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Replies: 15
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CU Guru [1868]
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The ACC is really good at basketball. 9-3 against big 12
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Feb 23, 2024, 11:27 AM
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I know everyone's seen the commercials . . . "it's not bragging if it's true" and all that. So, historically, and that includes the last 3-5 years, the ACC has been outstanding. That's indisputable.
Fast forward to today. We're talking about the ACC getting 4 teams in the tournament and the Big 12 getting 9 or maybe even 10, despite the ACC fairly dominating the big 12 head to head. And we want to justify it with computer rankings. What a crock.
Computer rankings are INHERENTLY FLAWED! They are based on input variables THAT ARE CHOSEN AND ARBITRARILY WEIGHTED BY HUMANS. Then they spit out numbers with decimal points that make them look scientific. There is way too much randomness going on in D1 basketball for a simple system like NET to effectively distinguish between teams that are so tightly packed in terms of their competitiveness (just look at the W-L records in the top 25 . . . they're all really close). Things don't average out. UVA loses as a one seed. FAU goes to the final 4. College basketball is insane. It's unpredictable.
I don't know what the answer is. Obviously, rankings and tournament selections are always going to be flawed. But that's my point. I get really annoyed listening to people talk about how great the big 12 is and how sucky the ACC is and acting like computer metrics are some kind of infallible proof. It's just idiotic. Choose different inputs, weight them differently, and the computers will say something different. You can let robots judge a beauty contest, but it's still a beauty contest. If robots told Joe Lunardi the Mona Lisa was the 4,738,425th best painting in the world, he'd act like it was an undeniable fact. So dumb.
Check out this article. It is a good look at how the NET can hose some teams and unfairly advantage others: https://richmond.com/sports/college/basketball/net-rankings-acc-big-12/article_eba150b6-d0d7-11ee-abe7-d7f0618df6c9.html
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All-In [44055]
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Anyone who watches college basketball can see that the ACC is strong.
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Feb 23, 2024, 11:44 AM
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Of course there are some bad teams at the bottom, but that's true in pretty much every conference.
The ACC's out of conference record this year against the likes of the Big 12 is good.
Plus, the ACC has done very well recently in the NCAA Tournament. There is no disputing that.
Bottom line, it's a very good basketball conference with very few easy games. People who want to bash it are going to find a way to do so, unfortunately.
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CU Guru [1868]
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Yes, Judge, you are correct, sir
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Feb 23, 2024, 11:53 AM
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However, I did happen to catch Bill Self on the radio talking to Jim Rome yesterday, and he said of the Big 12, "There is no bottom, just top and middle."
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CU Guru [1575]
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Re: Anyone who watches college basketball can see that the ACC is strong.
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Feb 23, 2024, 12:49 PM
[ in reply to Anyone who watches college basketball can see that the ACC is strong. ] |
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Some of the these rankings I believe are kind of BS… like games that happened 2 months ago have so much weight it just doesn’t make a lot of sense … I think a lot is media driven too talking about the acc being down but I’m sorry the acc should have more than 4 teams in and that’s not even a question… look at the record vs the big 12 and they may get 9 in… look at the bottom 3 teams in the sec , they are absolute garbage even compared to the bottom of our league. We aren’t top loaded I’ll Give them that but the middle of the conference is as good as most of the other conferences middle of the pack teams. And like mentioned look what we have done the last few years in the tourney with far less teams than normal… I don’t even see how you can argue against the acc deserving more than 4 freakin teams that’s a joke.
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110%er [5512]
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Re: Anyone who watches college basketball can see that the ACC is strong.
Feb 23, 2024, 12:52 PM
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"like games that happened 2 months ago have so much weight it just doesn’t make a lot of sense"
Why should those games mean more or less than tomorrow's game?
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110%er [5961]
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Re: The ACC is really good at basketball. 9-3 against big 12
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Feb 23, 2024, 11:46 AM
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The ACC is too buys beating up each other...see all teams lol
The league is definitely not as strong as might have been in the past with Louisville no longer cheating as hard as they once did, with Miami falling off big time from last year to being out of the tournament with a ACC tourney title.
Honestly, the ACC tournament could be an opportunity to break through...but first, let us beat those FSWho's coming to town Saturday...
Go Tigers!!
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Legend [16921]
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Re: The ACC is really good at basketball. 9-3 against big 12
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Feb 23, 2024, 12:07 PM
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The NET isn't really the boogeyman it's being made out to be. It's very similar to KenPom. Many loved KenPom when RPI was the primary metric. RPI was very easy to understand. NET is more complicated - so people hate it because they don't understand. RPI rankings had very high correlation with strength of schedule. NET correlates very highly to Adjusted Efficiency.
Check out bracket matrix. Over 100 brackets. While some are just trying to nail the picks others are actually completely unique modeling systems. The NET is not a dramatic outlier:
http://bracketmatrix.com/
Here is the AP Top 25 versus NET rankings:
AP NET
1 Uconn Houston -1
2 Houston Purdue -1
3 Purdue Arizona -1
4 Arizona Uconn 3
5 Tennessee Alabama -8
6 Iowa State Tennessee 1
7 Marquette Auburn -7
8 Duke Iowa St 2
9 Kansas Creighton -6
10 UNC UNC 0
11 Baylor BYU -14
12 Illinois Duke 4
13 Alabama Marquette 6
14 Auburn Baylor 3
15 Creighton St. Mary's -3
16 Dayton Illinois 4
17 Kentucky Kansas 8
18 Saint Mary's San Diego St -1
19 San Diego State Dayton 3
20 South Carolina New Mexico -13
21 Washington St Wisconsin -7
22 Colorado St Gonzaga -5
23 Texas Tech Michigan St -6
24 Florida Kentucky 7
25 BYU Clemson -13
Colorado St 4
Washington St 7
Texas Tech 6
Florida 6
South Carolina 38
The numbers after each school in the NET column represent the difference in AP and NET. Negatives mean bigger improvement in NET and postive means a worse ranking in NET. The lists are pretty similar. South Carolina is far and away the biggest loser by net. Ranked in the AP top 25 yet 58 in NET. Clemson is the second biggest winner by NET. Ranked 25th by NET while coming in 38th in votes. NET is updated daily and we're at the end of a week of games. So come Monday there will probably be less discrepancy. The sports writers who do the AP poll aren't trying to mimic NET rankings.
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CU Guru [1868]
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I knew I'd see you here, viz
Feb 23, 2024, 12:52 PM
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Point taken as far as it's similar to KenPom and RPI. And point kind of taken as far as NET vs AP poll. I think herding is inevitable when it comes to sportswriters' opinions, and NET's influence on those guys can't be measured.
My chief complaint is with the notion that the NET is somehow more "accurate" or "scientific." When it comes to the difference between the 10th best team and the 30th best team or the 25th best team and the 55th best team and all the teams that live within those ranges, I don't think what NET rankings tell us is very meaningful. But people will use it to justify decisions that otherwise don't make sense, like handing out bids to 9 big 12 teams and only 4 acc teams. Talking heads will use it to try to turn opinions like "the big 12 is better than the acc" into facts.
The competitive landscape that is D1 basketball is nerdproof, and the idea of concrete judgments based on NET is an illusion.
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Orange Blooded [4095]
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Re: I knew I'd see you here, viz
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Feb 23, 2024, 2:33 PM
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The problem with "the net is all that matters" is we've been left out of the tournament when our net was 35...
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CU Guru [1868]
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It is indeed a problem
Feb 23, 2024, 3:27 PM
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I'm sure there are plenty of instances where an analyst has pointed to NET to defend one team's resume and then dismissed or ignored it when he wants to defend another. People say contradictory things all the time without thinking about it.
It's called "the narrative fallacy," and it's strongly related to "confirmation bias."
College basketball analysts and sportswriters aren't above these human tendencies. In fact, it's kind of their jobs to push a narrative, because narratives are what people's brains like. It's how we make sense of the world, and it's why people kill themselves when the world "stops making sense" because of afflictions like schizophrenia.
It just so happens that the popular narrative right now is that the Big 12 is amazing and that the ACC is "down," and NET is a convenient data point to support that claim.
The inconsistency you're pointing out, and the narrative fallacy and confirmation biases that drive it, make the arguments in favor of NET's "fairness" and the attention and importance the media and bracket experts offer NET rankings even more annoying.
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110%er [5512]
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Re: The ACC is really good at basketball. 9-3 against big 12
Feb 23, 2024, 12:58 PM
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It is still unclear to me where the NET "starts". There has to be some sort of baseline for the first ranking. The system "knows" that beating Alabama is better than beating Alcorn St. But how? That early in the season, many teams have identical records, similar margins of victory, very small sample sizes for a computer to separate their profiles. But NET knows Bama is better.
That baseline has not been explained.
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CU Guru [1868]
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Re: The ACC is really good at basketball. 9-3 against big 12
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Feb 23, 2024, 1:06 PM
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Orange Blooded [3385]
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Think that's what's bothersome about the NET to me
Feb 23, 2024, 4:18 PM
[ in reply to Re: The ACC is really good at basketball. 9-3 against big 12 ] |
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Is that doesn't seem transparent enough to what's going into it to spit out the outcome.
Even if you agreed the RPI was flawed/outdated, you could figure out the math to it. The NET...how do they calculate SOS, performance, & whatever else goes into it? We don't know that.
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110%er [8539]
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Re: The ACC is really good at basketball. 9-3 against big 12
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Feb 23, 2024, 2:08 PM
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It has not happened so don't worry about it. Many things can change in the next 3-4 weeks.
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Orange Blooded [3385]
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Just came on this on Twitter
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Feb 23, 2024, 4:11 PM
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https://x.com/DNeckel19/status/1760838344299237514?s=20
Very interesting to see. Makes me think of later years of the BCS, when seemed like the SEC cracked the code & pretty much always had someone in NCG contention til the end.
Big 12 definitely seems to have found a way to game the system based on that graphic.
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CU Guru [1868]
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Good find
Feb 23, 2024, 4:31 PM
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Could be pure coincidence, but still . . . it's obvious that these rankings are basically an AI version of educated guesses with a lot of fancy numbers to make them seem more legitimate.
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