Virginia Tech played a terrible non-conference schedule. Hosting Georgia (88th at KenPom, 3-7 in the SEC, winless on the road this season) was arguably their third-toughest test, trailing their lone non-conference loss, @Temple, and their overtime win against Seton Hall at a neutral site. That’s on them. Their 13-1 non-conference mark could most charitably described as “not terribly damaging
After last night’s four-point win at home against Wake Forest they’re 8-3 in the ACC, 21-4 on the season, and ranked 25th at KenPom. They might be pretty good. It’s tough to tell, though, because they’ve drawn about the easiest possible conference schedule and a back-loaded one at that.
- Duke? Haven’t played them yet. Travel to Durham on Sunday for their lone meeting.
- Maryland? Haven’t played them yet. Get them in Blacksburg a week from Saturday for their lone meeting.
- Wake Forest? Beat them in Blacksburg last night. Don’t face a return trip to Winston-Salem.
- Clemson? Beat them 70-59 in Blacksburg on February 6th. Probably Virginia Tech’s best win of the season. Don’t have/get to play Clemson away.
- Florida State? The Seminoles beat the Hokies 63-58 in Tallahassee on January 16th. They don’t travel to Blacksburg this year.
Virginia Tech play five games against the other ACC teams (currently) with winning* conference records. Their other 11 games give them two against North Carolina, two against NC State, two against Virginia, two against Miami, two against Boston College, and a road trip to Atlanta to face Georgia Tech to close the regular season.
Now, if Virginia Tech loses their three remaining road games and the home game against Maryland, they’ll finish 9-7 in conference and will not be an especially good team and clearly not an accomplished one. But what if they beat Maryland at home and win at Boston College to finish 11-5 in conference, 24-6 on the regular season. I suspect they’ll receive appropriately tepid credit for going 13-1 against the 337th strongest nonconference schedule, but the soft ACC schedule isn’t their doing.
Is it fair to penalize them for not getting to play any of the upper division conference teams more than once? Given the number of poor-to-middling major conference teams this season and the paucity of compelling at-large cases from mid-majors, it’s likely a question of seeding rather than making or missing the tournament (and even this assumes a successful close to their season) but this brings me to my compromise position on NCAA Tournament expansion: It’s fine to expand to 96 teams but only if every conference commits to a full round-robin league season that crowns a true champion and forces at-large teams to have succeeded (to some degree) against their peers rather than succeeding in buying home games in order to make the field.
