Big Win For Pack Men; Close But No Cigar For The Women

ETHAN HYMAN - ehyman@newsobserver.com

NCAA Basketball Stats

College Basketball

Dennis Horner picked a fine time to get bloody and go off on a team.

After a nasty spill that required stitches above his right eye, Horner came back in the second half to lead State on a 19-5 charge that sealed State's third win in four games.

He finished with 14 points, most of them coming in a flurry at the end on old-fashioned three-point plays and huge long-range shots.

He had the second-highest +/- ratio at 13, second to CJ freaking Williams' 22. When you add in the 10 points scored against the Pack when CJ was off the court, his Roland Rating was an astounding 32. In fact, State didn't score a single point in the five minutes CJ was on the bench. His play down the stretch has been huge and frankly a bit unexpected. It's seems we've been waiting all year for the promise we saw in him last season to bloom into what we've seen the last two weeks.

Farnold Degand didn't have as memorable a senior game as Horner; in fact it was rather forgettable: In 15 minutes, he logged just one point, one assist, one rebound, one steal and a couple of fouls. Still, I'm sure it was sweet for the senior who transferred here from Iowa State to get a win in his final home game as a Wolfpack player.

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As for the women, they started the ACC Championship game strong. They built a seven point lead against Duke at one point, but Duke cranked up their press and forced the Pack into what felt like a baker's dozen straight turnovers. Once the Blue Devils took the lead, they did so for good. The Pack would rally twice to cut it to single digits, but could never get even.

As we've seen from State teams that have made it to the ACC title game recently, usually having played four games in four days, there just wasn't enough left in the tank to make a big enough push against a fresher, not to mention bigger and more athletic, Duke team.

That's not to say they phoned it in. The Pack fought to the bitter end, a quality I think we'll see from here on out from the teams of first-year coach Kellie Harper. Lee, get that checkbook and fancy pen ready...we need to lock up Harper for the long haul.

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All in all, not a bad Sunday. The Pack men will now face Clemson Thursday night at 9:00 in a rematch of State's almost-win-but-still-a-73-30-loss at the RBC Center earlier this year.

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ALERT: Lee Fowler About To Receive Praise From A State Fan

As much grief as Lee Fowler justly deserves, I have to give the man credit for this: He made one hell of a ballsy hire in Kellie Harper.

There were many that would've preferred Stephanie Glance be given the job following the passing of Kay Yow last year, per Kay's wishes. Lee, however, went against the grain and decided to give the keys to the program to a hot up-and-comer from Western Carolina.

And today, as State prepares to take on Duke in the Women's ACC Championship, that decision appears to be paying big dividends.

I think there's something to be said for "resetting" a program from time to time. State's women's basketball program needed a reset, and Kay's passing, while tragic and somber, provided the athletics program them that opportunity. Following through on that opportunity was a difficult choice to make, but Lee did it, and for that, he gets credit.

Now, for the other 98% of his decisions...nevermind. We'll keep it positive in this post. In hiring Harper, he earned it.

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Unbalanced Conference Schedules And Why The Mythical "Regular Season Title" Is A Farce

Ever since the death of the round robin conference basketball schedule, it's become more difficult to objectively look at conference win/loss records to determine which teams are best in the league.

The win/loss column is no doubt a good place to start--no one would argue that State is a better team than Duke, for example, despite the Pack winning the lone head-to-head meeting. But since each team plays more teams only once (6) than it does twice (5), it can lead to some misleading perceptions when looking at the standings.

This post is an attempt to give a clearer picture of which teams have faced tougher competition within the conference this season. Since the validity of the win/loss records are in question, I'm looking at RPI numbers to determine the strength of each team. To come up with a strength rating for each team, I took the total number of Division 1 teams - Team X's RPI, then divided that number by the lowest team's rating to serve as the baseline.

For example, Virginia has the lowest RPI (currently) of 122. Subtracting that from the total number of Div. 1 teams gives us 347-122=225. The divisor for all the team ratings therefore becomes 225. Virgina's strength rating becomes 1 (225/225), and Duke's becomes 1.528 ((347-3)/225).

The next step is to add up all of the combined strength ratings of the teams on a particular schedule. But since away games are typically more difficult than home games, I borrowed the RPI's convention of multiplying home game values by .6 and away game values by 1.4.

So, a team's schedule strength rating becomes: ((Sum of team ratings for home games)*.6) + ((Sum of team ratings for away games)*1.4)

Make sense? Me either. In any event, here's the chart:



What we see:

• Virginia Tech has played the weakest schedule this year of any team in the league. In addition to a crappy non-con schedule, they can't even lean on their in-conference body of work to impress the Tournament Selection Committee.
• Carolina has played the toughest in-conference schedule due mostly to home-and-aways with Duke, Georgia Tech and Wake, and their lone matchup against 2nd-place Maryland was away.
• Clemson's 9-6 conference mark looks disappointing on the surface, but they've played the 2nd-toughest conference schedule of any team: two games each against the 1st, 2nd and 4th teams in the standings.
  
• Being the worst team in the league (in terms of RPI) doesn't guarantee you faced one of the tougher conference schedules. Virginia, despite having a conference schedule entirely full of teams with better RPIs, still wound up with a weak 7th-place schedule rating.

The bigger implication that comes with comparing schedule strength is that it makes it easier to debunk the notion of a "Regular Season Champion." That term gets thrown around so much these days, carelessly, by members of the media and coaches alike. Coaches love any excuse to hang a banner, and the media--for some reason--seems to have a beef with conference tournaments determining the league champion.

This, I don't understand, precisely BECAUSE of the imbalanced schedules. If the round robin format were still in place today, I could stomach the notion of a regular season champion more easily. But because some teams play far more difficult schedules than others, how can we legitimately crown any team "regular season champ?"

Case in point: Virginia, 2007. They finished tied with Carolina in the conference standings, despite playing a weaker conference schedule. Were they legit "regular season champions," along with the Tar Heels? I don't buy it. I'm sure they hung a banner in John Paul Jones, but as far as I'm concerned, it carries far less weight than what the Tar Heels accomplished that season.

So why debate? Let the conference determine its champion like it ALWAYS has--on the court, in a conference tournament. Finishing first in the regular season awards you one prize and one prize only: top seed in the tourney.

Just like Everett Case wanted.

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