to win the game. That’s the object. Basketball isn’t like figure skating or gymnastics or diving where judges decide who wins based on who looks better. Basketball is about one objective, inarguable thing: who has more points at the end of the game. That’s it. And that’s why we love it. Whether you won by one point or thirty, it doesn’t matter.

Maybe you aren’t that good and got lucky to win your games. Doesn’t matter. Because you play to win the game.

Not only is this the only right and fair way to approach the decision, it also has a number of side benefits. It gets us out of the business of trying to predict the future, which humans are notoriously bad at. It gets us out of the subjective business of eye tests and other such nebulous criteria. It makes the task comparatively simple: whom did you play, where did you play them, and whom did you beat.

How What Matters is Being Measured

Now that we have arrived at the conclusion to rely solely on the Resume View, it may seem that our task is done. It’s simple. Wins are good. Losses are bad. The better the opponent, the better the win; the worse the opponent, the worse the loss. Your resume becomes the sum total of your wins and losses, with every game given equal weight. Throw out the predictive metrics, we don’t need them anymore.

You could envision a simple point system. Beating the best team in the country is 100 points. Beating the worst team in the country is 0 points. Losing to the best team in the country is 0 points. Losing to the worst team in the country is -100 points. That’s overly simplistic, but you get the idea. Add up the point totals for every team, and the top 36 get the at-large bids. Done.

But there is trouble lurking in the statement “the better the opponent, the better the win; the worse the opponent, the worse the loss”. Do you see it? The perceptive reader is saying, wait a second. I thought we just concluded that the whole notion of “better” and “worse” teams is too subjective. But if we are to reward teams more for beating good teams, we need a way to decide how good or bad teams are. Aren’t we back where we started?

In a way, we are; but I think there is a way out. The solution is that rather than banishing predictive metrics completely, we use them indirectly to determine how much credit to assign to a win, and how much debit to assign to a loss. The predictive metrics become the basis for our point system.

And so my radical proposal is this. Do away with the selection committee. No smoke-filled rooms, no subjective decisions. Instead, have a point system that is clear and transparent to everyone. When you win a game, you get points. When you lose a game, you lose points. What determines how many points you get or lose is where the opponent ranks in the predictive metrics. If Auburn is #4 in the predictive metrics and Tennessee is #7, then a win over Auburn is worth more points than a win over Tennessee. And a loss to Tennessee loses more points than a loss to Auburn. Publish the predictive metrics and the game-by-game point values on a website for everyone to see. No more guessing. You know where you stand. If you want more points, win more games against better opponents, and don’t lose games against worse ones.

There is one more devil lurking in the details. Which predictive metric or metrics should we use? Does it bother anyone else that Colorado State is #70 in the ESPN BPI but #38 in kenpom? Do we have any idea why that is the case or which one is right? Is Colorado State the 70th-best team in the country, or the 38th-best? If you’re going to use a system like the one I am suggesting, that difference matters a great deal to the teams that played Colorado State. My guess is that the NCAA doesn’t really understand how the metrics they are using work. They used kenpom, Sagarin, and ESPN BPI because they were available and the sources seemed credible. They are crossing their fingers and hoping that using them together closely approximates the truth. But just throwing more metrics together doesn’t necessarily improve the quality or accuracy of what you are measuring. Instead, you should strive to have one metric that is aligned with what you want to measure.

So that brings me to my final point. The NCAA should appoint a commission to develop their own predictive metric that measures what they want to measure and values what they want to value. Ken Pomeroy is a smart guy, but I’m not going to trust his metric at face value unless I understand how it works. Does the metric weight recent games more, or not? Does it adjust for end-of-game blowouts? How does it adjust for home-court advantage? Does it begin the season with a set of prior assumptions about team quality, or does everyone begin at zero? Pomeroy himself has been reasonably open about these things, and I’m not picking on him. What I’m saying is, the NCAA hasn’t been intentional about whether the way his metric works is they way they think it should work. Have they compared the differences in algorithm between kenpom and the BPI and then decided which they prefer? They should appoint a commission consisting of, yes, analytics gurus, but also analytically-minded coaches, players, and administrators to make decisions about how these things should be valued and create a predictive metric for the NCAA that reflects their values. Publish the algorithm for the predictive metric so that no one is guessing about how it works and so that it can be improved over time.

There you have it. My point of view on how to fix the selection process. Sure to be read by few and adopted by none, but it feels good to get it off my chest.

NC State Tournament Outlook

It won’t surprise anyone that I’ve been thinking a lot about NC State. How exactly did they do what they did last week? Is their improvement real? What should we expect on Thursday?

What happened last week is a good reminder that teams are not static. During the course of the year, there are injuries, there are changes to the rotation, coaches keep coaching and making adjustments, players improve and figure things out, players go through slumps and lose confidence. All of those dynamics affect the team’s performance.

The numbers for NC State tell a story. In the first half of the year, they were a good defensive team and a mediocre offensive team. In the second half of the year, they improved considerably on offense, but regressed on defense. In the ACC Tournament, they put both together. That’s what enabled them to do what they did.

Let’s draw a line after the Syracuse game on January 27. Up to this point in the season, the Wolfpack was 13-7, 5-4 in the ACC. They were ranked #78 in kenpom, #100 in offensive efficiency and #54 in defensive efficiency. They had had several games where they were rotten on offense: Ole Miss, Notre Dame, Carolina, at Virginia, at Syracuse. But they had had a couple of terrific games on defense (Carolina, Virginia) and several others where they were very good (Notre Dame, at BC, Vanderbilt, Wake).

Going into the ACC Tournament, NC State’s overall kenpom ranking hadn’t changed much at 76. But the composition changed a lot. Their offensive ranking had improved from 100 to 69, while their defensive ranking had regressed from 54 to 104. Starting with the Wake Forest game on February 10, the Wolfpack’s average adjusted offensive efficiency rating over their last eight regular season games was 121 points per 100 possessions, with no single game less than 119. For reference, 121 is a Top 10 offense. It’s the level of Gonzaga, Arizona, and Duke.

So NC State clearly had found some things on offense, but it was hard to tell by wins and losses in the second half because a) their defense was inconsistent and b) their schedule was harder.

In the ACC Tournament, somehow it all came together. Offensively, they essentially continued to play at the same level they had been, which again is Top 10. Keeping in mind that 120 is a Top 10-level adjusted offensive rating, their ratings for each game were:

Louisville – 125.7
Syracuse – 117.2
Duke – 116.1
Virginia – 121.9
Carolina – 128.0 (this was State’s second-highest offensive rating of the year, after their home win over Virginia)

But the really surprising thing is how much their defense improved after the first game against Louisville. Their adjusted defensive ratings were:

Louisville – 123.5
Syracuse – 90.5
Duke – 85.9
Virginia – 103.3
Carolina – 92.9

Duke was their second-best defensive game of the year, Syracuse was fourth-best, and Carolina was sixth-best.

I don’t have any quantitative analysis that would shed light on why their defense was better. But I did watch the games, and my thought is that it’s a combination of greater effort and focus, improvement by Diarra, and luck.

This is an interesting thing to think about. Would you rather be a good offensive team and an OK defensive team, or an OK offensive team and a good defensive team? The data suggest that offensive-oriented teams typically perform slightly better in the postseason than defensive-oriented. Why is that? My theory is essentially that defensive performance is more dependent on effort, whereas offensive performance is more dependent on skill. And for that reason, defense can be “turned on”, up to a point. But you can’t really “turn on” your offense. If you don’t have good shooters and good passers, no amount of effort is going to make up for that.

Of course there is such as thing as defensive skill as well, and a poor defensive team can’t turn themselves into Virginia just by playing harder. But I do think defensive performance is more variable with effort. Watching NC State this year, I think Morsell and Taylor were capable of being good defenders, but there were games they couldn’t seem to stay in front of anybody. But in the tournament, you could see the exceptional effort. Morsell in particular was really digging in. The increased effort was also evident in transition defense which was visibly improved in the tournament.

Then Mo Diarra started being a rim protector. In State’s last 12 games, Diarra is averaging 1.9 blocks per game, which would be second in the league if he had done it for the whole year. The uncontested layups which seemed so frequent in February were much less frequent in the tournament.

There was some luck, too. From three-point range, Syracuse was 6-19, Duke was 5-20, Virginia was 9-28, Carolina was 8-30. That’s a collective 29%. Some of that was good perimeter defense, yes, but some of it was just guys missing shots that they might make another day. I’m not convinced that State suddenly has a suffocating three-point defense.

Going back to offense… what changed from the first half of the season to the second? As you might expect, it wasn’t just one thing. Jayden Taylor played much better. He had an outstanding run the last six games of the regular season. Diarra also improved on the offensive end, becoming a legitimate threat from three and contributing a few buckets off the offensive glass and even off the dribble as well.

But what really stood out in the tournament was the play of O’Connell and Burns. As for O’Connell, in the regular season he had a total of three double figure scoring games. There were a lot of games where it seemed like he was just out there taking up space. He had some decent assist games, but he also had a lot of games with 3 points and 1 assist in 25 minutes or something like that. Not really making an impact. He had attempted only 25 free throws all year heading into the tournament.

And then he scored double figures in all five games in the tournament, going 9-16 from three, 15-18 from the line, and looking like a completely different player on the offensive end. I don’t really have an explanation for it. O’Connell is not a young player, having played 125 games in his career, and it would be unusual for a player like that to suddenly take a quantum leap forward. He has never been a scorer. He is a career 31% three-point shooter, which is not very good. I don’t know whether the coaches have been on him to shoot more, or if he decided on his own, but he clearly came into the tournament with a more aggressive mindset offensively, and once a few shots started going down, it fed his confidence.

O’Connell’s improved play is directly related to Burns’ performance. Burns has always been a skilled and unique offensive player, but the tournament was the best stretch of his career. I saw two things. One, Taylor’s, O’Connell’s, and even Diarra’s improved offense makes it much tougher to defend Burns. For a good portion of the season, the only real perimeter threat they had was Horne. Taylor was shooting poorly and O’Connell and Diarra weren’t shooting at all. It allowed their defenders to help on Burns with relative impunity. But with Taylor, O’Connell, and Diarra being threats to score, the situation changes completely. Choosing to double-team Burns means leaving a good offensive player open. Most teams therefore chose not to double team Burns, but when they did, he burned them.

That brings me to the other change I saw in Burns. He put a little Tyler Hansbrough in his game, which is to say, he did a better job of using his size and strength to get closer to the basket and get an easier shot. As big and skilled as Burns is, he winds up taking a lot of difficult shots. He shot 52% from the field this year, which is not bad, but it’s not that good either for a guy who is 6’9″ and 300 lbs. I’ve often thought that because he does have such nice touch, he falls in love with that a little bit and takes an 8-footer when he could use his size to get a 3-footer.

Then, too, I think the knowledge that teams weren’t double-teaming him gave him more time to work and get closer to the basket. In the past, he’s had to be mindful of going quickly and getting a shot off before the double team comes. In the tournament, he knew that teams weren’t going to double, and he could take 10 seconds to back a guy down and get a point-blank shot.

So I think all of that worked together to create offensive synergies for the Wolfpack. Will it carry over into the tournament? Anything can happen in a single game, but I think most of the improvements they’ve shown are real and sustainable. They now have 13 straight games with an offensive efficiency of 116 or better, which is outstanding. I’m not convinced that O’Connell will continue to be a threat offensively, but they have enough different ways to score now that I expect them to be a good, Top 20-type offensive team from here on out.

I have no doubt that teams, especially with time to prepare, will try to throw new wrinkles at them. But I will say this. Great offensive basketball is not primarily about being opportunistic and taking what the defense gives you; it’s about running stuff that the other guys know is coming and can’t stop. I think you saw in the tournament that NC State has some of that now. With the emergence of other scorers, the maturation of Burns, and the variety and efficiency of DJ Horne, defenses have to make some very difficult choices. Nothing could be more telegraphed in terms of what is coming than when Burns gets the ball, but the defenses in the tourney were at a loss for what to do about it. Most of them chose to defend Burns one-on-one, and he scored. If they doubled him, he passed to a teammate who was in favorable scoring position. I don’t think that fundamental dilemma is going to change in the NCAA Tournament.

What I am more skeptical of is whether NC State can maintain the defensive efficiency they showed in the tournament. I expect their effort to be excellent, but their fundamentals are shaky. They make mistakes in defending ball screens. They get beaten in transition. They give up back doors. Guys lose assignments for a second and give up open threes. All it’s going to take is a team having a good shooting night. But the way they’re playing offensively, it’s possible they could score enough points to survive a shaky defensive performance.

Watch the officiating as well. I loved the way the ACC Tournament was officiated. The officials let the players play and stayed in the background, which is the way it should be. Keatts’ teams at State, including this year’s team, have been high foul teams. That has hurt them at times, both from guys getting in foul trouble, but also from sending the other team to the line. But other than Horne in the Carolina game, State had no significant foul trouble issues, and they shot 128 free throws in the tournament to their opponents’ 65. If the upcoming games are called more closely, it could hurt State. I expect teams to try very hard to get Burns in foul trouble and get him out of the game. Watch for an early flop on a Burns back down to see if they can get the officials to bite.

I think the biggest stat to watch will be Texas Tech’s three-point shooting. If they shoot 6-for-27, State will win; 11-for-21 and we’ll be headed back to Raleigh. Also watch the foul situation closely. State cannot afford a major imbalance at the free throw line and they can ill afford foul trouble for Horne or Burns.

Bracket Reaction, Part 2: How Did I Do?

As a reminder, here was my final bracket. I have color-coded it to illustrate how I did. Teams in blue were picked and seeded correctly; teams in brown were one seed line off; teams in red were two or more seed lines off, or not picked correctly at all.

UConn, Purdue, Houston, Iowa State
North Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Marquette
Creighton, Baylor, Illinois, Auburn
Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Alabama
Florida, Wisconsin, BYU, Texas Tech
St. Mary’s, San Diego State, South Carolina, Clemson
Dayton, Gonzaga, Nevada, Washington State
Nebraska, Texas, Utah State, Boise State
Texas A&M, Colorado, Mississippi State, TCU
New Mexico, Florida Atlantic, Colorado State, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Michigan State
Drake, Oregon, NC State, Grand Canyon
James Madison, McNeese, Samford, Duquesne
Vermont, Yale, College of Charleston, UAB
Akron, Oakland, Morehead State, Colgate
Western Kentucky, South Dakota State, Long Beach State, Longwood
St. Peter’s, Stetson, Grambling, Montana State, Howard, Wagner

Adding it all up, I missed one team entirely, Oklahoma; I missed five other teams by 2 or 3 seed lines; 21 teams were off by one seed line; and 41 teams were perfect.

Is that good? One way to compare is at bracketmatrix.com. Their scoring system gives you three points for accurately predicting a team being in the field; two additional points for every team that is seeded correctly; and one additional point for every team that is seeded plus or minus one.

There are 226 brackets total brackets scored. My score was 345, which was tied for 54th. Not too shabby. Here are scores of some of the better known sites and experts:

This year’s top score: 355
Warren Nolan: 349
Washington Post: 347
The Barking Crow: 347
FOX Sports: 345
MUDVILLE ANALYTICS: 345
SI.com: 344
Bart Torvik: 344
The Athletic: 341
Jeff Borzello: 338
Sporting News: 337
Joe Lunardi/ESPN: 336
USA Today: 332
On3.com: 325
Jerry Palm/CBS: 323

I’m happy with that. The only picks I would like to have back are picking Iowa State over Carolina, which I knew was wrong as I was doing it but couldn’t stop myself, and picking Gonzaga as a 7. My model said Gonzaga was a 6, but I was influenced by external forces to knock them down to a 7.

Now for some speculation about some of the other misses. With FAU, sometimes I get the sense that the committee has its mind made up prior to the conference tournament, and then they can’t be bothered to change it based on what actually happens. FAU lost to Temple, which is a really bad loss, and it doesn’t seem to have hurt them. Same thing with Florida and Kentucky, the committee seems to have ignored the SEC Tournament. The Nevada/Boise State situation (both received much worse seeds than expected) seems to be some kind of conspiracy against the Mountain West. There was speculation that the committee felt that the Mountain West was overrated because most of their Quad 1 wins were within the league. If that’s true, that would call into question the validity of the NET rating, but that’s a discussion for another time.

There is more evidence of the committee ignoring the results of conference tournaments. Look at the St. Peter’s/Longwood situation. Longwood has a much better resume than St. Peter’s. Why did they get a lower seed? Well, a good guess is that the team that was supposed to win the MAAC, Fairfield, did have a better resume than Longwood. You can imagine the committee had Fairfield on the 15 line, and when Fairfield was upset in the conference tournament, they just did not do the work to understand how St. Peter’s resume was different and change the seeds accordingly.

Bracketmatrix has been doing this for a long time and you can look at past results on his site. Lunardi is OK, Palm is below average, although both have had some good years and some bad ones. There are just a handful of prognosticators who have been above average for five consecutive years.

Last year was my first year, and I was well below average. I definitely got better this year. We’ll see next year if my improvement is real and sustainable.