Holliday: ACC shows up NCAA Selection Committee again

By Bob Holliday, WRAL Sports contributor

Through the years, the Atlantic Coast Conference has outperformed every other league in the NCAA Tournament by a wide margin. Among current members, the ACC counts 18 national championships, 34 appearances in the title game, 67 trips to the Final Four, 113 Elite Eights, and 179 Sweet Sixteen appearances, including a run of at least one team to the Sweet Sixteen in every tournament since 1980.

Alas, history plays no part in the selection process for the NCAA Tournament.

In reviewing the last three NCAA Tournaments for the ACC, I think the committee did get it mostly right in 2021. The ACC did not excel during that pandemic season. The committee in fact might have been a bit generous in awarding the league seven bids, as five of those teams lost in the first round. Only Syracuse and Florida State reached the Sweet Sixteen and the league finished just 4-7, the first time it failed to achieve a mark of .500 or better in the NCAA Tournament since 1987 – a span of 34 years.

Last year was a different story. The committee invited just five ACC teams, and one, Notre Dame had to play a First Four game. Neither the Irish nor ACC Tournament Champion Virginia Tech survived the first week. However, Notre Dame did take out Rutgers and Alabama before losing in the round of 32. The other three schools Duke, UNC, and Miami, all made deep runs in the tournament. Duke was awarded a two seed, but UNC came in at #8 and Miami at #10. Yet the league outperformed the committee’s expectations by a wide margin. Duke and UNC of course, both reached the Final Four. Miami battled its way to the Elite Eight. The ACC’s record in the 2022 NCAA Tournament was an extraordinary 14-5; I say extraordinary, because only five teams got in and their seeds were 2,8,10, 11, 11.

Which brings us to 2023. The committee again extended just five bids: Virginia #4 seed, Duke and Miami, both #5 seeds, NC State and Pitt, both #11 seeds. Virginia and Duke both suffered unexpected defeats. NC State lost a close game to favored Creighton. Pitt meanwhile nipped Mississippi State of the 8 bid SEC, and routed Iowa State of the 7 bid Big 12. Miami is still playing.

The Big East, currently 10-4 with UConn headed to the Final Four is the best performing league in 2023 by a wide margin. The ACC, thanks to Miami, will finish this tournament with the second best winning percentage among the Power Six conferences. Even if the Hurricanes lose Saturday night, the ACC will have posted higher winning percentages than the SEC, the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the Pac 12.

So for the second straight year the ACC has enjoyed a post season journey that was not envisioned by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. How has this happened?

Let’s go back to November 2022 when the evaluating for the current season began. The committee starts with a blank sheet. History, not even the previous season, has any bearing on the committee’s evaluation.

Every game matters. The early November games are given the same weight as the February games. In early December, the first NET rankings are released.

The NCAA began using the NET as its key measuring metric in 2018, replacing the former RPI. The NET has been strengthened in the past year. It measures quality of wins, especially away from home and also rates teams’ efficiency based on points per 100 possessions against both top competition and lesser opponents.

The NET is not the committee’s only resource. Each of the 12 members looks at complete box scores and results, NABC regional advisory rankings, as well as various computer metrics, to list just a few. Much is said about “the eye test” as committee members watch games and look at head to head competition, along with results against common opponents, strength of schedule, the quality of wins and losses and much more.

Trouble for the ACC this season began with the release of the very first NET rankings. Only Virginia #9 and Duke #17 made the top 25. The veteran UNC team started at 39, while Miami was buried at 47. Virginia Tech made a good start at 41 but then the Hokies’ season headed south in January. And otherwise, NC State was #55, Pitt #80, Wake Forest #86, and Clemson #88. Notre Dame, Syracuse, Georgia Tech, and Boston College all rated well over 100 in the first December release. Florida State ranked 263 and Louisville near the very bottom at 361.

Meanwhile the Big Ten placed four teams in the top 25 of the first NET rankings, even though just a week before the initial release the ACC defeated the Big Ten 8-6 in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. Neither Clemson which beat Penn State nor Pitt, which trounced Northwestern, got any kind of bounce from taking down two teams that ultimately made the 68 team NCAA field.

The December rankings, based largely on inter-conference warfare, really have a profound impact on the season, because January and February are all about conference play.

Now the committee doesn’t actually rate the conferences per se; but if a league like the Big Ten which in December placed 13 of 14 teams in the top 81 of the NET, has upsets when conference play begins, the perception is “they’re beating each other up, what a league!”

But when a conference like the ACC, which in December had just six teams in the top 81 has upsets, conclusion by media and apparently the committee is that the league is down.

ACC coaches expressed frustration with the low NET rankings all winter and who could blame them. It’s very hard to move up when all you are playing is a conference schedule and half your opponents are ranked 100 or higher; especially considering that these teams often play above their norm in rivalry games and especially at home. Now of course the top ACC teams did get some upward movement when they defeated other top ACC teams, especially on the road. Still, many among the league’s top teams experienced a drop in the NET from December to March.

Virginia -18

Duke +1

Miami +12

NC State +10

UNC -7

Clemson +28

Pitt +13

Virginia Tech -36

Wake Forest -4

So the result of the numbers listed above is that the ACC got just 5 bids. Again. The mighty Big Ten got 8 bids as did the SEC. The Big 12 got 7 bids. The Big East got 5 bids and based on performance in this NCAA Tournament should have gotten at least one more. Conference USA should have gotten one more. Final Four newbie Florida Atlantic, one of the biggest stories of this tournament, should have been joined in the 68 team field by conference rival North Texas, which finished 30-7 with NET ranking of 38.

In my view, NCAA Tournament results this March have thrown some cold water on the committee’s decisions. The Big Ten, did not survive the Sweet Sixteen. The SEC, which boasted the overall top seed in Alabama, also did not survive the Sweet Sixteen. The Big 12 at least put two in the Elite Eight, but despite great efforts by Kansas State and Texas, the road ended there for the league generally considered college basketball’s best this season.

So we have the Big East, the ACC, the Mountain West, and Conference USA competing in the Final Four. This is not exactly like the committee drew it up.

Again, the committee evaluates teams, not leagues. But since conference play comprises approximately 2/3 of games played, those early rankings really matter. The Big Ten finished with eight teams in the top 41 of the NET and 10 in the top 81. The ACC had three in the top 41 and eight in the top 81.

Miami Coach Jim Larranaga, whose team placed 35th in the final NET rankings, has expressed his displeasure of the process quite publicly:

“Our league is very good from top to bottom,” Larranaga said at a recent NCAA press conference. “I think there has been a lot of disrespect for the league that it doesn’t deserve.”

Larranaga also asserted that the ACC “has been the best basketball league in the country for the last 60 years or more.”

Let’s note that Miami did not dominate the ACC this year. The Hurricanes lost five regular season games and lost in the ACC Tournament semi-finals to Duke in what felt like a Final Four game.

The lessons of conference play—Miami won seven games by four points or less—have not been lost on the players. After the Canes’ tight win over Texas Sunday, Player of the Year Isaiah Wong put it this way:

“I thank the ACC for preparing us for these types of games coming in. Every game we played in the ACC was a close game.”

Larranaga revealed he recently received an email from the ACC’s Jim Phillips. “Our commissioner is saying we’re going to address this as a league at our spring meetings,” Larranaga said. “Hopefully we can get the committee to understand that our league should be respected a lot more seriously than it is right now.”

Perhaps the league can learn some things about the committee from UNC Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham. He served on the 12 member group this past season.

No doubt parity in college basketball is a big reason why this Final Four looks nothing like the vision laid out back on Selection Sunday, with all of the 1, 2, and 3 seeds eliminated, as well as the three conferences that received the most bids. But there are changes the NCAA should consider if in fact the goal is to identify the 68 best teams in March.

*There is too much emphasis on November games. Player mobility is at an all time high. NC State’s Kevin Keatts had to rebuild 2/3 of his roster this season and he’s not the only one by a long shot. For a team like Duke, which also fashioned a roster rebuild and suffered early season injuries to key players on top of that-the gap between the team’s play in November and three months later in February was pretty striking. With so many players now coming and going, there are many teams who won’t be at their best in November and yet these early games are weighted equally with every fierce conference battle in February.

*NET rankings hinge on early season opponents continuing to play well. That’s a strange one. UNC defeated Ohio State on a neutral floor in December when the Buckeyes were nationally ranked. Quad I win right? Nope. The Bucks’ season tanked in January and by the end of that month UNC had no Quad I wins. In fact, Virginia, which UNC defeated in February for its only Quad I victory, nearly fell out of the top 30 because of some late season losses. Did that make Virginia any easier to beat? Ah no. Or look at the more egregious case of Pittsburgh. The Panthers got blown out at home by Michigan, which was nationally ranked. That loss was a big part of why Pitt started ranked #80 in the NET. Then Michigan’s season took a nosedive making that loss appear even worse. Meanwhile, as mentioned, Pitt routed Northwestern in Evanston by 28 points during the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. Pitt didn’t get much of a bounce from that road victory against a team which finished #41 in the NET. Nor did the Panthers get much credit for their 14 ACC wins. You know, the perception was that the ACC was down. And so Pitt only climbed to #67 in the final rankings.

*There are so many analytics that coaches, players, and fans don’t understand. Larranaga noted that Houston was the fourth best rebounding team in America and Miami was the 400th, yet the Canes tied the Cougars on the glass 35-35. The analytics diminish the role of passion and emotion in basketball. In my view, fewer analytics and more use of the eye test evaluations would be a good thing.

*More non conference games in January and February are essential. For the ACC, the 20 game schedule ESPN wanted in conjunction with the launch of the ACC Network has become something of an albatross. Even with playing four or five league games in December, ACC teams see only each other in January, February, and early March. The ACC should go back to a 16 game schedule and play four games in the final 60 days of the regular season against quality non conference opponents. And obviously the ACC can’t do this alone. Other leagues would have to buy into the plan.

Under the current system, teams that dominate in November and then play well enough to more or less maintain their NET ranking, usually make the field whether they have improved or not. But with the creation of mid-winter non conference battles, the committee is more likely to select the teams that are truly playing well in March.