2017-2018 Major Conference predictions

I have been a little delinquent starting the previews and preseason bracket.  The FBI sting took some of the wind out of my sails.  I could write for days on that particular topic, but that has nothing to do with the bracket.  I do feel that it would be ignorant not to take the investigation into consideration, as well as other legal implications, so I highlighted teams that I felt were in limbo for this season... not that the NCAA sanctions or postseason bans are imminent or likely (though that is a possibility) but this will affect the longterm mental health of the program.  Maybe not so much the players on the court, but everything that goes into the sausage (recruiting, coaches, practice, travel, media, etc) are going to change for those teams in the immediate future.

Notes:
The PAC12 is a disaster. Arizona, USC, and UCLA looked to be frontrunners, but who knows where the investigation leads, and how China expedites their legal process, which I can only imagine to be like Brokedown Palace.  Cal is bankrupt, Oregon is embroiled in its moral and ethical quandries, and every school north of the 44 degree parallel sucks.  Arizona has the depth to prevail, but my guess is that the investigation breaks Miller before the postseason.  If so, the PAC12 is wide open.

ACC is messy, but the teams currently involved were outside the "lock" status.  Miami and Louisville had tourney potential, but will likely be just impacted enough to tumble to the middle of the ACC standings, with self sanctioning a bargaining chip. Not quite as high on Duke's likely outcome versus the "upside" outcome.  Notre Dame is flying under the radar despite being sound, deep, and experienced.  They have a better shot at an ACC title, while Duke could go all the way if they peak at the right time.

The state of Alabama shot itself in the foot big time.  Auburn looked close to a contender last year, while Alabama pulled a few upsets to remain in the selection discussion until the SEC tourney.  Both are already in the midst of damage control, and I can't see Pearl lasting through Christmas.  Florida and Kentucky are the class of a flat conference again.  Media is high on Missouri because of the Porter effect, but both Fultz and Simmons played for the draft, not necessarily for the postseason.  I can see the Tigers getting off to a fast start and fizzling once NBA scout confirm his draft status. 

The Shockers are jumping to the AAC, which will put a strain on their typical road dominance.  Cinci didn't lose enough to warrant overlooking (SMU did) so I think that chip on their shoulder will be enough to win the league while everyone prematurely puts WSU in the Final Four.  UConn could be the wild card again.

Venue issues will change the fortunes of both Villanova and DePaul.  While the Wildcats are basically playing neutral or road all season, DePaul finally has new digs of their own near campus.  The edge goes to Xavier and Seton Hall to play up that advantage, while DePaul could finally be trending out of the cellar.

Oklahoma State should plummet back to early, while the Dixon effect has taken root at TCU.  Kansas hopefully exhibits a less ambiguous standard toward moral turpitude on the roster.  Over the years, Self has never worn the same stink of other embattled coaches.  I doubt there is any dirt there, but come on, show some discipline.

I have nothing to say about the Big Ten, other than they were very overrated in the seedings last year, and the overall talent seems to have slipped, though little Pitino has a sleeping giant.

Mike Rhodes could keep VCU's stream open, but the Rams have been good for 13 years now.  Typically the bubble bursts on mid-majors and someone has to rebuild from scratch, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.  Ironically, the man who broke their drought, Anthony Grant, will be presiding over continuity at Dayton.  The Bonnies and Rams have the best 5's in the conference, and without much competition, they won't need the depth to win.

Update: ACC

Atlantic Coast

Summary: Up until a week ago, you could say 1-12, the ACC was the deepest ever.  That isn’t saying much, because who has 15 teams, but this was a 12 bid league, with only Georgia Tech, BC, and Syracuse on the outside looking in.  Now to maintain that relative strength, the right teams have to win the right games.  Then all the Duke stuff started happening, Wake Forest ran into a wall, and NC State is doing just enough to make the NIT.  That leaves 10 deep, with an ambitious outlook on Pitt and Miami, the latter of which has yet to beat anyone of significance.  It is hard to argue with how good the rest of the teams have played.  Florida State owns a fluky neutral site loss to Temple. Notre Dame took back to back neutral site losses to Nova and Purdue.  UNC lost at Indiana and lost the “game of the year” to Kentucky.  Virginia got pressed by West Virginia.  Duke got Masoned at the Garden by Kansas.  Louisville got tripped up in Nassau by Baylor.  The Hokies blew a big lead in Fullerton to Texas A&M.  Clemson dropped games to Xavier and Oklahoma in Orlando.  Miami also got stung in Orlando by Iowa State and Florida.  Pittsburgh is the only one with a true WTF, pairing a respectable loss to SMU with a terrible loss to Duquesne.

What I got wrong: Clemson is a tough out at home, and they schedule strong in the non-conference slate.  The momentum should carry them to .500.  I was way to high on Larranaga’s ability to make lemonade a second straight season on the Beach.  They are still a Top 50 team, but have work to do.  They cannot slip up again the bottom 5 again.  Most of this is pretty close, with big movers Florida State and Clemson.

Prognosis: Duke has a bullseye on their backs as they clearly do not play on the same level without Coach K righting the officials and putting the fear in the players.  It’s too much to overcome in this conference.  They are looking at 3^rd, possibly 5^th.  Despite the hot start, do you really see the Irish finishing better than 6^th?  Florida State needs to win on the road in this conference to maintain that glidepath.  They got one at UVA, but have Duke and Clemson late, and Notre Dame/Pitt the week before that.  It reeks of 12-6.  I don’t see Georgia Tech, BC, and Wake competing for an actual bid this year, and some how Syracuse is tanking even harder than imagined.  So based on the way the top 5 are playing, Duke has the most potential, Virginia is the most consistent, North Carolina can punish anyone in the nation, but it’s Louisville’s defense that is giving the most fits.  Many teams are showing that aggressive defense may be the best offense.  In this case, the press forces teams to attack fast, and the lane is usually open, so they are willing to give up a 60% 2 point basket over a 40% 3 point basket.  It’s close, and I’ll give the edge to UNC, but nobody is excited to play the Cardinals.  Top ten are in, with UNC on the 1 line, Louisville and UVA on the 2 Duke is a 3, Florida State a 4, Notre Dame a 6, Virginia Tech a 7, Miami and Clemson 9s, and Pittsburgh a 10.  Actual seeds may shift based on the s-curve.  NC State is among the first 10 out, and the rest really have to finish over .500 in the league and grab a scalp in the ACC tourney to move up.

ACC	Preseason	Realtime
1	Duke	North Carolina
2	Virginia	Louisville
3	Louisville	Virginia
4	North Carolina	Duke
5	Miami, FL	Florida State
6	Notre Dame	Notre Dame
7	Florida State	Virginia Tech
8	Virginia Tech	Miami, FL
9	North Carolina State	Clemson
10	Pittsburgh	Pittsburgh
11	Syracuse	North Carolina State
12	Georgia Tech	Wake Forest
13	Clemson	Syracuse
14	Wake Forest	Boston College
15	Boston College	Georgia Tech

The ACC/BigTen Challenge as a Bracket Barometer

With so many viable bracket and bubble contender, the ACC/BigTen Challenge provides a slightly closed system with fair matchups to see how these strengths stack up.  While anyone can have an off night on the floor, 14 contests are a decent sample size to at least feel how these teams stack up.  Feel free to reference back to the charts.  Bracket.  BCS.  First outs.

Purdue (projected 3) at Louisville (2); Result: Louisville wins 71-64, confirmed.  Louisville jumped out early, never looked back. 

Rutgers (OUT) at Miami (5); Result: Miami wins 73-61, confirmed.  Rutgers was undefeated head to south Florida, but this game stayed closer longer that I had anticipated. 

Nebraska (BUBBLE POOL) at Clemson (BUBBLE POOL); Result: Clemson wins 60-58, confirmed?  Both these teams have a lot to prove to get back into the discussion, so it makes sense this was a battle to the end.  Clemson steals a potential Top 50 win.

Virginia Tech (10) at Michigan (11); Result: Tech wins 73-70, confirmed.  I really didn’t think the Hokies could pull this one out on the road, especially against Michigan’s tight defense.  Win will be big in March.

North Carolina (3) at Indiana (2); Result: Indiana wins 76-63, confirmed.  Wow, Indiana did not f-around after that loss at Fort Wayne.  A road loss doesn’t mean too much for UNC, but a big bounce back win for the Hoosiers keeps them on the 2 line for while.

Ohio State (SECOND FIVE) at Virginia (1); Result: Virginia wins 63-61, disputed?  The Cavs played like a bag of wet hair, taking poor shots all game, and still pulled this out.  The Buckeyes booted so many chances to put the dagger in.  Either way, I think one of these teams is probably no quite rated correctly… whether UVA gets bumped to a two (not elite) or Ohio State turns the screws on Michigan, MSU, Maryland, and Iowa.

Pittsburgh (FIRST FIVE) at Maryland (8); Result: Pittsburgh wins 73-59, disputed.  Ooof.  I could see this type of score line for a road game, but the Panthers are expected to be a year away adjusting schemes and bringing in “different” talent.  This result flexes the depth of the ACC.

Georgia Tech (OUT) at Penn State (OUT); Result: Penn State wins 67-60, confirmed.  PSU wins at home, and the line is a wash.  Not much to discern here, other than both are a game closer to the NIT.

Syracuse (SECOND FIVE) at Wisconsin (2); Result: Wisconsin wins 77-60, confirmed.  Most people will keep Syracuse in their polls and brackets, and I don’t have much reason to hold them out other than this looks to be a rebuild season as opposed to a reload, despite the early results.  The 2-3 zone couldn’t hold the drive-kick-bomb by Hayes/Koenig, but for the most part, that should allow the Orange to split in conference and get on the bubble.

NC State (FIRST FIVE) at Illinois (OUT); Result: Illinois wins 88-74, disputed.  I will not fault a team for losing on the road, but NC State was handled pretty well by a team that was eventually run over by Florida State.  The Pack rotation is only 6 deep, which will get them in trouble against fast and physical opponents.

Iowa (9) at Notre Dame (7); Result: Notre Dame wins 92-78, confirmed.  I would like to think this is my crowning achievement.  My original outline had Iowa #4 in the Big 10 and Notre Dame #7 in the ACC.  After exhaustively balancing the equation, they both fell to #6, and with the strength of the ACC superior, Notre Dame landed 9 spots ahead on the S-curve.  Vindicated.

Michigan State (6) at Duke (1): Result: Duke wins 77-69, confirmed.  Coach K has revealed Duke has no depth.  Jones and Kennard have each dropped a complete game 3 times this year… before December.  That’s a lot of unnecessary miles against Penn State and URI.  MSU is wallowing in preseason schedule hell, with what looks to be 4 quality losses (assuming Arizona and Baylor hold on) and one near blown shot against the Shockers.  The December slate is pretty sloppy and if they lose any of these, they will slide in the seedings. MSU and Pitt have taken an approach of not forcing turnovers.  Very Odd.

Minnesota (OUT) at Florida State (8); Result: Florida State wins 75-67, confirmed.  Little Pitino has the Gophers with solid wins over Arlington and Arkansas, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they back-doored a cover.  This was a 17-point game with 5 to play, so I’ll say things regress to the mean.

Wake Forest (OUT) at Northwestern (FIRST FIVE); Result: Northwestern wins 65-58, confirmed.  The Deacs are competitive early and NW looks to be in the same position every year, being good enough to not finish last, but never getting over the hump.

Final score: 10 matchups confirmed analysis, 2 matchups are inconclusive, and 2 matchups disputed the analysis.  I’ll take those percentages any day for a rough run it Bracketology after being out of the game five years.

2017 Predictions: The BCS teams

Despite my bias toward the Big East, Atlantic 10, Mountain West, and powers in the Missouri Valley and West Coast, I feel that it would be ignorant to state that these conferences are in the same class as the 5 BCS Conferences.  The Big East clearly has the talent to compete with any of these affiliations, and top to bottom, the A-10, MWC, and AAC have the horses to run with the PAC-12 and SEC this year.  It really comes down to resources, exposure, and the “self-licking ice cream cone.”

The resource gradient does not drive basketball as much as football, but at the end of the day, even your middling BCS program (say, Washington?) is spending so much more per student athlete.  It makes everything easier, from recruiting, training, and actually going to and playing the games.  Richmond and Saint Bonaventure just are not going to have those selling points.

Exposure has changed dramatically the last 15 years.  Back in the days of yore, dish was the only way to get out of region games, let alone mid-major and small conference games.  Now I can choose from any of about 6 to 20 games on any evening or weekend through FiOS (no, I am not trying to sell their service… it sucks, but is still better than cable).  This at least gives casual fans the opportunity to observe that Old Dominion may be legit.  However, when CBS advertises its game of the week, they never try to dig outside the BCS sandbox.  The Big East makes it difficult to ignore, but you are more likely going to be pimped Tennessee/Georgia or Oklahoma State/Oklahoma.

These first two discriminators do not necessarily give a school an advantage reaching the tournament through conference affiliation.  But the self-licking ice cream will do exactly that, giving mediocre teams more credit for getting their asses handed to them through mandatory conference games than rewarding excellence winning the games you should win.  I think the SEC is a prime example.  Outside Kentucky, there isn’t a true dominating national contender.  It is really them, 9 bubble teams, and 4 doormats.  Pretty much all 9 of those teams are going to log 17-22 wins of varying caliber.  The advantage is that they not only get the strength of schedule bump from playing Kentucky, but also all of their other conference opponents who have played Kentucky, even the doormats. 

So once upon a time, the commissioners in several of the “mid-major” conferences realized that they were never going to get the cherry home-and-home opportunities against the big schools, so they gamed the RPI formula.  First off, avoid games against the lower third of teams except for the ones you have to play in conference.  BCS conference teams were more than happy to buy those games anyways to drive toward 20 wins.  Second, find neutral site games and “preseason” tournaments to add additional games to the schedule that have the road/neutral bonus.  Finally, the “Bracket Buster” series was established to give these teams additional Top 50/Top 100 games to both their contenders, as well as the mid and lower conference teams.  The result has been frustration and consternation, and arguably the end of the RPI used as the basis for selection and seeding. 

Virginia Tech under Seth Greenberg was the example of how the system was being worked and how NOT to schedule.  It seemed every season, they would take advantage of their natural home court advantage and spoil a Duke, Maryland, or UNC, chalk up a few other Top 50 wins on their way to 23-9, lose early in the ACC tourney, then find themselves in the NIT because their schedule was fat on Campbell, Longwood, and VMI.  Now it is possible for a team to get screwed because after putting together a fair schedule, those opponents all just had a bad year, but Tech played some good teams… it’s just that the bad teams were always really bad.  Now the book out is that if you anticipate being in the bubble discussion, avoid those games and on the weak BCS teams, weak mid majors, or the best small conference schools.  This has made scheduling harder for the non-BCS conferences because they cannot offer their opponent the same resources or exposure.  Hence, the rich get richer through association, and the middle class fights the fight.

On to the predictions!

The ACC is a true dog fight.  5 elite teams, 7 legitimate bubble teams, 2 doormats, and 1 Clemson.  UVA and Miami have huge upside and downside, but I can’t see either falling below .500, even in this loaded conference.  Notre Dame and Florida State will likely get high seeds based on strength of schedule, and this conference will probably never get 12 teams in, but 10 is not out of the question.

The Big Ten is also loaded the same way with 3 legit final four players, the enigma that is Michigan State every year, 4 other teams that will have to play their way out at this point, four other bubble teams, and then the 2 doormats.  When I finished my predictions, I was surprised how low I had Michigan.  They seem safe, yet bottom half of the conference.  While there is much to like about the progress being made at Northwestern and Nebraska, it just seems that there is a chasm of talent between them and the next tier.  The other teams are all rebuilding, not reloading.

One through five in the PAC 12 are fairly interchangeable based on schedule, injuries, suspensions.  Utah has great upside, and USC is sneaky good this year and a fun Sweet 16 dark horse.  I’m betting on Cal and Washington stumbling this year before making moves next year, though Lorenzo Romar may not make it around if the Huskies are tanking winnable games.  People have shown that is possible to win in Pullman, but not this year… not sure that is the case in Tempe or Corvallis, as those teams never seem to play up to potential.

Texas returning to respectability ups the profile of this conference.  I don’t see a true front-runner, even if Kansas has the talent to do so.  Bob Huggins will beat and bruise and win 75% of his games.  The question is: “where is the fall off?”  There are strong teams here, but Oklahoma was a Buddy Hield force, but will show growing pains.  Brad Underwood has Oklahoma State trending the right way, but inherited a mess.  Baylor has talent, but man, that athletic program is a ticking time bomb.  Can Jamie Dixon turn TCU around, or was that Pitt program really Ben Howland and a house of cards that nobody knocked down?  This smells of a 4 bid league, but will probably get 6.

My thoughts on the SEC were pretty clear.  It is Kentucky and a bunch of 8-9 seed fodder.  I like South Carolina, but Frank Martin started with nothing there and is coaching up a bunch of 2 and 3 stars.  There are lots of good coaches down here, but the football drain on these programs seems to keep many dormant until after bowl games.  Texas A&M was a good story last year, but they are fringy at best.  Florida is not taking a step forward.  I am still not sure why Arkansas is getting so much love, but Mike Anderson at least plays exciting basketball.  The real wild card and potential west division anchor going forward could be Auburn and Bruce Pearl.  His ethics will always be questioned, but he does what Mike Anderson does, and he has typically had more success and consistency.

Now that this is complete, I should have a bracket out Wednesday.