Following the win last night over NC state, Joe Lunardi moved us from a play in game with Boise State to a solid 10 seed playing Michigan. He has the Hokies listed in his "Last 4 Byes" category and I'm wondering how much of an impact these next two road games will have. Win one and I'd have to imagine we're locked in, but I don't know how realistic that is.
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Prediction: we're going to bounce out of/into Lunardi's bracket no less than 3 times the rest of the season. It's gonna be a rocky road, and it all depends on the resumes of the other bubble teams once we get to conference tourney time. Lots of ball left to play for everyone across the country
We either going to be way in (like 7 seed) or way out because of our schedule. We are at 17 wins, need to win three more games + an ACCT game probably. We can't get those wins without them being big wins.
the bubble looks weak, we have our berth right in front of us, just need to take it.
Great Oden's Raven the rest of our schedule is brutal...
@ UVA
@ Duke
@ GT
Clemson
Louisville
Duke
@ Miami
We essentially (As Smooth said) need to have a few huge upsets to get in or we're not in at all. I need to be heavily sedated for the remainder of these games. They mentioned last night that we had the toughest finishing schedule of any team in the ACC.
Must win at GT and against Clemson and Louisville in Cassell.
Win one of @UVa, @Duke, Duke, @Miami
That should do it. Any additional wins gets us better seeding.
With this said, the bubble (and the field in general, really) is going to be pretty weak this year. It might not even take that to get in as long as we pull one or 2 more big wins.
Yeah I'd say we have to win 4 of our final 7 with one of those being GT.
What if we beat UVA and Duke twice then lose the others?
We'd probably still be on the good side of the bubble.
The field is going to be weak this year. Just not a great year for the game. There will be teams comfortably in this year that likely are in the NIT most other years. You put a Top 10 win over UNC, win @ UVa, win @ Duke, and win vs Duke on our resume, with no real bad losses (Saint Louis, maybe....) and it probably distances us from the bubble.
Really, the only ACC loss that anyone could hold against someone is Pitt. Everyone else can be overlooked if the top end wins are there.
That would mean being 3-0 against RPI top 6 teams in the last month of the season, with 2 of those on the road in the ACC. We're wayyy off the bubble if that happens (it won't).
Probably would be ok but GT would be a bad loss.
To be quite honest, our only real quality wins are over UNC, NC State and surprisingly Washington. Yeah, winning road games in the ACC is always a good thing and mildly impressive, but when talking tournament-level teams, we haven't beaten a lot of them.
Hell will freeze over first. :-). Referring to beating UVA and Duke twice comment above...
It all about quality wins.
9-9 with wins over UNC, Duke, and UVA: We're probably good.
9-9 with just a win over UNC: NIT bound.
That home loss to Miami is really going to hurt us. We have to get one against UVA or Duke, which will be incredibly difficult.
In order to get to 9-9 we'd have to beat at least Clemson and/or Louisville. Those would be almost as quality as the UNC win.
a home loss to the #25 team in the country will not hurt us. It would have helped having a win, but it doesn't hurt
I think that's a fair analysis. I think we could potentially steal one against Duke in Cassell and I've got a weird, irrationally positive feeling about our game this weekend at JPJ. I don't think we win in Coral Gables and knowing us, we'll probably drop at least 1/3 between GT, Clemson, and UL although I could {and hopefully} be way off.
Joe Lunardi anagrams to Dale Junior (but also, Nude Jailor)
what have you done
This kind of in-depth analysis can only be found at TKP.
The BS with Lunardi is that he predicts the 68 if selections were made right now - therefore he has a moving target until the end of the last conference tournament game on Sunday. This allows him to claim he's only missed 1-2 teams per year. He make no attempt to predict anything for March.
Don't know how that's BS, as nobody else can predict any of that, either.
Do you know how VT is going to do in their next seven games and the ACC tournament?
They're certainly going to need to play their best ball in the next 7+ games.
Why is it BS when that's precisely what he's supposed to be doing? Giving a snapshot of what the tournament might look like if the season ended today. His job isn't to predict what happens in the games that haven't been played yet
And he doesn't pretend to, either.
The good news: VT can definitely make the NCAA tourney.
The bad news: It all depends on the next seven games and the ACC tournament, and those games aren't going to be easy.
So, you know, there's that.
TeamRankings shows VT needing 6 more wins to get in. That includes the ACCT.
5 more wins, and it's about 50/50. The Miami loss was a crusher.
Depends on who the wins are against. If we can beat Duke or UVA, I think 4 wins will get us solidly in the tournament with an ACC tourney helping with seeding.
Edit, nvm, I misread
The Miami loss was a quality loss, for what that's worth.
The problem is that it was a winnable game, and we need numbers.
I cautiously optimistic that we'll get in, I think GT/Miami are must wins, and we have to steal one of the other 5.
My predictions:
@ UVA-_W
@ Duke--L
@ GT--W
Clemson--W
Louisville--L
Duke--L
@ Miami--L
Going to be a tough road for sure but we have to beat UVA or Duke 1 time during this stretch
After the Miami game, I was talking to my friend about the schedule and what we had to do. I thought all we had to do was go 3-5 and not screw up in the ACC tourney (aka at least 1 win there) and we'd be okay. We'd squeeze in. Let's beat Clemson, Miami, and GT and anything else is a bonus.