Coach K says Virginia deserves an NCAA bid: The metrics, being metrics, disagree

The conventional wisdom going into Wednesday’s Virginia-Duke game had it that Virginia needed a win just to stay in the conversation for an NCAA Tournament bid.

Mike Krzyzewski, after the Duke win, was calling bs on that premise.

“There’s no question that Virginia is an NCAA Tournament team,” Krzyzewski said after Duke, in the running for a #1 regional seed, fought off the Cavaliers, 65-61, to earn a season series split with Virginia, which had defeated Duke, 69-68, in Durham on Feb. 7.

“So much of these numbers, you’ve got to be careful. You need to give the eye test, too,” Krzyzewski said. “They are playing as well as anyone in our conference right now, and have been for about a month. They had back-to-back Miami games, back-to-back Duke games – the two of us are two of the top four teams record-wise, and they’re 3-1.

“It’d be a sin if they’re not in the NCAA Tournament. It almost makes me [think], ‘What am I talking about?’ They have to be in. They’re that good. They really are that good, and Tony [Bennett] is that good,” Krzyzewski said.

The computers, being computers, don’t care about someone with the stature of Coach K calling bs on their algorithms.

Computers don’t have feelings. They don’t do eye tests.

And they’re only as smart as the people who write their code can make them.

Which is how they can value Virginia Tech with an 0-5 record against Quad 1 teams, a strength of schedule ranked 82nd, out of conference SOS ranked 130th, an average NET win of 173 and an average NET loss of 62, a full 39 spots higher than a Virginia team with a 3-6 record against Quad 1 teams,  a strength of schedule ranked 54th, an out of conference schedule ranked 135th, an average NET win of 155 and an average NET loss of 73.

I’m a human, so maybe that’s how I see that based on what I would assume should be key inputs into whatever the NET algorithm is, Virginia should maybe be a few spots higher than Virginia Tech, but even granting that it could be debatable, it’s not at all debatable that it’s patently absurd that Tech is 39 g-d spots higher than Virginia.

Tony Bennett, as you would expect, has the right perspective on this.

Virginia is playing well, played its heart out in the loss to Duke, but there’s still work to do, as he told his team after the game.

“I said, there’s zero room for arrogance or pride in this game. I said, there’s a bunch of room for humility and tough passion and what were problems involved, but the last thing I said was don’t make too big a deal of this. This is an important game, go play, and then we’ll have two more important games and go from there,” Bennett said.

Story by Chris Graham