Inside the ACC Numbers: Volume III
Posted by Brad Jenkins (@bradjenk) on February 12th, 2016Here is the latest edition of our weekly look at the current ACC standings and team performances, where we focus in on which teams are playing better or worse than their records indicate. Each week we delve into advanced metrics to find a few interesting teams or player stats and trends. This week we will also look at which of the Four Factors are most important to winning in the ACC. Finally, we will forecast how the final standings may look and what that means for ACC schools’ postseason aspirations.
Note: All numbers are current for games played through Wednesday, February 10th.
Current Standings
Things have tightened up at the top of the standings as North Carolina has come back to the field following its recent road trip, which included losses to Louisville and Notre Dame. The depth of the ACC is on display here – 10 teams have winning records and all are even or better in points per possession performance. In a bit of bad news for the rest of the league – Virginia’s stingy defense is back! After allowing each of their first eight conference opponents to top 1.00 points per possession, Tony Bennett’s team has held the last four foes to an average of 0.81 PPP. None of those last four opposing offenses have scored over 50 points, and the Cavaliers have now won their last seven contests. It will be interesting to see if Virginia can maintain its defensive acumen this Saturday at Duke, where it will face the nation’s 2nd rated offense. The Blue Devils have been the one ACC school that has been able to handle Bennett’s pack line defense over the last four years, averaging 1.07 points per possession against the Cavaliers in five meetings.
Without Boston College
It almost looks like the Eagles took this chart as a challenge, as they nearly pulled off one the year’s biggest surprises against league leader North Carolina on Tuesday night. The Tar Heels trailed until very late in the game, eventually slipping by Boston College by three points. It was the first time this year that an ACC team has failed to best the Eagles by double digits. With a few more performances like that, we may not need this chart in the future.
Advanced Stat of the Week: Winning the Four Factors
With a decent sample size now available, we decided to investigate how important it may be for teams to outperform opponents in each of the Four Factors. We looked at all 85 ACC games to date and counted how many times the winning team won each specific category in those victories. While we expected shooting to be at the top of the list, we are surprised there isn’t a bigger gap between it and the other categories. It’s slightly surprising that rebounding has been the least important factor to winning, as the ACC ranks fourth nationally in conference game offensive rebounding percentage. We also included a breakdown of field goal shooting, which reveals that it’s been more meaningful to out-shoot the opposition from inside the arc than from behind it.
On average, the winning team in ACC play ‘wins’ 2.7 of the Four Factors in that particular game. But, in tracking the individual game data, we came across four instances when the winning team only led in one of the Four Factors. On the first three occasions, the winning teams overcame other issues by shooting much better than the losers. The Virginia Tech win over Georgia Tech is the true outlier of the season. The Hokies won despite being out-shot, out-rebounded, and losing the turnover battle. They triumphed by a whisker, almost entirely due to a massive free throw attempt disparity (+20) over the Yellow Jackets.
Future Forecast
The above chart gives us a predicted order of finish with final regular season records based on KenPom’s current win probabilities for each team. Also included are a few comparative rankings that are mentioned frequently when evaluating NCAA Tournament potential, as well as projections from two bracketology experts, ESPN‘s Joe Lunardi and CBS Sports‘ Jerry Palm. Note that while these two bracketologists project the field as if it were named tomorrow, we make our projections based on final KenPom projected records. We lowered our bid number estimate by two ACC teams this week, for different reasons. Of course, one of those deletions was Louisville, which won’t be in the field because of the school’s controversial decision to take itself out of postseason play this year. The other team to drop out is Clemson, which was on shaky ground anyway before dropping its last two games. Duke and Notre Dame are feeling a little better about their chances to be in the top half of the bracket after each posted big home wins (over Louisville and North Carolina, respectively). Note that Virginia now projects to tie for first place in the league and finish with the best overall record, likely making it the highest rated ACC team.
