Conference tournaments are about basketball but also so much more: the fans, parents, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The ACC Tournament is taking place this week in Washington, DC, and we could not be more excited to be there in person! HoopsHD will be covering all the angles so you can look forward to an abundance of articles in the days ahead. Jon Teitel continues our coverage with a recap of the ACC semifinal doubleheader on Friday.
I am running out of new food stands to try so I am reduced to getting different items at places I have already eaten at: mini chicken corndogs and cheese curds.
GAME #1: Pitt-North Carolina
UNC star Armando Bacot did his usual damage inside during the 1st half with a series of layups/dunks but did not get much help from his supporting cast. In contrast, while Pitt G Jaland Lowe was able to make a few shots at the rim, his 7’ teammate Guillermo Diaz Graham knocked down back-to-back threes, and FR Carlton Carrington scored from everywhere (finishing with 16 PTS in the 1st 20 minutes). Pitt headed to halftime with a 35-33 and visions of the NCAA tourney dancing in their head. Carrington cooled off in the 2nd half but Lowe was soaring high with a 3 from the top of the key, and several tough shots in the lane. Pitt hung around for the 1st 30 minutes and then the 2 Tar Heel studs took over. Bacot kept making a bunch of shots inside, highlighted by a gorgeous spin out of a double team that led to a reverse layup. ACC POY RJ Davis had a quiet 1st half but went off in the 2nd half with a trio of trifectas and an old-fashioned and-1, as UNC won it 72-65 and booked a spot in the ACC title game for the 1st time since 2018.
The winning team is often-but-not-always the 1st to appear at the postgame press conference, but tonight Pitt had the honor. As you may be aware, I try to summarize both my question and the person’s answer, but since Pitt coach Jeff Capel decided to take my question and run with it for a few minutes I will present the Q&A in their entirety from the transcript:
Q. If you do not hear your name called on Sunday, do you think it will be due to your non-conference strength of schedule, and if so, will you change your scheduling approach next year?
A: Interesting question. If you look at a lot of the Big 12 teams, they have a lot worse schedules than us. If you look at some of the Big 10 teams that they have projected, their strength of schedule is where ours is or less. Again, coming into this game, us and North Carolina were 12-3 over the last 15 games since January 20th, so I think that shows that we were the 2 best teams in this league over that stretch when we figured things out. Before tonight we had won our last 4 or 5 by an average of 15 points. I don’t look at them (the metrics), but people tell me our metrics are better than they were last year. Our NET, the KenPom stuff, whatever that stuff means, it is better than it was last year. I think our league is better than it was last year. Last year the thing that we heard was that North Carolina and Duke weren’t “North Carolina” and “Duke”. Well, you are talking about a team today in North Carolina that probably is going to be a 1-seed, and Duke will be a 2 or 3-seed. Those teams were top-10 for most of the season, so I do not understand all of it. I do not think it will be because of that, but I do not know. I am not a bracketologist, I am not an expert: I am a basketball coach. I try to worry about my team and I know we have gotten better. I know if you look over the past — since January 20th, I think we have played as well as anyone in college basketball. Last year I remember hearing, well, the early stuff does not count because we had an unbelievable win last year against Northwestern at Northwestern. We beat them by 28 points on the road: they ended up 2nd in the Big 10, so that is a Quad 1 win. We heard, well, that was November or December so it does not matter. Now all I am hearing is our Missouri loss: that was early December. Again, we thought we had a good schedule. We did not know West Virginia would turn out like they did: they were picked high in the Big 12. We did not know that Missouri would not win a game. When we played them, they were pretty good. We did not know they would not win a game in the SEC. We will schedule the way we feel will put us in the best position to win and to get to the NCAA Tournament just like we did this year.
GAME #2: Virginia-NC State
I am sure that it was a great game but I had to finish a few interviews so that is a wrap for tonight, check back tomorrow for the title game as UNC tries to clinch a #1 seed on Selection Sunday.
The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Friday, March 15th
Tonight was the second night of our Hoops HD Selection Committee meetings via Zoom conference call; we were able to vote more teams into the field in tonight’s voting as well as to begin seeding the top 6 seed lines in the tournament field. The first order of business was to nominate 8 more teams to add to the field (along with carryovers TCU, Colorado State and St. John’s); in this round of voting we added five more teams – Mississippi State, Seton Hall, New Mexico, Indiana State and Florida Atlantic. After each committee member ranked these teams one through eight, we added Colorado State, TCU, St. John’s and Mississippi State to the field. Seton Hall, New Mexico, Indiana State and Florida Atlantic all carried over to the next round of voting.
While we waited for more results to go final, we began the process of seeding the top 6 seed lines in the process. For the first round of voting, we debated and each individual member would nominate their top 12 teams on the Auto-Bid/At-Large board. We then took the top 12 teams and then ranked the teams 1 through 12. As you can see in the board above, our 1-line included UConn, Houston, Purdue and North Carolina; our 2-line included North Carolina, Arizona, Marquette and Iowa State.
The next step was to again have each person nominate their top 12 teams not yet seeded or carried over (the initial round of carryovers included Baylor, Creighton, Illinois and Duke); the top 8 teams would be added to the four carryover teams and we would rank this group of teams 1 through 12. Our 3-line included Baylor, Creighton, Kentucky and Duke; our 4-line included Illinois, Alabama, Kansas and Auburn. (The four carryovers were South Carolina, BYU, Texas Tech, and Saint Mary’s).
We repeated the process one more time to fill out the 5-line and 6-line; the 5-line had BYU, Texas Tech, Utah State and South Carolina; the 6-line had Saint Mary’s, San Diego State, Nevada and Gonzaga. The four teams that will carry over to the next round of seeding will be Florida, Clemson, Boise State and Texas.
After this, we took a break to watch other games go final; as a result of tonight’s games, we were assured of bids opening up in the Big East and Big 10. There is a possibility of bids being stolen out of the ACC thanks to NC State advancing to the ACC Championship as well as the Pac-12 thanks to Colorado and Oregon advancing to the Pac-12 Championship (even a stronger possibility considering both the Buffs and the Ducks remained Under Consideration at the end of the night). At the time this article was posted, New Mexico was leading Colorado State in the Mountain West semifinals – the Lobos could also steal the automatic bid here. Also remember that a bid will likely be stolen out of the Atlantic 10; there is a remote possibility that they could be a 1-bid league if Dayton is voted off the at-large board.
Therefore, we decided to only add two more teams to the at-large board tonight and vote in any remaining teams tomorrow night after more results go final. Each committee member nominated six teams to add for this round of voting; there was a three-way tie between Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Colorado that was broken when Texas A&M and Oklahoma advanced via roll-call vote. Both teams were ranked along with the four carryover teams one through six; Florida Atlantic was finally added to the field on their fourth attempt and Seton Hall was also added to the field. Texas A&M and Oklahoma will carry over to the next round of at-large voting; New Mexico and Indiana State moved back to Under Consideration after failing ot advance on back-to-back votes. There was also a motion to add Oregon to the Under Consideration board that successfully passed, but it was more of a procedural move since the Ducks are basically playing the role of bid thief tomorrow night.
Tomorrow night will be the busiest night for our Committee; we will do a further scrub of the Under Consideration board and entertain any potential motions to move teams off of the At-Large board (for example, Dayton’s at-large spot could potentially be moved back to Under Consideration if there are enough votes to do so). We will do a final round of voting in teams along with any contingency spots (SEC, ACC, Pac-12, Mountain West, American) that can open along the way. We will also finish seeding the rest of the field and do an initial scrub of the seed list to account for game results and debate from our Committee to make any changes that we feel are necessary.
Stay tuned to the website tomorrow to see how our initial seed list plays out!