^I think that might be Keatts era PTSD. He always seemed to screw around and lose multiple really bad ACC games in the years we otherwise had a solid team. I think that is a lot more rare than we think it is -- good teams might lose a road Quad 3 or 2. But I feel like he would catch a ridiculous home loss or two in addition to those road losses.

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"4 of those 8 wins are Q4 wins. Those do nothing for the resume, I wouldn’t count them as part of the difficult schedule."

But that isn't how SoS is calculated. All the games go into it. Some of our Q4 games are better than other team's Q4s. Gotta remember that Q4 can include the bottom 50% of all teams. A team at percentile 50 is itself massively better than the team at percentile 99. We also played few Q4 teams. The analytics algorithms are taking this all into account. Which is why we're rated as a strong team and much higher ranked than teams with "better" records.

Put it in this context. Only 20 teams have more than 1 Q1 win right now. And in the group of teams with that 1 win, only Kentucky has more Q1 games (5 vs our 4). I think people are just not recognizing the levels here. Big conference teams that have winning records against a high count of Quad 1 games end up being 4+ seeds. You can have a pretty low win rate against a high count of Quad 1s and still have a solid seed. We just need to win a few more, have a strong record against Q2/Q3 (which we've done well against so far), and not lose the few stupid bad games (which I think this team + staff is perfectly capable of). I actually see that stretch in mid January where we have to play BC (Q3), FSU (Q3), and GT (home) as more dangerous to our tournament seed than the late season stretch with Duke/UNC.

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"The other part of this is the eye test. Every high major opponent we’ve played has punked us."

I don't see it that way. We were in every game (except maybe Seton Hall). We did play atrocious defense in that 10 day stretch w/ Seton Hall, Texas, and Auburn. And sure, if we regress too much back in that direction, we won't stay rated where we are.

I still maintain we are in a far better spot than we've been in decades. And the analytics/projections support that. We're projected to be a 6/7 seed. That would be our best since 03-04 (#3 seed).

12/20/2025 7:13:49 PM

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"I still maintain we are in a far better spot than we've been in decades. And the analytics/projections support that. We're projected to be a 6/7 seed. That would be our best since 03-04 (#3 seed). "

The only reason we’re in a better spot is purely SOS. In terms of actual wins, we aren’t trending significantly better than any other teams that have made NCAAT appearances as far as I can tell. And there’s plenty of time for that to change. We have to win games. It starts tomorrow with Mississippi.

I’m not trying to be a downer. I want us to be good. But I’m watching the games. We are fine. We are good enough to make the tourney for sure. We’re also streaky enough and lacking in enough key areas that we could easily lose games we shouldn’t…that’s not KK era PTSD, that’s the reality of how our team is constructed. The coach is calling it out, I think it’s fair for fans to call it out too.

12/20/2025 8:11:52 PM