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Initially, I considered Joe Lunardi the most accurate and integral bracketologist in the field. He has taken all the metrics and data the committee uses and professionally "guesses" what the tournament bracket will look like and who will be left out. I have been noticing, though, that this year, when talking about specific conferences, Lunardi made it appear that certain conferences performed better based on their NET rankings and the quad win/loss system. Based on this graphic given to us by the committee, the NET ranking clearly doesn't matter, even if they factor it in somehow.

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Going back to Lunardi, he would compare each school's quality of wins and losses, which played a crucial part during conference play in the season. Well, based on how he would analyze this, either he or somebody he was getting information from would consider specific conferences being "good" or "bad" based on who they were beating and losing to in conference play. As much as I didn't like his takes on Carolina and the ACC not having quality wins and bad quality losses in conference play, I fully assumed he was following the same metrics and data the committee was using and was going based on an objective perspective. But yesterday, Lunardi decided to take a fat dump on the line he was repeatedly crossing and tweeted this.

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You read his tweets and replies on this thread, and he is stubbornly taking a stand that somehow the ACC has a basketball problem, despite constantly competing in the postseason far more than the SEC, PAC12, and especially the B1G10. I'm unsure what Jim Philips said or did to get Lunardi to throw his fecal matter in his face with that unprovoked tweet. Still, ACC Twitter saw it happen, and the ACC army and even people with no ties to the conference are going at Lunardi for this take. The strongest (but is really his weakest) argument Lunardi has been able to make is that these metrics are only applicable before the NCAA tournament. This doesn't make sense because the committee is trying to put the most deserving and best teams in the tournament, yet favoring teams that underperform in the postseason year after year. I'll admit Jim Philips meeting with the committee to talk to them about this negative narrative isn't the best look, but it has happened two years in a row so I'm in favor of this move because teams like UNC, Wake Forest, and especially Clemson are getting left out of the tournament but having a solid win/loss record is absurd. Yet, we're letting teams like Iowa and West Virginia, with similar records, get in with favorable seeding because of how their conferences are viewed.  

I'll admit, the bottom of the ACC this year and in years past have drastically underperformed and almost don't even look like they should compete in division 1 basketball; I'm talking about you, Louisville, but it feels like the way Lunardi is talking about the ACC as if all the schools are lumped into a poor quality basketball conference just because of one or two teams. Whatever reason he has against the conference, he's not alone in this thought, just based on how the committee screwed the ACC in this tournament based on all those teams' seeding positions and teams left out of the tournament.  

For whatever reason, Lunardi is anti-ACC and believes the conference's basketball product is beneath the other power 5 conferences. Yet, the ACC showed up again this year with Miami with arguably the most challenging road to get to the national championship. The only team I want over Miami is FAU just because of the cinderella aspect. Still, I hope Miami makes it to the national championship to represent the ACC and prove this is the best college basketball conference in the NCAA once again.

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