ACC Basketball: Five-Year Ranking

ACC Basketball

ACC FIVE-YEAR STANDINGS

This ranking tries to answer a simple question: Who has been the best team in the ACC over the last five years?

A heavy emphasis is put on ACC league play & NCAA Tournament success. NIT wins are meaningless here, as are non-conference wins.. if you feel your team is slighted by this, feel free to make your own ranking. No doubt other factors could be taken into account such as the RPI, or one could have favored postseason success more heavily. But I feel satisfied this simple system does a good job of ranking the teams recent performance.

100 total points is set up to be the equivalent of batting .300 in baseball.. anything above and beyond is all-world stuff. 50 points is mediocre and you only start to get bad below 40 points. Miami, for example, at 44 points is actually quite solid for the last-place team. The ACC just doesn't have the perennial doormats that leagues like the Big Ten and Big East have.

The postseason scoring system is listed below, along with some related notes & thoughts. Check back soon for the Big East ranking..

-Ties are broken by favoring conference winning %

Thoughts

- No surprise that Duke & UNC dominate the ranking. These two teams have each won 59 league games in this period, but UNC has far superior tournament success. BC at 3rd will come as a surprise to many.

- Note how close teams 8 to 12 are in this system.. virtually separated by a win or two.

- Maryland remains surprisingly strong at 5th due to winning 50% of their ACC games.

- Georgia Tech's high standing is due solely to the '04 run, their overall ACC winning % is rather mediocre.

- FSU still hasn't made the NCAAs despite winning as many or more league games than 3 other teams.

* BC and VT started in the Big East.. there's no real way around this, but the numbers work out well because the BE in those years also played a 16 game schedule.

Postseason Points

NIT = 1

NCAA 1st Round = 2

NCAA 2nd Round = 4

Sweet = 6

Elite 8 = 8

Final Four = 10

Final = 11*

Champs = 12*

* I've stopped giving 2 points per win in the final games, to prevent one year wonder teams from getting too much of a boost (ie, Georgia Tech or Ohio State in the Big Ten). Also, CBI bids receive no credit.