The Schedule of the Reckoning

As football continues to fight through injuries and stumble towards the finish line - how are we ~75% through the season already? - The Red Reckoning offers a welcome vibe shift.

We have more preseason data points on college basketball teams than ever before. Major exhibitions are being broadcast on ESPN, box scores are being shared, and several predictive models have debuted their ratings.

It's a dangerous game to put a ton of stock into any of these sources of information, but it's a starting place that can help set the expectations table. And the expectations table has many guests seated around it ahead of Wade's first season.

Today we're going to take a look at State's schedule through the lens of KenPom, EvanMiya, and BartTorvik ratings - some of the most well respected models in college basketball. How hard is it? How does it compare to last year's? What are reasonable expectations for the Pack?

For starters, State is a well regarded preseason team:

With a composite ranking of 34, State's leapt up significantly from last year's debacle of a season. Last year's team finished nearly 100 spots behind this number on KenPom, finishing the year as the 125th rated team - right next to Northern Colorado.

A quick note on the schedule I put together: State won't know who it plays in Maui until the tournament results unfold. Because I'm a fan who likes to have fun, I picked State to beat its first opponent (Seton Hall) and projected it to beat USC in the second round, before facing Texas in the Championship. Obviously, that can (and probably will) change.

Enough talking, dude. What does this year's schedule look like?

My first observation lies with how much better the ACC appears to be. Last year, the ACC had nine teams outside the top ~100 of KenPom. On State's schedule, only two ACC teams have any preseason ratings in the 100s in BC and Stanford...and Stanford just beat top ~30 Oregon in an exhibition.

If that preseason trend holds, that's a boon for State's tournament and seeding aspirations. And frankly, the ACC hasn't been the most watchable conference of late. This would be great for entertainment value and the brand.

The second observation is how stiff State's non conference looks compared to years past. Coach Keatts was not a proponent of challenging out of conference schedules, certainly not compared to what we're seeing here from Wade's first year.

State gets at least 3 matchups against top 40 competition, with one each coming on a home, neutral, and away environment. They also draw 60th rated VCU, and the tag team of UAB and Liberty as fringe top 100 teams. That's not accounting for what State will get in Maui, either.

I like this set up for the Pack. These are all winnable games, but you still get exposure to tough teams in a variety of environments. We know the NCAA has an obsession with non-conference strength of schedule and performance; with State's experienced group, this is a slate you can capitalize on.

Next, I used the NCAA's quad system to bucket these averages into Q1-Q4 games to see what the committee might see when evaluating this team. I also used BartTorvik's predictions to simulate the season for the Pack:

This gets the Pack to an record of 23-8, with a conference record of 13-5. That also gets them the following Quad win spread, with last year's record in parentheses:

• Q1: 5-8 (0-8)

• Q2: 10-0 (2-8)

• Q3: 4-0 (2-3)

• Q4: 4-0 (8-0)

  
  

With the potential to flip 5 of the Q3/Q4 games from last year into Q1 games, you can see how State's schedule looks much more worthy of a respectable NCAA tournament seed, if executed well.

If we put aside the wonky Maui results and whatever might happen in the ACC Tournament, State would be a projected 9 seed right now in March Madness per Bart Torvik. That'd be a solid first season in Raleigh for Will Wade and crew in my opinion.

I wouldn't put too much stock into the win-loss record listed here - most teams win and lose games they "shouldn't" on paper, and these preseason ratings will change significantly once games start tipping off.

State's first match up is less than 82 hours away against one of its worst on paper opponents. The blended spread of that game from our 3 power rating friends is State -27.7 points.

Regardless of what this season entails, I'm hopeful we can all step back and appreciate the transformation that's happened in Raleigh. There's going to be big wins, some frustrating losses, and a lot of wackiness (it's college sports, after all.) But we aren't guaranteed much in life - and certainly not much as sports fans.

Win, lose, whatever: enjoy where we are, and all of the moments this season brings.