lv20gt
Helluva Engineer
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So I decided to try and somewhat quantify the difference in conference schedules this year. I decided to break the ACC into 3 groups. Group A was FSU and UVA. Group C was Pitt, ND, Wake, Miami, and BC and Group B was the rest. It's not a perfect breakdown as ND and Pitt are significantly better than the bottom 3 imo and the middle 8 has a lot of gradience, but there wasn't a good place to draw a line to split things up in the middle of that group imo. You could split between UNC and Cuse and have two groups of 5 with a bottom 3 and a top 2 but that would feel somewhat weird with only a half game separating them and Cuse having just won. Oh well. Anyways, Here are the results. a * means they have one game left against that group. This isn't accounting for things like road records so that is a variable missing as well. I did this somewhat quick so there might be mistakes.
Keep in mind since teams can't play themselves it slants the expected number of games against teams from the group you are in. FSU and UVA could play a max of 2 against group A while everyone else 4 as an example.
My take aways - Group A is pretty balanced. UVA will end with having played 2 extra games against group B. FSU did get UVA at home, and beat them by 21. Not a lot of difference.
Group B. Most teams played group A 2 or 3 times which is what was expected. GT is the only team, in the entire conference, to play 4 games against that group. VT, Duke, and Cuse lucked out in this category with only 1 game. UL will play a second game against UVA saturday I believe. Nobody won more than one game against group A. Against group C you would expect between 5 and 6 games based on the number of games played this year in conference in total. UNC and Clemson will have gotten the shortest ends of the stick here. VT, Cuse, NCSU and Duke fortunate. NCSU especially at 8 games, and VT especially since they played a low number overall. Against B group, you would expect around 8 games which is how most teams played out. UL at 5 is reasonable considering they have only played 5 games. NCSU has the clear worst record against this group. GT and UL have the best records.
So as expected, VT is significantly helped by a small number of group A games and group B games and a large number of group C games. NCSU was helped by a large number of group C games and probably the worst team of this group. Honestly, looking over it, it'd probably better to do the split I was talking about because there does look to be more of a clear cutoff when looking at it like this.
I know I'm biased but I think GT and UL are the two teams with reasonable arguments for being the best in group B, and to me GT would be the clear winner except for the head to head. VT is more of an unknown than a proven bad. They're still basically .500 against the middle group and did get a win against group B.
I don't really care much about group C. Pitt separates itself with the record against group B followed by ND separating itself with its record against group C. Sort of reinforces the different splitting of teams. Might go back and look at that later.
Team | Record against Group A | Record against Group B | Record against Group C |
FSU | 1-0 | 5-3 | 5-0* |
UVA | 0-1 | 6-3* | 6-0 |
VT | 1-0 | 2-3 | 6-1 |
UL | 0-1* | 4-2 | 4-1 |
GT | 1-3 | 5-3 | 4-0* |
Clemson | 1-2 | 5-4 | 3-0* |
UNC | 1-2 | 4-4* | 4-0 |
Cuse | 0-1 | 5-4 | 4-2 |
NCSU | 1-2 | 2-5 | 7-1 |
Duke | 1-0 | 4-5* | 4-3 |
Pitt | 0-2 | 4-5* | 2-2 |
ND | 0-2* | 1-8 | 5-1 |
Wake | 0-2 | 0-10* | 3-2 |
Miami | 0-3 | 3-7 | 0-5* |
BC | 0-2 | 0-6 | 2-2* |
Keep in mind since teams can't play themselves it slants the expected number of games against teams from the group you are in. FSU and UVA could play a max of 2 against group A while everyone else 4 as an example.
My take aways - Group A is pretty balanced. UVA will end with having played 2 extra games against group B. FSU did get UVA at home, and beat them by 21. Not a lot of difference.
Group B. Most teams played group A 2 or 3 times which is what was expected. GT is the only team, in the entire conference, to play 4 games against that group. VT, Duke, and Cuse lucked out in this category with only 1 game. UL will play a second game against UVA saturday I believe. Nobody won more than one game against group A. Against group C you would expect between 5 and 6 games based on the number of games played this year in conference in total. UNC and Clemson will have gotten the shortest ends of the stick here. VT, Cuse, NCSU and Duke fortunate. NCSU especially at 8 games, and VT especially since they played a low number overall. Against B group, you would expect around 8 games which is how most teams played out. UL at 5 is reasonable considering they have only played 5 games. NCSU has the clear worst record against this group. GT and UL have the best records.
So as expected, VT is significantly helped by a small number of group A games and group B games and a large number of group C games. NCSU was helped by a large number of group C games and probably the worst team of this group. Honestly, looking over it, it'd probably better to do the split I was talking about because there does look to be more of a clear cutoff when looking at it like this.
I know I'm biased but I think GT and UL are the two teams with reasonable arguments for being the best in group B, and to me GT would be the clear winner except for the head to head. VT is more of an unknown than a proven bad. They're still basically .500 against the middle group and did get a win against group B.
I don't really care much about group C. Pitt separates itself with the record against group B followed by ND separating itself with its record against group C. Sort of reinforces the different splitting of teams. Might go back and look at that later.