Look Busy - NC State S*** Is Watching

And yep, you guessed it, 6 of those 13 are to Maryland. Damned Twerps always seem to be the buggaboo of NC State greatness. These numbers come from JP Giglio's article on the subject over at the N and O, and while trends like this typically have some weight to them, it's important to bear in mind the magnitude of the change the Wolfpack has seen in recent years. Responding to a big win is the one arena in which the Wolfpack is of uncertain development, and we shall see the answer to that tonight. As Akula has already pointed out, Maryland is a big team who will battle State on the boards, so we will be in for a scrap, regardless of the terrible RPI the Twerps are carting with them. Of interesting note, insofar as trends go - Wisconsin had beaten Indiana 16 times in a row, as of yesterday, leading me to the upset pick - which sports fans will know did indeed come to pass. Will the numbers gods be satisfied with this offering, or will they be interested in more?

UPDATE: One of our incredibly cognizant readers has come to some interesting conclusions about the record of NC State basketball that illustrate the trend that correlation is not causation, as Mr. Giglio would like his readers to believe. According to PACKHOOLIGAN, whose original comment can be found below:

to the 2011-2012 season, NC State’s ACC record is 113-175 (0.392). If you take NC State’s record just from the years that they beat UNC and/or Duke in that time frame, the record is 40-72 (0.357). The best ACC record for a year that State beat Duke or UNC in that time frame is 9-7, which they did twice (2001-2002 and 2002-2003). Based on this I would guess that if you looked at NC State’s record in the game after beating ANY ACC opponent, it would not be pretty. So one COULD attribute the record of 1-13 after beating unc or duke to a letdown, or to the fact that most of those NC State teams were mediocre to terrible.

Record after beating Maryland: 2-6
Record after beating Clemson: 3-10

As you can see, this whole letdown after beating unc/duke idea is bunk.

So numerically, there really is no such thing as a "blue letdown". We could go deeply into this concept as a psychological manifestation of State's feeling of inferiority toward the blue schools when it comes to basketball - but that is beside the point here. SCIENCE has spoken, and SCIENCE says there is no such thing as the "blue letdown". We will see whether NC State S*** believes in science soon enough.