Hokies are one of four ACC teams ranked this week. Florida state at 18, Duke at 20, LOLUVA at 23 and Tech at 24.
UNC fell from the rankings with their loss this week, LOLUVA benefited from the "It was to the #1 school" after they were thrashed 98-75 by Gonzaga. Most points given up by UVA in nearly a decade.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/30612823/gonzaga...
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I get that they have been consistently good, but loluva got boat raced and lost to a team with no other good wins and 3 bad loses. They have also not beat anyone.
I have only really followed what has been posted here, and watched a couple of other games. So Duke at 20 seems like a real WTF.... off to google their season.
EDIT: OK, Googled. If Duke is 20th, there is no way UVA is 24th. Duke has 2 loses to ranked teams, Those teams have losses to Ranked teams and Northwestern. Also Gonzaga is killing it, I knew they were good from the WVU game, they have wins over 3 top ten teams, and had a 4th game postponed, also they destroyed UVA, which some how is currently ranked. I really love college basketball schedules. Good teams actually play each other.
UVA should not be ranked ahead of us, period.
Our win over Nova is the best ACC win so far this year. I'm not saying we are top 15, but we should definitely be ahead of the Hoos.
I will say that I love that Gonzaga is such a beast of a team. It's kind of fun to have such a juggernaut in college basketball after quite a few seasons without such a dominant group. They've beaten 4 top 25 teams in their first 7 games. That's awesome
They are NASTY! It is great to see a small school like that excel at the highest level.
After having googled Gonzaga's campus I can see why it is easy to recruit basketball players to the area.
Big Ten has 9 teams ranked. Big 12 has 5 teams in top 13. ACC not keeping up.
Lack of major football money is going to start showing it's full effects through basketball, I think
There is a very large drop off from the top 5 Big 12 teams to the next teams in the conference.
The ACC has 8 teams above the Big 12 6th team (KenPom)
Big 10 only has 8 teams before the 6th Big 12 team. The rankings don't like Minny.
The issue is right now the ACC has 3 teams at 26th, 27th, and 29th in the Ken Pom rankings, so they have a lot of teams on the cusp. Right now the Big Ten is just the media darling, but a couple good runs by the top 8 ACC teams and there will be a glut of ACC teams in the rankings.
It's one bad year for the ACC and it's not like the season is over yet. Most seasons the ACC is inarguably the top conference.
ACC ain't going nowhere in basketball. Until last season the conference was putting 7-8 teams in the tournament regularly.
EDIT: Updated the table, because I had time.
Here is how the ACC finished the seasons according to Ken Pom. There isn't a season where either Duke or UNC is not in the top 10. The numbers are totals/cumulative [e.g. in 2020 there were 3 teams in the top 25 (#1 Duke, #3 UMd, and #21 NCST), 2 of which were top 20, the same 2 were top 20].
Here are the schools by number of appearances.
* UMD has 2 top 25 and a top 20 appearance with the Big 10.
Huh?
This is the data showing that the ACC averages 3.84 teams in the top 25 over the last 19 years using the KenPom Rankings. So the fact that the ACC only has 4 teams in the top 25 means that the ACC is right on target. What should be a concern is that the highest ACC is 18th, which is very odd for the ACC as they average 2.1 teams in the top 10 and have always had a top 10 team.
This is because they didn't have 10 powder puffs to start this season. Mistakes are that much more evident. See Kentucky... UNC LOLUVA and Duke got exposed early and other then the goodwill FSU built up last year no other ACC team has instant Top 10 cred, and those teams dropping hurts the overall perception of the ACC.
with the lack of additional OOC games, it may be hard to move up during the season as a group. To move top you need to knock a team down. We may not know how good the conference really is until the tourney, if they play it. (Knowing how the NCAA needs money now I cannot see them not having it this year.) There will likely be fewer ACC teams in the dance this year, which could really hurt our chances. We need some ranked teams in other conferences to lose to the bad teams in the conference while we hold serve and avoid the bad losses.
Other than some postponed games (Gonzaga-Baylor), I doubt more OOC games are coming. Most teams are playing a pretty full schedule. VT has 28 games scheduled and played 31 regular season games last year. Conference play is going to knock a lot of teams down. The Big Ten will eat itself with MSU being ranked yet 0-3 in conference. They are ranked on Tom Izzo's career and a win against Duke, not the actual team.
If Duke, UNC, VT, UofL, Cuse, FSU, and NCST all start winning (those are the top in the conference by KenPom minus UVA) the they will get ranked. They just have to beat up on the NDs, BCs, and Wake's of the ACC.
Yes, it has been an odd year for a lot of the top programs of college basketball, and UVA. Looking over the numbers, the ACC has built a perception on being Duke and with some UNC.
Duke has more top 10 finishes than the rest of the ACC minus UNC. UVA has 6 appearances on this list in the last 7 seasons so they are new money. FSU is the same way with 2 out of it's 3 in the last 2 years. UofL would have been on here more but wasn't in the ACC (4 more top 20, 5 more top 10, bring their 5 appearances to 14). UMD left and would have been here 3 more times too.
Most of the other blips can be attributed to a player, Wake had a couple good years with Chris Paul, GT had Chris Bosh, Clemson had Trevor Booker.
I am not sure how goodwill factors into KenPom rankings, but looking at the numbers the ACC has been two teams with UVA playing well as of late, and UofL being a great addition.
Moved up 5 spots to #19 today. Tied with Clemson for highest ranked ACC team.
Tied with a team we beat. Math checks out.
Well shit, we really are a basketball school now, aren't we
Going to go out on a limb and guess this is the first time we've ever been the highest ranked team in the ACC?
How beautiful is this chart?
https://theacc.com/standings.aspx?path=mbball
Big early season game on Wednesday @Louisville, a team we rarely ever beat. If we can get the W this team could be going places.
That would be a very very nice win
I don't know if it's hyperbole to say this game is one of the bigger games in recent VT hoops. Maybe not in terms of it being just one game, but the narrative it can add to.
At some point, it's still the ACC. If not Duke or UNC, the powers that broadcast are going to be looking for a story to hype the conference.
An 8-1 Hokie squad with wins against a ranked at the time Clemson, Miami, Louisville, and oh yeah a top 4 Nova team starts to build a prettt good story.
I keep seeing us projected at the 8/9 line, which is cool. But I think this team can do more than that. I will still think that if they drop one @Louisville, but they are a "name" win.
It is definitely a big game, over the past 20 years UofL basketball is the 3rd best team that now plays in the ACC. They won a championship in the last decade. They are 5th in NCAA tourney appearances. Top ten in wins*. Top ten in winning percentage*. They are a big time program.
*they had 100+ wins vacated due to adias scandal.
They should be 4th on our list of teams we want to beat; Duke, UNC, and UVA being the others.
VT has lost SIXTEEN straight matchups to Louisville. Last win was in 1991. Would be pretty big to get over that hump.
For comparison's sake, they have beaten every other team in the ACC at least once in the last 5 years.
We need to win against louisville to keep rolling
Well this is... Uhh.... Ummm.... Well ok then
Georgia Tech is still a head scratcher for me. Yes they beat a just returning Wake Forest team and a really underwhelming UNC squad thoroughly but they also lost to Georgia State and Mercer. 6-3 but with two really bad losses.
I literally never thought I'd see the day with Hokies atop ACC bball rankings.
Not because I have no faith in them, just not something I thought would happen.
When did Kentucky join the ACC?
I'm guessing it's because they lost to GT, ND, UNC, & Louisville in 4 straight games. They've played more ACC games than any ACC team so far.
Played is a loaded term, the lost more ACC games than any one else.
That's why they're 16th!
Looking at the schedule. Out of the next 6 games for the hokies. 4 are against the bottom 4 of the Acc with Louisville and duke sprinkled in. It would be pretty cool to go 5-1 or 6-0 during that stretch😎
It is always cool to go 5-1 or 6-0 against the ACC in any sport at any time. :)
I think 4-2 should be the expectation. Still a young, growing team, but that would still position us really well for a tournament bid. 6-0 would be a special year for sure.
Us becoming a basketball school, is kinda awkward and new to me.
I'm fine with us becoming a formidable basketball school, so long as that doesn't come at the expense of football. We've done a good job getting the right hires in basketball and making basketball more profitable, to the point of basic self-sustainability. I wish Whit could see how great a fit Mike Young is at Tech and his approach to recruiting and program building and go that route in football. Mike Young is a great guy and coach but also gets the modern game. Fuente is trying to make a boot camp or something, IDK.
Yeah, as exciting as it is to see basketball finally step up, it's sad to see football equally decline when there isn't really a good reason for it. It's not like we significantly re-allocated funding to prop up basketball and devalue football, we just made good hires in one and let the other slip into mediocrity. We could easily be a force in both right now if we were smarter.
Time will tell, Justin Fuente looked pretty good after 1.5 seasons too. I'm much more optimistic about Mike Young continuing this trajectory though.
At any rate, if Young continues on this trajectory, we could be in pretty good shape for a long time. Consecutive successful head coaches would really illustrate that our program is a desirable one, making it easier to sustain success with whoever comes in after Young retires from the boredom associated with winning 25 consecutive NCAA tournaments.
Lets be honest, how many of us would just be ecstatic with making 25 tourney's back to back.
as one streak ends, another begins fam
Yeah, if Young continues at this trajectory, he is only leaving when he wants to.
And given what we know and have seen about this dude, why would he want to leave? He doesn't strike me as the kind of person that would jump and run for the "next big thing" *cough* Buzz *cough*.
And realistically, what would that job even be? He's a VA guy and establishing/maintaining a consistently good ACC program is a better job than all but a handful of places. And that's all relative, because I don't even know if going to a Duke/UNC/Kentucky/Kansas/UCLA type job is really that attractive of a proposition given that NCAA basketball actually gives teams that arn't big names an equal chance to win a Natty.
I know we like to throw shade at Buzz, but I would much rather have a coach leave because he is successful and somebody else wants him than to have to show him the door because he is not meeting the standards set by the AD and/or fans.
I'm not throwing shade, but Buzz left because he felt his own personal profile would be enhanced by making that move. We all knew that is is MO. That's fine. Simply saying that Mike Young does not seem like that kind of guy. He did great at Wofford, but making the move to the ACC from Wofford is a no brainer. Realistically where would he go if he had great success here that would actually be a better job, other than financial considerations of course.
I'm just saying that if you build a consistently higher end ACC team as a coach, then you have in effect made your own position look highly desirable. Because you can make your entire career off of that, even if you just stay there.
Buzz also left because TAM is closer to home for him, which is a legit reason. I agree Young is probably a better fit for VT long term, but I also feel like this website is way too salty at Buzz for leaving.
Mostly agree but I think the issue some have with Buzz leaving, myself included, is how Buzz left. He should have continued to recruit earnestly for VT up until his last day as coach. He left the cupboard pretty bare. Fortunately, MY and staff did a great job piecing a respectable team together.
Bingo. Using our recruiting budget and all are allotted player visits to recruit players to another program while pretending to be doing so for VT is my only real issue, but it is a big one to me.
Double Bingo! Its been said above.
I don't mind him leaving for another program. I don't miss him.
As mentioned above, it was the manner in which he did it. It's clear he knew he was moving out for more than just a little bit of time. In that time he shirked his duties as our currently employed Head Coach (and may have even spent VT recruiting $$s on trips to recruit kids to aTm). That to me is the problem. He wasn't chained to Virginia Tech and I am not salty that he went somewhere else, but the manner of his departure was poor form. I think criticism in that regard from the members of this website is warranted.
I hear you but at the same time, we all remember how bad things were with James Johnson right? And that Buzz took us to the first Sweet 16 in over 50 years?
And?
Being appreciative for what a coach did while here but also critical of how they left are not mutually exclusive.
We can think both things. I appreciate that Buzz got us to a spot where a guy like MY who could have lived and coached very comfortably at Wofford decided to come to us.
I'm not salty towards Buzz, I really havn't thought about him until this thread.
Pretty much. I'd love to get into b-ball as much as I have with football. However, I never invested as much time into it, nor have I have ever played on a (even as a youth).
Strong programs in football, basketball, and baseball, are all I ask from Whit.
I'd love a varsity Ice Hockey program in there, too, but we're not some college in Alabama (still amazes, but I've seen D-1 Hockey in Grand Forks, ND hosting UAH) or the Snowbelt.
Wow, the ACC is glaringly.... average this year. I feel like Buzz's Sweet 16 team could have gone like 17-3 in the conference if they had played this schedule and not in 2019.
Either way, super excited to see the Hokies excelling so far this year! Let's make it 3-0 tomorrow.!
So watching the miami game, UNC are not good. Listening to Vitale and Jay Bilas crap on UNCHEAT is music to my ears
Officials helping UNCheat all over in the last few minutes
Even so they still struggle. Never thought I'd see the day where things were this ugly for UNC.
That clemson win just keeps looking better
I'm honestly curious right now... Are our wins over Nova and Clemson the best 2 wins of the conference right now?
Yes
Ahhh Tahiti
Just need some goddamn MONEY, Arthur
I'd say almost without question.
Nova win by itself puts us at the top of the list, but certainly helpful that Clemson is pretty darn good too.