Here is the latest edition of our weekly review of the current ACC standings and team performances, where we focus on which teams are playing better or worse than their records indicate. Each week we delve into advanced metrics to reveal a few interesting teams, player statistics and trends, and this week we also analyze the crazy deep-shooting improvement in the league this year. Finally, we forecast how the final ACC standings may look given current efficiency margins, and what that means for teams’ postseason aspirations.

Note: All data is current for games played through Wednesday, January 25.

Current Standings

Louisville leaped to the top of the ACC in efficiency margin thanks to its 106-51 humiliation demolition of Pittsburgh on Tuesday night. The Cardinals now own the league’s best defense, while North Carolina continues to claim the top offensive unit. In what has been a very tough week for top-10 teams around the country, Florida State’s blowout loss at Georgia Tech on Wednesday night may have been the most surprising result. At this point in the season, the Yellow Jackets should be taken seriously — sporting a solid 4-4 record against the second-toughest schedule in the nation’s deepest conference. That win probably also thrust Josh Pastner into the pole position in the race for this year’s ACC Coach of the Year award. No one around the league — including Pastner himself — could have predicted that both North Carolina and Florida State would fall in McCamish Pavilion by double figures.

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We entered the weekend with a three-way tie at the top of the ACC standings and that is still the case as all three leaders were victorious on Saturday afternoon as North Carolina won a tight one at Boston College, Notre Dame handled Syracuse in South Bend, and Florida State held off visiting Louisville. In other action, Duke ended its two-game skid by coming back from a double-digit halftime deficit to defeat Miami on Saturday night. Then on Sunday evening, Clemson dropped its fifth straight–this time at home by a single point to Virginia Tech–putting the Tigers’ postseason hopes in major jeopardy. Here are the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

Freshman Jonathan Isaac has been on fire lately for Florida State. (Phil Sears/AP)

• Best Win: Leonard Hamilton‘s team has taken on all comers to begin ACC play and has done more than hold its own – going 5-1, all against ranked opponents. Saturday in Tallahassee, Florida State finished the tough opening stretch in style by beating Louisville by a score of 73-68. It wasn’t the prettiest contest as there were a total of 45 fouls whistled and both teams shot under 40 percent from the floor. Freshman Jonathan Isaac has ramped up his play recently. After finishing with 16 points and 10 rebounds, Isaac now has posted three consecutive double-doubles. After navigating that front-loaded conference slate, the Seminoles will probably only face two more ranked opponents when they meet Notre Dame and Duke in return games on the road in February. So even though Florida State now hits the road for three straight contests, they are primed to contend for the league regular season title.

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With approximately one-third of conference play now in the books, it’s time to take a closer look inside the ACC numbers. This is the first edition of our weekly look at the current ACC standings with a focus on which teams are playing better or worse than their records may indicate. We will also delve into some advanced metrics to find a few interesting notes on teams, statistics and trends. Finally, we will forecast how the final ACC standings may look given current efficiency margins, and what that may mean for teams’ postseason aspirations.

Note: All numbers are current for games played through Wednesday, January 18.

Current StandingsWith a sample size of games this small, any one-game extreme performance can really impact the season numbers. This means that some of what we see in the table above is the result of two ACC blowouts — North Carolina’s 51-point rout of N.C. State, and Duke‘s 53-point beating of Georgia Tech. The Tar Heels are currently leading the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency, mostly because of their incredible dominance on the boards. North Carolina’s 44.0 percent offensive rebounding rate in ACC play is even higher than its nation-leading mark for all games (42.7%). Florida State and Notre Dame have achieved great starts (both are 5-1) despite facing two of the three toughest league slates to this point. At the other end of the ledger is Clemson, which has only managed a single win over Wake Forest while playing the toughest conference schedule. The Tigers’ actual performance margin, however, is better than the three squads ahead of them in the standings, so maybe they are not struggling as much as it appears.

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The College Football Playoff has caught a lot of flak for a system that rewards four teams in an environment where five power conference champions all feel that they are deserving. The NCAA Tournament with its 68 teams is obviously a lot more inclusive, but the pursuit of the four top seeds shares some of the flaws of the football system. College basketball features a less defined definition of its power conferences, but depending on your opinion of the Big East and American, our landscape features a minimum of six power conference champions which presumably would have a shot at the top line. On top of that, there are always a handful of mid-majors capable of having a stake in selection of the #1 seeds. With the American sitting at eighth in the RPI this season, Cincinnati would likely need to run the table for a chance at a top seed, an unlikely outcome. That leaves seven entrants, loosely defined to include conferences, for only four spots. Let’s examine each in turn.

Are Wisconsin fans gearing up for a possible #1 seed? (Photo by David Stluka)

• Big Ten. Thanks to a pair of unexpected swoons by Indiana and Michigan State, Purdue and Wisconsin seem to be the only Big Ten teams with a semi-realistic chance of making a run at a #1 seed. However, the margin of error is already thin for both. The Boilermakers have four reasonable losses with wins over Notre Dame and Wisconsin, while the Badgers’ likely best win came at Assembly Hall against a struggling group of Hoosiers. It would be difficult to imagine that these resumes could turn into top-seed material by March. The Big Ten’s best teams appear to have suffered too many hiccups before conference play and are now slowly cannibalizing themselves into the lower seed lines.

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Each week during the ACC season, RTC will review the last seven days to discuss the teams, players and anything else trending across the league.

STOCK UP

• Notre Dame. As expertly diagrammed by our Brad Jenkins last week, winning on the road in the ACC is quite the chore. So when a team can win a pair of games over likely NCAA Tournament teams away from home in the same week — as Notre Dame did with victories over Miami and Virginia Tech — it will result in a “Stock Up” spot on our list for the second consecutive week. Irish point guard Matt Farrell has made so many big plays down the stretch for his team that, according to David Peel, head coach Mike Brey referred to Farrell as “his Aaron Rodgers.” Now that’s some high praise, indeed.

Donovan Mitchell is becoming the leader of a very talented Louisville team. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

• Donovan Mitchell, Louisville. When you think about the great Rick Pitino teams, you think about terrific guards — players like Peyton Siva and Russ Smith from Louisville’s 2013 National Championship team or Tony Delk and Wayne Turner from Kentucky’s 1996 National Championship squad. Pitino’s best teams have always had outstanding athletes in the backcourt leading the way. Sophomore Donovan Mitchell is the next name on that list. In the Cardinals’ last five games, Mitchell is averaging 19.0 points, 4.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 2.2 steals per game. His ascension to stardom will become even more important in the short term as news broke last night that starting point guard Quentin Snider will miss 2-3 weeks with a hip injury. If Mitchell can continue to play at a very high level, Pitino could be headed back to another Final Four.
• North Carolina. The Tar Heels’ home win over Florida State on Saturday was an important step for Roy Williams’ team if it wants to win the ACC this season. After also beating Syracuse during Big Monday last night, North Carolina has now won five straight games after an ACC-opening hiccup at Georgia Tech. The key to the streak has been Williams’ offense, as the Tar Heels, riding stellar three-point shooting to the tune of 40.5 percent, have scored at least 85 points in each of those five games. When they miss, extra opportunities abound, with North Carolina also averaging nearly 17 offensive rebounds per game during the stretch. A combination of an offense that is clicking, domination of the offensive glass and a favorable schedule over the next few weeks could give the Tar Heels an early advantage in the ACC title race.

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There were several marquee match-ups in the ACC this weekend, including two monster games on Saturday afternoon as North Carolina overcame some adversity to hand Florida State its first league loss and Louisville ensured that Duke continued its struggles on the road. Later that day, Notre Dame held off Virginia Tech to remain unbeaten in league play, while three schools that entered January with NCAA Tournament aspirations — Clemson, Pittsburgh and North Carolina State — all suffered devastating home defeats to drop to a last place tie in the standings. Here are the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

Theo Pinson celebrates North Carolina’s big win over Florida State. (USA TODAY Sports)

• Best Win: In a league as strong as the ACC this season, sometimes a team must show some collective toughness to pull out a win. That’s exactly what North Carolina did on Saturday afternoon in its impressive 96-83 home victory over a red-hot Florida State squad. Faced with the daunting task of playing the nation’s second tallest team without freshman center Tony Bradley (out with a concussion), the Tar Heels were already short-handed in the paint. With Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks battling foul trouble, Roy Williams was forced to play almost half the game with no true post player. North Carolina not only hung in with the bigger, deeper Seminoles, but the Tar Heels managed to dominate the glass in a surprisingly effective rebounding effort  (+22). Three Tar Heels — Hicks, Joel Berry and Justin Jackson — finished with over 20 points and Theo Pinson turned in a solid overall effort with 12 points, 10 rebounds and three assists.

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This is the second part of a review of home court trends in the ACC. In Part I that published yesterday, we looked at overall home court winning percentage in ACC conference games over the last 15 years. Today we will look at the outcomes when ACC teams play each other twice in the regular season. In the days before major conference expansion, every league team played the others twice each year, a convention that ended when the ACC reached 11 members in 2005. The conference has since played an unbalanced schedule that features several home-and-home scenarios but mostly consists of one-time match-ups. 

As the above graph shows, we reviewed 312 double-meetings between ACC teams over the last 10 years. We broke the data into four discernible outcomes — sweeps by better and worse teams (as determined by KenPom‘s final rankings), and splits where home or away teams won both games. The data shows that there were 188 sweeps and 124 splits over the 10-year sample. The better team won both games 53.5 percent of the time; teams splitting games by defending their home floors occurred 32.7 percent of the time; while sweeps from the worse team and splits with the road teams winning made up the remaining 21.8 percent — on average, about twice per season.

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Through the first two weeks of conference play, ACC teams are an impressive 21-7 (.750) at home, flying in the face of a national trend. Over the past 15 years, there has been a slight but noticeable drop in home court advantage in college basketball. From 2002-09, teams won their conference home games at a rate of about 62 percent. It dropped to nearly 61 percent for the next four seasons from 2010-13, and then declined a bit further to approximately 60 percent over the last three campaigns. How has it looked in the ACC over the same span? This is the first of a two-part examination of home court advantage in the ACC.

As you can see above, the ACC at just over 63 percent ranks in the middle of the pack of the six power leagues over the last 15 seasons at defending home turf. Interestingly enough, home court advantage in the major conferences has not been as volatile as the nation overall. Read the rest of this entry »

After one of the craziest opening weekends in ACC history, things calmed down considerably in the second weekend of conference play. In fact, all seven ACC games were won by the favored squad, and only one of those contests was decided by fewer than 11 points. Even if the games weren’t all that scintillating this weekend, there were still a couple takeaways heading into this week. First, in an unanticipated surprise, the two remaining unbeaten schools in conference play are Florida State and Notre Dame — the Seminoles handled visiting Virginia Tech while the Irish rallied to defeat Clemson in South Bend. And then there’s the continued injury misfortunes for Duke — in the Blue Devils’ first game without head coach Mike Krzyzewski (back surgery), stalwart center Amile Jefferson suffered a first half foot injury and never returned. Early reports suggested that the team captain may miss substantial time, meaning even further interruption to a “dream season” that has been anything but smooth to this point. Here are the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

V.J. Beachem’s six three-pointers helped Notre Dame defeat Clemson and remain unbeaten in the ACC. (Photo: slapthesign.com)

• Best Win I: Notre Dame trailed Clemson by seven points at halftime, but the Irish prevailed by five to move to 3-0 in league play. Senior forward V.J. Beachem led the way, making six threes en route to 22 points. Bonzie Colson pitched in with 13 points and 12 boards — his third straight double-double performance to open league action. Notre Dame now faces a very daunting part of its schedule — a stretch of five games in just 13 days, with the first three on the road — beginning with a trip to Miami (FL) this Thursday.

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The first full weekend of conference play was quite a doozy. From several head-scratching results (e.g., #22 Indiana falling in Bloomington to what was supposed to be an overmatched Nebraska team) to last second heroics (e.g., #11 Oregon beating #4 UCLA on a Dillon Brooks three-pointer), the start of conference play reminded us why college basketball is great theater. No conference that had a more dramatic opening weekend than the ACC, a fact that was driven home on New Year’s Eve when league stalwarts #6 Duke, #13 Virginia and #14 North Carolina were stunned by #21 Virginia Tech, #15 Florida State and Georgia Tech, respectively. While it is probably unreasonable to expect each subsequent week to provide as much drama, it is fair to assume that we will see flashes of this unexpectedness throughout the remainder of the season. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis of the RTC25 is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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