Tournament Preview: ACC Quarterfinals

Was it just me, or did it seem like it was a whole lot easier for the guys to make shots from the near side of the court (from the TV perspective) than it was from the far side? Since the seats behind the baskets don't run parallel to the the endline, the shooter's eye changes much more dramatically than it would anywhere else. Just another reason to hate the Georgia Dome.

On to the matchups:
North Carolina 85.8 - 73.8 Virginia Tech (74.1 possessions). Ty Lawson's potential absence is not included here. Splitting his minutes 60/40 between Frasor and Drew using the PAPER model drops Carolina from a .707 ACC team to a .585 ACC team, and drops Carolina's winning percentage in this particular game from 79% to 66%.

Florida State 68.9 - 61.7 Goergia Tech (72.3 possessions). I'm on the fence as to whether to classify Tech as the home team or treat this as a neutral site game. Of the three factors that make up the bulk of home court advantage--familiarity with the shooter's backdrop, supportive crowd, and sleeping in one's own bed--the Jackets only have one, so I'm sticking with the neutral site. If the game was in the Thrillerdome or I thought the crowd would be overwhelmingly for the Wreck, though, the Seminoles would only be 2½-point TAPE favorites.

Wake Forest 78.0 - Maryland 69.8 (75.2 possessions). That spread seems a little big to me. It's mostly based on Wake making more free throws than the Terps even attempt, so look for the officiating to be a story in this one.

Duke 80.0 - 68.6 Boston College (68.8 possessions). Al Skinner's teams just don't play defense. Mike Krzyzewski's teams do. This one is going to be a blowout.

CATCHING UP

I know I probably should have posted something about the ACC Tournament. Thing is, I only watched a game and a half of the whole thing. I was traveling all day Thursday and Friday, and after watching the DVR of the Virginia game, I was so disheartened that I couldn't bring myself to watch any more until the second half of the championship game. What's more, there's not much I could say that hasn't been said already.

Same goes for the NCAA Tournament seedings. Those things are so overanalyzed--good and bad--that there's not really anything I could say that might add value. I'm still in a state of shock that a team that doesn't rank in the top 40 of any of the major ratings systems (or the RPI), finished the season by losing 3 of its last five games to the three worst teams in its conference, and got bounced in the opening round of its conference tournament got a 4 seed. Realistically, UVa shouldn't be higher than a 5 or 6 seed. But I'm not going to take much more than a furtive glance into the mouth of that horse.

With that out of the way, there's a new link to the right, a table showing home-road shooting splits for teams in conference play since 2004. One of my plans for the offseason is to get a full set of splits up--home/road, conference/non-con, etc.--for all players and teams, but this is a bit of a stopgap based on a question a friend asked a couple days ago: does UVa really shoot as badly on the road as it seems like they do, and are they unusual in the degree of their frustration? Yes, and sort of. The good news for Wahoos, though, is that things aren't nearly as bad now as they were last year.