NC State secured at least a .500 record in the ACC by winning 82-66 over Boston College at home Tuesday night. One more conference victory assures a winning record in league play, but that does not make the Pack a lock for an NCAA Tournament bid.
Just ask Virginia Tech. The Hokies, prior to last season’s at-large bid into The Big Dance, went to the NIT the previous four times it finished above .500 in the ACC.
So where does NC State stand in the minds of the bracketelogists?
Joe Lunardi’s bracket on ESPN.com has not been updated to reflect the win over Boston College, but going into the game he had NC State as the last team to avoid having to play a first four game in Dayton, Ohio. Lunardi shipped NC State to Dallas as a No. 11 seed, playing No. 6-seeded Texas A&M in the first round in a practical road game. The No. 3 seed that would be favored to be in the next round is Texas Tech.
CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm had a little more favorable set up for NC State in his bracket. He has the Pack more safely avoiding Dayton with a No. 10 seed and playing nearby in Charlotte against No. 7-seeded Michigan, with the winner likely facing No. 2-seeded Duke, which NC State defeated at home earlier this season, in the round of 32. Like Lunardi, Palm’s bracket had not been updated post-NC State defeating BC.
There remains some cautionary tales regarding NC State’s stature. The Pack’s win over BC elevated its overall RPI to No. 55 in the country, but its non-conference strength of schedule is rated No. 270 out of 351 teams. Patrick Stevens, one of the few to correctly predict NCSU making the 2015 NCAA Tournament field, had this historical nugget that suggests NC State might need to do some more winning:
In other words, the only teams with a non-conference strength of schedule in the ballpark of NC State’s are teams that were seeded ninth or higher and therefore not on the bubble.
Thus the win over Boston College was important, as Sports Illustrated — which labeled NC State a “true bubble team” — noted before the game Tuesday night:
“Like Virginia Tech, the Wolfpack are likely to have too many good wins for the committee to ignore despite a few obvious blemishes on their résumé. Put simply, it’s awfully hard to see the committee leaving out a team that has wins over Duke, North Carolina, Clemson and Arizona. The Wolfpack would really have to stumble down the stretch and that’s equally hard to imagine with games remaining against the likes of Boston College and Georgia Tech. They may not be able to climb too far up the seed list without a deep run in the ACC Tournament, but they have almost certainly proved that they are one of the 36 best at-large candidates in the country.”
The main focal point for NC State is to keep winning. After its victory over Boston College, the popular college basketball metric site KenPom.com predicted that NC State would win two of its last three to go 11-7 in the ACC. Even when Virginia Tech was being snubbed by the committee with winning conference records, it never had 11 ACC victories.
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