CollegeHoopsNet.com: State ACC's "Worst Nightmare" To Bubble Teams

From CollegeHoopsNet.com, State represents the ACC's best chance among teams unlikely to make the NCAA tourney to run the table in their conference's tournament, thus robbing an at-large bid from a bubble team:

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ACC
North Carolina State: With five teams looking like locks to go to the Dance, and four teams on the bubble, North Carolina State certainly looks like the best of the rest. The Wolfpack have knocked off Wake Forest and Miami (Fl.) in conference play this season, and played some other teams very close. Brandon Costner is difficult to defend and Ben McCauley has bounced back after a down year. Courtney Fells is the most potent scorer in the backcourt. NC State can shoot the ball, both inside and outside the arc, and it also offensive rebounds at a high rate. They also slow the pace of the game down and force teams into tough shots.

Now granted, this doesn't really mean a whole lot. It's basically saying out of the group of three teams at the absolute bottom of the league--State, Virginia and Georgia Tech--we have the best chance to win four games in four days. I also have a better chance of blocking a dunk from Shaquille O'Neal than do either Verne Troyer or Danny Devito.

So I don't expect you to get too amped up by this. But I think it's a bit ambitious to think that there are four bubble teams from the ACC at this point. There's no way Virginia Tech finishes above .500 in the league at 6-6 with Clemson, Duke, Carolina and FSU remaining, and the best Miami can do is finish at 8-8 with only one decent OOC win (Kentucky).

So adding Virginia Tech and Miami to the pile of need-to-win-the-tourney-to-get-in teams, I think it makes it a bit tougher to make that same argument. McClinton can keep you in any game and if he gets Randolph Childress hot for four games, Miami can win it. Virginia Tech is dangerous, but I think State would stand a better chance to go all the way than the Hokies who always seem to struggle in the ACC tournament.

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In this empty space...

...is where I would've normally written a nice preview and subsequent game-by-game recap of the Super Regionals.

But when I couldn't find time to write a preview, I skipped it, hoping for the best in game one. Then we lost game one spectacularly. So then I held off to see what would happen in game two, praying for a good showing. We won that one, so I figured, screw it, don't jinx it by writing a THIS IS FOR THE WHOLE BALL OF WAXXXXXXXX!!!!! post. And, as it turns out, a lot of good that did.

So this is simply a congratulatory post to State's baseball team. You made it to the Super Regionals and won a game at that level for the first time in the program's history against a very hot-hitting Georgia team. Nothing to be ashamed of AT ALL. You carried the Pack banner proudly, and got a lot of casual Wolfpack baseball fans (like myself) biting nails and huddled around radios.

I think pitching coach Tom Holliday did a wonderful job this season assembling one of the best and deepest pitching staffs in college baseball, so the two biggest questions heading into next year will be A) can we keep him, and B) how many of the draftees stick around to try and make another run for Omaha?

Let's hope the answers are:
A) Yes
B) Just about all of them.

Thanks again, Pack Nine: You gave us something to cheer about at the tail end of an athletic calendar that was fraught was disappointment many times along the way. That alone was worth it.

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Pack downs Gamecocks twice to advance to Super Regional

Old adages stay in circulation for a reason: More often than not, they're true.

That was the case this weekend in Raleigh. Good pitching truly did beat good hitting on Saturday (5-4) and Sunday (2-1) as the Pack downed South Carolina in both games to advance to the Super Regionals.

South Carolina came into the games against the Pack swinging some ridiculously prolific bats, and had beaten UNC Charlotte 15-8 in their first game of the Regionals.

But Clayton Shunick's pitching performance on Saturday, Erik Surkamp's masterful four innings of two-hit ball on Sunday and a lockdown job both nights from the bullpen were too much for USC's hitters.

Now State awaits the results of tonight's 7:00 game between Ga. Tech and Georgia. A win by the Yellow Jackets would advance them into the Super Regionals, but more importantly grant State hosting rights to the second round by virtue of their higher seed. A win by the Bulldogs would mean a trip to Athens.

It's the first time State has advanced to the Super Regionals since 2003, and with pitching this strong, the Pack looks like one of the teams to beat in the second round.

I suppose there's some irony that State does so in defeating Ray Tanner's Gamecocks in newly-renovated Doak Field. It's widely rumored that the reason he left was lack of support from the State athletic administration and a refusal to upgrade the facilities while he was here. To see his understudy (Avent was an assistant under Tanner that assumed the team when Tanner left) advance in a sold-out Doak must've been bittersweet, to a degree.

Here are some recaps, and a nice piece from Baseball America:

• GoPack.com
• PackPride.com
• Heather Dinich, espn.com
• Aaron Fitt, Baseball America.com
  

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Pond helps Pack take first game of Regionals 6-2

Ryan Pond's two-out, two-run double in the seventh leads Pack on to victory.

GoPack.com story
PackPride.com story

The win marks the first time in four years that State has won the first game of the Regionals, and puts them into a matchup with hot-hitting South Carolina tonight at 7:00.

The Gamecocks destroyed the Charlotte 49ers 15-8 in the first game of the Regionals. State will be sending their top ace--and freshly-minted Second-Team All America--Clayton Shunick to the hill to try to throw some water on the Gamecock bats.

Should be a great game tonight, and with tickets sold out well in advance, if you don't have one already you'll most likely be listening to it on the radio with folks like myself.

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Baseball-a-palooza

Today is the opening day of NCAA Regional action at Doak Field, and the Interwebs are all over it.

GoPack.com has a full bevy of baseball articles up and running as you might imagine on account of this weekend's action:

• NC State's NCAA Regional Notes
• Recalling Esposito's 'River Rats'
• Stanley: Different Feel at Ballpark
• Get Inside Link to NC State's Grounds Crew
• Clayton Shunick Named 2nd-Team All-America
• General Admission Tickets Go On Sale 8:30 a.m. Friday

850 The Buzz has an interview with Head Coach Elliot Avent posted from yesterday's afternoon program with Dave Glenn:

• Busy Day For Baseball

PackPride.com has a preview of this weekend's action here:

• Avent: Buchanan to Start Opener

Steven's on top of things, as usual, over at Section Six:

• Too Small To Be Its Own Country...
• NC State Baseball -- Bring Your Own Pants General Admission Tickets Still Available
• Everyone Say Hi To Spanky

The StateFansNation folks have a nice breakdown of the teams at this year's regional:

• “Raleigh Regional” Preview- What to Watch For

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25 years ago today...

...I was probably playing with Transformers or GI Joes, unaware of what would transpire that evening.

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Screw You(tube), NCAA!

Ah, the NCAA...that wonderful governing body of collegiate athletics. That faceless, ruthless organization that makes billions every year off of amateur athletes yet won't let them hold so much as a part time job without a committee hearing. Well, they're up to their same old antics again this March.

You've probably heard about how they've freaked out about the drink cups this year. Anyone so much as drinking Coke straight from the can is quickly whisked away in an unmarked van, never to be heard from again.

Not content to rest on their facist laurels, the NCAA has put in place another dandy rule this year (or perhaps before, but I don't recall it being this big of an issue). TV stations are not allowed to show highlights of ANY game from that day until ALL the games from that day are complete. And since the last game of the day usually concludes after midnight here on the east coast, your local news stations can't show any highlights until the next day, at which point it's stale news and the highlights are essentially useless.

Well Kudos to NBC17 here in Raleigh for not taking things lying down. When Duke beat Belmont in the final seconds, their sports director, Penn Holderness, took it upon himself to recreate the game using dolls and stuffed animals--something that has to be seen to be fully appreciated.

I'm sure the NCAA, in their twisted logic, would love to take partial credit for this gem, born out of the necessity to get around their petty policy. Whatever. Screw you. Thanks to Penn and NBC17 for giving you a big stuffed middle finger.



(Thanks to Matt at The Dare Society for pointing to the video's original home, Ginny From The Blog)

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Davidson reaping the rewards of scheduling tough

In an era of college sports where football and basketball programs love to load up on cupcakes to pad their win totals, Davidson is validating the notion that getting your teeth kicked in at the beginning of the year by big-name programs has some real, tangible value.

The top teams in Davidson's non-conference schedule read like a murderer's row for a small school from the Southern Conference: North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, Charlotte, N.C. State. Each game ended in a loss, and by the end of December the Wildcats were 4-6.

Kudos to coach Bob McKillop for taking a chance on playing these tough teams; by signing up for games he was likely to lose, he ran the risk of missing an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament had the Wildcats not won their conference tournament.

But now they're in the Sweet 16 after knocking off Gonzaga in the first round and Georgetown in the second. What's more, Davidson twice staged comebacks to advance to the second weekend, down double-digits in the second half in both games.

I've always been a big believer that you learn more about your team in losing to stronger teams than in winning against cupcakes. If you drop 80 on a directional squad from Michigan but distribute the ball poorly or don't have to fight for rebounds, have you improved as a team? Conversely, when you learn to fight and make plays against squads filled with McDonald's All Americans, your weaknesses are easier to spot and easier to improve from game to game.

You also gain poise. The poise that comes with playing the "big boys," often on the road. And poise, when down big in the second half of both games this weekend, is what kept Davidson plugging away when more-talented-yet-less-tested teams would've folded.

Stephen Curry is playing out of his mind at the moment and quickly putting together one of the greatest single-player NCAA tournament performances of all time. But the rest of the Davidson team is not simply standing around watching Curry work; they're supporting him on the defensive side of the ball, rebounding and applying pressure. The Hoyas finished with 20 turnovers to Davidson's four. Four! And all-everything Roy Hibbert fouled out, scoring only six.

This collection of Southern Conference-caliber players isn't backing down just because the names on the front of the jerseys say they should. At this point, playing the country's best is old hat to them, and it shows each time they take the court.

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Comparing the bubble teams

Hey, let's talk about some ACC teams with good problems, like, "Will we make the NCAA Tournament?"

The top three teams of the league--Carolina, Duke and Clemson--are bona fide locks. No debate about it, the ACC is guaranteed these three, and it's only a matter of seeding from this point forward.

The next three are Virginia Tech, Miami and Maryland. Back in pre-expansion days when the round-robin was in place, usually all it took was a cursory look at the conference record to get a feel for who was in and who was out. A record of 9-7 was all but a lock, and you felt pretty good sitting at 8-8.

But today's post-expansion ACC makes things a little more difficult. Teams now play unbalanced conference schedules, making it tougher to look at conference records and compare apples to apples.

Here's a breakdown of the three teams:

Team	RPI	Pomeroy	AvgConfOppoPomRat	Last 10
Virginia Tech	57	.8928	.863769	6-4
Miami	28	.8917	.878294	6-4
Maryland	69	.8772	.872763	5-5

Maryland, pssh. You're dead. Yeah, 8-8 would've looked good three years ago, but with an RPI of 69, 6th-place finish in the league and a 5-5 record over the last 10 games, including a BAD loss to Virginia in the final regular season game, you can stick a fork in Maryland. I don't think even a run to the ACC finals could save this team.

Now, take a look at the average Pomeroy rating of the conference opponents for the remaining two, VaTech and Miami. You can see there's a sizeable difference between the average rating of the teams VaTech played and those Miami played. Virginia Tech played the top three teams of UNC, Duke and Clemson only once apiece. Miami played both Duke and Clemson twice, and beat them both once.

Miami's RPI is clearly stronger at 28th versus VaTech's 57. Their Last 10 records are both the same, but looking closer, Miami lost only two over the last eight; VaTech lost four.

Ironically, State could potentially spoil BOTH Miami and VaTech's NCAA hopes. Miami faces us in the first round of the ACC Tournament, and a loss in the first round with an 8-8 record could keep them out, despite their RPI. State would advance to Friday's game, and a win against VaTech would give THEM a first-round tournament loss, and really put a hurt on their NCAA bid.

By having two fewer teams in the NCAA tournament field, State could potentially end up costing the rest of the league a LOT of shared NCAA tournament revenue.

Hmmm....

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