On Sunday, the NCAA Selection Committee will comb through the team sheets for a handful of teams to try to justify which ones deserve the final, coveted at-large spots into the NCAA Tournament and which ones are likely headed to the NIT.
So how does NC State's team sheet stack up?
For the comparisons, we used the at-larges whose consensus projections, according to bracketmatrix.com, were seeded 10th or below or one of the first eight teams out. That list included (in order from 10 seeds to the last of the eight teams out):
Seton Hall
Utah State
Minnesota
Texas
St. John’s
TCU
NC State
Arizona State
Florida
Temple
Clemson
Ohio State
Indiana
Belmont
Creighton
Alabama
Georgetown
UNC Greensboro
Toledo
Saint Mary’s
Here's how the comparisons shook out in three key metrics:
The computers
The No. 1 ranking of note is the newly established NET rankings, but the team sheets also include rankings from KPI and ESPN’s strength of record (SOR), which are results-based metrics, and three predictive ratings in ESPN’s BPI, Ken Pomeroy’s rankings and the Sagarin Ratings.
This is one category that NC State shines. Only Utah State has a higher NET (30). If the NET continues to be used similarly to the RPI and the historical tendencies remain the same, then no team as high as the Pack has been left out as an at-large.
Further, NC State had the highest rankings in SOR, BPI and Sagarin and was fourth highest on Pomeroy. Only in the KPI does the Pack fare poorly. It is rated lowest among the 20 teams sampled.
Wins and losses
There are several factors at play here.
Start with quad one (Q1) wins, and this is where NC State’s game at the ACC Tournament against Clemson is huge. A win over the Tigers would give the Pack a third Q1 victory, provided Penn State can hold quad one status after the conference tournaments are over. Penn State though needs to do well in the Big Ten Tournament. It is currently No. 49 in the NET, and top-50 foes on neutral courts, where NC State defeated the Nittany Lions, qualify as a Q1 game.
NC State is currently just 2-8 overall in Q1, and of the 20 teams listed above, only Clemson, Toledo and Saint Mary’s have fewer than two wins. Twelve teams have at least three, but only six of those have more than three.
However, when you factor in Q2 games, NC State catches up. It is 6-0 in Q2, provided the road win over Boston College does not drop into Q3 after the Eagles were defeated Tuesday at the ACC Tournament. BC was No. 128 on the NET going into the game, and 135 is the cutoff for quad two contests. (The good news for State is that BC rallied from being down 27 in the second half to make it a more respectable 10-point loss, perhaps softening the steepness of the fall BC faces in the ratings.)
At 8-8 in Q1/Q2, only eight teams listed have a better combination of wins in the first two quads than NC State, and of those only Seton Hall (12-10), St. John’s (10-9), Arizona State (11-5) and Georgetown (11-10) had .500 or better records. NC State would get above .500 at 9-8 in Q1/Q2 games with a win against the Tigers, if everything else holds in the current quads.
It’s also worth noting that only Seton Hall, Arizona State and Georgetown — each with six — have more Q1/Q2 wins away from home than NC State’s five.
On the flipside, NC State has two Q3 losses, which is only topped by two teams: NCAA Tourney longshot Toledo and Arizona State. Both those teams have four. Half of the 20 teams have only one or no “bad losses.”
There is one other basic win-loss number to consider, and that’s the actual win-loss number. NC State is 21-10. More notable is that no team with more than 14 losses has ever received an at-large bid. Texas already has 15 losses. Florida, Indiana and Alabama are all at 14. Ohio State will have 14 unless it wins the Big Ten Tournament.
Schedule
It’s been well-documented that NC State has a liability here. The question is, how much will the NCAA take strength of schedule into consideration?
Historically, teams with a non-conference strength of schedule (SOS) like NC State’s 353 have had great difficulty surviving the bubble. As The Athletic's Patrick Stevens noted on Twitter, no at large-team since Air Force in 2006 with a non-conference SOS below 250 has earned an at-large bid worse than a nine seed (although technically a pair were seeded 10th but moved to the nine line for technical reasons).
In other words, traditionally if you scheduled like NC State did this year you need to knock it out of the park in conference play to erase any doubts.
Another example that illustrates the issue NC State faces: the team sheets include the average NET ranking of your victories. Of the 20 teams listed, only Utah State (197), UNC Greensboro (217) and Belmont (234) have a worse number than NC State’s 190 in that category.
(On the flipside, NC State’s average NET ranking for its losses is 39, tied for sixth “best” number among the teams.)
Even if you expand the SOS to include ACC games, NC State’s 214 is still last among the 20 teams under hypothetical consideration. Only Belmont (194) is below 150, and 14 of the teams are in the top 80 on SOS.
The bigger question is, how significant a factor will it be? The new NET supposedly takes into account SOS, but so did the RPI where it was baked into the formula heavily.
Even if the committee chooses not to place as much emphasis on it, the question remains will it feel pressure not to set a new precedent in the “NET era” of awarding a bubble team with a soft schedule for fear of the unintended consequence of encouraging teams to schedule accordingly?
Final Analysis
On the computer analysis, most specifically the NET, NC State is in very good shape. In the quads and the wins/losses breakdown, a win over Clemson probably puts the Pack in a good enough position compared to the other bubble teams.
When it comes to the schedule, NC State’s hope is that will be overlooked in favor of the other factors.
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