I think we're in without beating Syracuse, but I hope we do just to shove it in everyone's face who laughed at the thought of us getting 10 ACC wins.

3/4/2015 3:50:49 AM

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/jeff-goodman/post?id=4811

NC State Wolfpack (18-12, 9-8 ACC)

Current Bracket Standing: No. 9 seed
BPI: 40
KenPom: 41

Good luck trying to figure out the Wolfpack. Not even Mark Gottfried has a clue about what this team will do from game to game. NC State has three tremendous wins -- at home against Duke and on the road against North Carolina and Louisville -- that stack up with just about anyone's in the country. That should be enough to get Gottfried & Co. into the NCAA tourney. However, it’s difficult to gloss over the losses. You know the ones -- at home against Clemson, the road setback at Wake and the near-20-point drubbing at the hands of Boston College.

Gottfried can rely on leading scorer Trevor Lacey, who has been in double figures for the past 13 games. But besides Lacey and point guard Anthony "Cat" Barber, there’s little else he can depend on. Ralston Turner can look like the best shooter in the country one day (8-of-17 from 3 and 33 points against Tennessee), but can also shoot the team out of the game (3-of-14 in the loss to BC). The big men are talented, but have been inconsistent for most of the season. This team has the talent to make a run, but could just as easily get blown out in its first game by whomever it gets matched up against.

3/4/2015 12:54:37 PM

I like that matchup with Ole Miss. Would be nice to beat one of the guys that made Personal Fouls such a sham.

3/4/2015 12:57:36 PM

plz to keep us in this NCAAT slot. I would GLADLY take a shot at getting by Ole Miss in order to be the team that upsets the first #1 seed in Nova. Looking at their 1-50 wins, they don't have any marquee victories - and have played a pretty soft schedule this year.

3/4/2015 5:06:56 PM

If our road could be Ole Miss, Nova, Louisville, Zona, Kentucky, and finish with Duke or Virginia.

I think we either lose in the elite 8 to Arizona on a last second , heartbreaking shot...or lose by 20 to Ole Miss.

3/4/2015 7:08:51 PM

I probably shouldn't get so excited reading these bubble articles every day but I will admit I eat them up with a spoon.

3/4/2015 10:34:26 PM

So in the ACCT we are locked into either the 6 or 7, and the only chance we have at the 6 is a Miami L and a Pack W

W on Saturday:
Mia L - 6 seed
Mia W - 7 seed

L on Saturday:
Clemson L, Pitt W - Tied with Pitt, get the 7 based on H2H
Clemson W, Pitt L - Tied with Clemson, get the 7 based on best W (Duke #2 for us, ND #3 for them)
Clemson W, Pitt W - Three way tie, we are 2-1, Clemson is 2-1, and Pitt is 0-2. So Pitt would be knocked down to 9th, and we would get the 7 based on the tiebreaker above.


Chances are we end up with 7 since Miami is @ VT this weekend, and we will draw FSU, then Duke.

If we were to get the 6 it would be either WF/VT then ND.




[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 7:27 AM. Reason : more]

3/5/2015 7:23:06 AM

Ugh that fucking BC loss. ND is a much better qf draw than Duke. ND will pull a Brey still this year and exit both early..

3/5/2015 7:43:13 AM

^ Yeah and even worse we could be playing for the 5 seed on Saturday.


I didn't consider the possibility of the Pack and Mia both losing, but it wouldn't change our seeding. Here's what it would look like:

Mia and Pack lose:
Clemson W, Pitt L: 3 way tie (Clem, Pack, Mia) : Pack 1-2, Clemson 1-2, Mia 2-0. Mia gets the 6, Pack the 7.
Clemson L, Pitt W: 3 way tie (Pitt, Pack, Mia): Pack 1-1, Pitt-0-2, Mia 2-0. Mia gets the 6, Pack the 7
Clemson W, Pitt, W: 4 way tie: Pack 2-2, Mia 3-0, Clem 2-2, Pitt 0-3. Mia gets the 6, Pack the 7

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 8:24 AM. Reason : .]

3/5/2015 8:10:55 AM

^I think we could have been playing for the 4th seed. We could have ended tied with Louisville and UNC.

3/5/2015 8:34:55 AM

So best case scenario I suppose is we beat Syracuse and FSU. Is that enough to get us off the 8/9 line and into a 7 seed? I dont really see us beating Duke at this point. They are playing significantly better lately than they were when we beat them and it wont be at home. Its not impossible, but I give us maybe a 10% chance of winning that one.

3/5/2015 8:45:47 AM

Just hoping we win & Miami loses. Rather have that 6 seed (Wake/GT/VT then ND). Bright side is at least we'll be playing in the evening (7 or 915ish)!

7 seed is more likely though Hate to have to play Pitt or FSU, then Duke

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 9:02 AM. Reason : ]

3/5/2015 8:53:34 AM

hopefully we win against FSU, I just got tickets to the Thursday evening session and would love to see a tourney game against Duke live

3/5/2015 9:10:00 AM

Quote :

"So best case scenario I suppose is we beat Syracuse and FSU. Is that enough to get us off the 8/9 line and into a 7 seed?"

If we get help from other 8s and 7s its possible. Looking at who those are - doubtful. We just need to win the ACCT and quit F'n around here

3/5/2015 9:21:35 AM

I think beating Syracuse and FSU would be enough as long as we were competitive against ND the next game. Moving up 1 seed after 2 wins is reasonable, esp. given other teams will likely lose in their tournaments around our seed. Beat ND and we're for sure moving up to a 7 seed.

But at this point, just beat Syracuse and lock yourself into the NCAA Tournament and avoid the play-in game. I don't really care about seeding, I just don't want to spend another Selection Sunday sweating it out to see if our team makes it or not.

3/5/2015 9:45:48 AM

Almost makes me want to lose our last two games so we can get a 10/11 seed.

3/5/2015 9:49:53 AM

New Lunardi has us still on the 9 line playing UGA and still in Nova's bracket. Palm has us as a 10 vs SDSU, with Arizona on deck.

^ Yeah, looking at the 6s I think I would rather have an 11 right now. Current 6s are Butler, Gtown, Prov, SMU. I have no idea how the BE is ranked so high

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 10:06 AM. Reason : .]

3/5/2015 10:06:03 AM

i'm just happy we're either 6/7 for acct so it'll be evening games

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 10:43 AM. Reason : .]

3/5/2015 10:42:54 AM

Quote :

"I think we're in without beating Syracuse, but I hope we do just to shove it in everyone's face who laughed at the thought of us getting 10 ACC wins."

i laughed at the thought because this team's pedigree at the time, and even after the WF loss, was not terribly great. after initially saying 10 wins and making the tournament was a ridiculous expectation (which you basically predicted based on absolutely nothing), it's obvious now, 2 months later, that it's not out of the question, but you can't maintain that you were right and everyone else who said you were wrong should now eat crow just because this team serendipitously stumbled into a scenario where they may win 10 acc games.

3/5/2015 11:17:32 AM

http://insider.espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/12425634/latest-update-joe-lunardi-bracket-math-college-basketball

Lunardi has us as 34 on the S Curve, so there is some wiggle room (#47 is last team in), but going 0-2 to end the season would put us dangerously back on the bubble, so plz to win at least once more.

3/5/2015 1:49:57 PM

after the Wake game, we were 4-6 in the ACC with games against #2 UVA, @#8 Louisville and @a top 10 UNC at the time, @Clemson and home against Syracuse. I can't blame anyone that would say it was highly, highly unlikely at that time that we would reach 10 ACC wins. However, if it makes you feel better to laugh at people with realistic expectations then so be it. Go ahead and laugh. Its been a season of highs and lows with this team. We'll see how the rest of it goes

3/5/2015 2:57:51 PM

Quote :

"it's obvious now, 2 months later, that it's not out of the question, but you can't maintain that you were right and everyone else who said you were wrong should now eat crow just because this team serendipitously stumbled into a scenario where they may win 10 acc games."

why not? if he predicted us to win 10 games and we win 10 games then he'll have been right. it doesn't matter the circumstances of those 10 wins. but i guess you mean that since this team made an unexpected turnaround the folks dismissing 10 wins as a possibility weren't unjustified in doing so. to which i'd say: he was right, you were wrong. not that being right on a message board carries any weight.

i think you're wrong about how low the expectations were this season from fans (and somebody with more free time can go back and look up what we were all predicting preseason). while the media may have predicted us to finish 10th in the ACC, i think a lot of us thought we could reasonably finish anywhere from 6-10 in the ACC given that the ACC was top heavy 1-4 and really weak at the bottom.

edit: unless you're talking about the fans expectations immediately following the loss @WF. then you have a point. i think the original poster was talking about preseason projections but idk.

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 3:01 PM. Reason : d]

3/5/2015 3:00:05 PM

Quote :

"Just hoping we win & Miami loses. "

yeah but i really feel like vt beating miami is a really long shot. but the #6 seed is our ideal draw for sure

3/5/2015 3:03:41 PM

Virginia Tech took Duke to overtime. They can beat Miami.

Just found one of my earlier predictions...not too far off...

Quote :

"I'm normally realistic-to-pessimistic....and I think next year's team is going to be sick. We're not going to roll through the league or anything...but we're going to be top 1/3 by the end of the year. The only thing that can hold us back is if Cat gets injured or just really has a shitty year. If he's solid...then I think we're golden. "

I think Cat playing poorly for the first half of the year hurt us.

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 3:20 PM. Reason : .]

3/5/2015 3:14:55 PM

if we're digging up old predictions (and why not - it's cold and rainy and i'm not doing anything else) here's mine from earlier in this thread:

Quote :

"I'm definitely cautiously optimistic about this year's team. We obviously lose TJW, and our scoring will have to be much more balanced overall. I would probably expect us to be projected middle of the pack in the ACC. Obvioulsy UNC, Duke, Syracuse, Lousiville (maybe UVa, I don't know who they lose) will be the upper echelon. But I think it's completely reasonable to think we find a way to be right there fighting for, say, 6th place. It's not like the rest of the conference are world beaters. I know it's early and we haven't played a game yet, but I'd say that making the NCAAT is absolutely the expectation."

not far off.

3/5/2015 3:41:16 PM

Quote :

"to which i'd say: he was right, you were wrong. not that being right on a message board carries any weight."

from a very facile point of view, yes. that's what the deal is. however, he's going to be right despite the fact that he essentially closed his eyes and threw a dart at a dartboard. a monkey could've done that.

Quote :

"unless you're talking about the fans expectations immediately following the loss @WF. then you have a point. i think the original poster was talking about preseason projections but idk."

he said 10 acc wins and that we'd make the tournament after the loss to cincinnati. we played like shit and lost by double digits at home, and acc play was about to start. we had lost to wofford at home and had to come back from double digits to beat LA tech at home, and we had also lost to WVU in a game that a lot of people thought was winnable. the outlook for the rest of the season wasn't terribly great at the time considering the strength of the acc and our home/away schedule.

bdmazur predicted 10 acc wins and an ncaa tournament berth basically because the teams from the last 3 years had found a way to squeak in at the last minute. looking at the schedule from that point in the season made that prediction look pretty unlikely, and there was no reason to think the team would pull it off just because other teams with different rosters had done it in the recent past.

so while there's not a tried and true way to predict what's going to happen over the next 2 months, you also can't be like "lol i was right all along" when you took a wild guess based on absolutely nothing but conjecture and past evidence that had no bearing on what would happen this year.

3/5/2015 3:51:15 PM

Quote :

" you also can't be like "lol i was right all along" when you took a wild guess based on absolutely nothing but conjecture and past evidence that had no bearing on what would happen this year."

Why not? It's only ok to gloat when you make calculated predictions?

3/5/2015 4:25:40 PM

Went to Vegas. Blindly put $100 on a team to win. They won. I won. But I shouldn't gloat about it

3/5/2015 4:31:42 PM

Quote :

"so while there's not a tried and true way to predict what's going to happen over the next 2 months, you also can't be like "lol i was right all along" when you took a wild guess based on absolutely nothing but conjecture and past evidence that had no bearing on what would happen this year."

Using past results/evidence to predict future outcomes is usually not a bad way to go about predicting these things.

3/5/2015 4:33:35 PM

Quote :

"Went to Vegas. Blindly put $100 on a team to win. They won. I won. But I shouldn't gloat about it"

did you blindly put $100 on team A and try to tell your friends it was a good idea even though you just randomly picked them?

Quote :

"Using past results/evidence to predict future outcomes is usually not a bad way to go about predicting these things."

but not when you're saying, "i think they're going to win x games and go to the ncaa tournament because a different team with different players did it last year and the year before and the year before that." and do you remember what people predicted for the 2012-2013 team based on performance at the end of 2012? what about picking stocks based on past performance? or mutual fund managers? similar concepts where past performance isn't a great tool for future predictions.

3/5/2015 5:03:17 PM

jeez man. he was right. regardless of how he came to the determination that we could win 10 games, he was right. that's it. who the fuck cares.

3/5/2015 5:21:39 PM

because it's shitty to gloat when you make a shit prediction based on nothing that just happens to come true

3/5/2015 5:29:47 PM

I, for one, don't have a problem with it. Mostly because I don't care. So agree to disagree.

3/5/2015 5:36:24 PM

^^ Even though we looked like shit in a couple games, some people could still see the talent and potential on this team.

3/5/2015 6:14:03 PM

Quote :

"Mostly because I don't care"

well it's a good thing you got involved then

3/5/2015 6:25:18 PM

Well we know we are playing Wednesday night....
We know it will be against FSU/PITT or Wake-VT/BC/GT

if we win we know we will playing Thursday night....
We know it will be again either duke or ND. I want ND.

3/5/2015 6:33:55 PM

Caulton Tudor apparently hasn't watched Trevor Lacey or Marcus Paie this year

Quote :

"1st TEAM J. Grant, ND J. Okafor, Duke M. Brogdon, UVa Q. Cook, Duke R. Christmas, Syracuse 2ND TEAM O. Hanlan, BC T. Rozier, Louisville T. Jones, Duke M. Harrell, Louisville L. Perrantes, UVa 3rd TEAM C. Barber, NCSU P. Connaughton, ND M. Paige, UNC J. Artis, Pitt J. Winslow, Duke "

3/5/2015 7:00:33 PM

Quote :

"after initially saying 10 wins and making the tournament was a ridiculous expectation (which you basically predicted based on absolutely nothing)......this team serendipitously stumbled into a scenario where they may win 10 acc games."

Quote :

"from a very facile point of view, yes. that's what the deal is. however, he's going to be right despite the fact that he essentially closed his eyes and threw a dart at a dartboard. a monkey could've done that."

Quote :

"bdmazur predicted 10 acc wins and an ncaa tournament berth basically because the teams from the last 3 years had found a way to squeak in at the last minute."

dingus drinking the haterade for no reason at all. Are you honestly upset that the team did better than you thought they would? I wasn't the only one saying 10 wins. There were folks preseason saying we'd be top 4 in conference, and others shouting doomsday. I made my prediction based on how these players and THIS COACH (who has remained the biggest constant in those 3 years) have performed down to the wire. Also, let me please direct you to Page 21 and a much more specific prediction I made on January 13, when I also called out the 10-win haters:

Quote :

"Someone in one of these threads (maybe in a specific game thread) said it was ridiculous to think we'd get to 10 ACC wins. Not looking too bad at this point. We only have to win half of the games we have remaining to get there. UNC, FSU, Miami, ND, Clemson, GT, Wake, UVA, Louisville, VT, UNC, BC Clemson, Syracuse I still think we split UNC on the season and lose to Louisville, ND, and UVA because we've already used up our WTF win. That leaves us 4-5, and needing to win 6 of the other 9. 6 of those games are against the worst 6 in the conference, so it would be sad not to get there at this point."

And just a few days later:

Quote :

"I still think we finish #6 in the conference with 9 or 10 wins."

There was 1 win I wasn't expecting (Louisville) and 1 loss I wasn't expecting (BC). I think I said somewhere else that splitting with Wake wasn't out of the question because they always seem to screw us up.

If we don't get to 10 it won't bother me at all to be wrong (and I was only 1 off on our finish in the standings) but for you to be pissed at me for being right is pretty lame.

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 7:32 PM. Reason : -]

3/5/2015 7:29:32 PM

Quote :

" well it's a good thing you got involved then"

Nah, I think you misunderstood. I don't care what his prediction was based on. He was right. That was what I meant by "I don't care"

And after the Cincy game (which we all agree was a complete abortion) i don't think the majority of folks were ready to throw in the towel like you're suggesting. I mean, no more than your typical overreaction to a single game that you see on any game thread.

[Edited on March 5, 2015 at 7:38 PM. Reason : A]

3/5/2015 7:33:53 PM

^^ i'm not pissed at you for being right, nor am i upset that we've done better than expected. you just said you couldn't wait to shove it in people's faces if we won 10 games like it was dumb to think this team wasn't gonna do very well. and even though we have a shot at winning 10 games, it's not like they completely turned things around and are actually great. no one knows what the fuck to make of them.

3/5/2015 9:16:04 PM

This argument is fucking stupid.

3/5/2015 10:54:15 PM

I hate 5 day lags between games. I'm sure the players like the rest, but for the fans it just makes you restless.

3/5/2015 11:00:18 PM

^^^Oh, well then you misinterpreted my enjoyment of using the user tag on face as an actual serious interweb comment.

But to be honest, I was a little disappointed so few folks here had faith. Yeah each individual loss was painful to see but so few are looking at the scope of the whole season. Thank goodness the players aren't as defeatist as most of TWW.

3/6/2015 4:42:16 AM

Kyle MacLachlan is disappointed in this thread.

3/6/2015 9:43:05 AM

Can we have the real conversation that everyone keeps avoiding?

Who the hell is our lady luck for this year? ScarJo was a huge disappointment last year. Natty Daddy alone won't be enough to carry this team deep into March.

[Edited on March 6, 2015 at 10:31 AM. Reason : fucking iphone]

3/6/2015 10:26:46 AM

I nominate the chick from Wolf of Wall Street

3/6/2015 10:37:55 AM

Strong nomination

3/6/2015 10:39:54 AM

I can't get over how much Margot Robbie reminds me of Jaime Pressly.

3/6/2015 10:45:46 AM

3/6/2015 11:20:53 AM

^ fuck that

3/6/2015 11:23:32 AM