Let's talk about the chances of making the NCAA tournament. Now, I'm no loon. I know Georgia Tech doesn't have a snowball chance in Hell of making it in as an at-large berth. Prior to the Duke game on Saturday, Tech was 110th in the LRMC rankings. So let's knock out the 31 conference champions. That means GT would have to surpass 80 or so teams to get into the tournament...
However, we're not in the Ivy League. Our champion is decided in Greensboro. Georgia Tech is staring down the barrel of an opening round game against Clemson or Maryland. Both squads are beatable particularly in a neutral court setting, which Paul Hewitt so favors. Then, we'd face either University of No Chance or VT. Once again, we've beaten both teams this season. Do you see where I'm headed? We'd have to win four games in four days to make the NCAA Tournament. It would be an amazing feat.
If we had to break it down by odds, our best case scenario would involve playing the teams that Paul Hewitt has the best record against all time: Wake (47.8%), BC (50.0%), Clemson (52.2%), and UVA (61.1%). The odds of defeating all four = 7.62%. If we had to play the four teams that Hewitt has the worst record against, this number would shrink to 0.38% (Duke, Maryland, VT, & Miami).
Hewitt has the unusual tendency of surpassing everyone's expectations in the ACC Tournament. Hewitt has a 9-10 record in the ACC Tournament, which is 6.0% better than his overall ACC record and 6.9% better than his ACC regular season record. If you were to assume all of Hewitt's opponents had a 10 out 19 chance of defeating Hewitt in ACC Tournament play, then the odds of winning tournament round out to 5.0%. That's what I'll go with as our odds of making the NCAA Tournament. We've got a 5% chance. It's better than zero but not by much...
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