bprichard

I think that's not particularly valid. Very few high-level BCS teams are willing to do a home-and-home with Dayton, and UD relies on their basketball program to support all their other sports. So Dayton will never be leaving the Arena much in the non-conference schedule. I'm not crazy about it. I think that their lack of non-conference road games contributes to their A-10 road struggles. But I can certainly understand why they do it and don't get all worked up about it.

xudash

Appears to be a reasonable breakdown.

Do you agree that it is a matter of when and not if for the Big XII to eventually get back to 12? A year or two perhaps?

I look forward to your answer, but allow me to opine on this one: they've already gone full throttle in their recovery AND AT PUTTING THE ACC AT RISK by consummating their deal with the SEC. Perhaps it's time to stay pro-active, rather than providing the ACC any wiggle room. Perhaps there is no wiggle room, given the nature of the agreements that now exist between the Big4, but why not kill the beast now while its wounded and on the ground?

sheg

No rational Dayton fan is pretending, much less believing, that Dayton is superior to Xavier. That ship sailed about twenty years ago. I shouldn't need to emphasize the key word in that first sentence, but in case you missed it, it starts with an "r" and rhymes with "fashion hole."

The point of the post, anyway, was that DAYTON's OOC...performance OR scheduling...has NOT been the A10's problem. Dayton's contribution to the A10 via its OOC has been routinely very good, and occasionally spectacular. And there is absolutely no point in needlessly reminding us that our team has routinely shiznitted the bed in conference, likely missing out on some NCAA units as a result...we know...and we have gnashed our teeth to bloody stumps over it.

ExplorerSteve

We'll take Wake Forest if no else wants them!

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jpschmack

Yeah, Dayton's hurt no one but themselves (ok, and Xavier by beating them at UD Arena occasionally). They've been our best friend the past five years in getting more bids. Because they show how good they are outside of the A-10 by beating teams like… Top 10 Pitt and Louisville, George Mason, Creighton, etc… and then crapping the bed against Bona, Duquesne, Saint Louis, UMass and Saint Joes. How many A-10 teams count "Dayton" as a "Key Win" in early March? Eight of us.

Well, it's a matter of WHEN, not IF, for all kinds of things: Going to back to 12, raiding the ACC, getting raided by the Big Ten/SEC, Texas leaving, etc.

People seem to think we're "Destined" for four power conferences of 16. As if this is going to STOP after that.

That's ludicrous. We never had SIX power conferences of 12.
Humans crave logic, reason and sortable groups to make sense of things. But Symmetry isn't pushing this. Money is.

What's the stats now? 88% of all TV money is controlled by the "Power Six." So they're all trying to get as much as they can for their conference by adding good programs in new markets to up their share.

Once the BIG FOUR consolidate power and control 95% of the money, the only way to get MORE money is to:
A - Turn on the weakest of the four and consolidate into THREE power leagues by expanding further.
B - Leave the bottom half of these big conferences and cut out the Northwesterns, Vanderbilts, and Iowa States.

Short term, yes, the Big 12 will go back to 12, have a championship game, and strength their numbers. They need to, they want to, and they have the opportunity.

Long term, FOUR power conferences doesn't work. Because there's FOUR major networks: Fox, ESPN/ABC, CBS and NBC.

You need THREE power conferences so there's always a bidding war. That's why the NFL has deals with everyone. They all want in.

e-parade

I'd rather be "IN" at some point than never at all.

Regardless, neither UMass nor Dayton should be talking about OOC scheduling, we were the two weakest schedules in the entire A10 this past year (well, Dayton was tied for second weakest with La Salle)

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebaske...-analysis-a-10

bprichard

Yeesh. Nice job using an ESPN preseason prediction rather than actual numbers:

http://www.rpiforecast.com/confs/A10.html

Note: Projected now is actual since the season is over.

ace93

When you scheduled was it based on projected or did you have a crystal ball to base it on actual?

bprichard

The ESPN list is purely subjective. Someone looked at the games and assigned it a number based on feeling. So this presents a lot of biases, mainly in that it focuses on the number of big name teams being played. I feel fairly confident that the UD Athletic Department knows their schedule better than a guy at ESPN who runs through the list of teams and assigns their schedule a number.

e-parade

It was the article I remembered from early in the season, didn't follow up.

Not that an after the season look has anything to do with scheduling though, since scheduling has to do with stuff that happens before you play the games, and unexpected turns throughout the season will make things in the end either better or worse than what was planned (for example, Dayton's OOC slate was certainly helped a TON by the fact that Murray State ended up only losing one game the entire regular season - something no one would have predicted).

jpschmack

OOC SOS does not matter. OOC WINS do. Period.

It's simple. There's 16 conference games and 13 non-conference games.
When Dayton beats someone crappy OOC, it adds 1-0 to the SOS of all the other A-10 teams.
And since every A-10 team we played, ALSO played Dayton, that 1-0 is reflected on all our our Opp SOS 16 times each.

We tried the "play hard OOC schedules" when Linda Bruno was in charge. And we didn't get an at-large! Let's not go back to that.

Easy wins are better than good losses.

e-parade

This is true. Though we do need some teams to have high quality opponents on their schedule (which has typically been Xavier and Temple as of late)

I think the point is that while we don't want to overload our schedules with tough games, we also don't want to make it too light. Teams that are reasonably expecting to compete for a league title should try to have a couple of marquee games in there. That's why I brought up both UMass and Dayton having it be light pre-season this past year. UMass wasn't expected to do much, so a weak OOC schedule made sense, to try and rack up some wins. Dayton typically is at worst an OK team, so their OOC schedule (at least from a starting point) should be a bit stronger so they can still get the wins, but have them mean more.

jpschmack

UD's OOC has been excellent. Even during the Bruno policy, they scheduled extremely well.

2011-12 (10-4)
2010-11 (10-3)
2009-10 (10-4)
2008-09 (12-2)
2007-08 (10-4)
15-15 vs Top 100.
37-2 vs 101+

That's what EVERYONE should do:
-- Schedule 9-10 games you know you're gonna win,
-- three good teams you could beat if you play well,
-- one team you can't but helps our SOS and gets you AP votes if you win.

e-parade

So that would be an average of 6 games a year (winning 3) against the top 100 RPIs for OOC?

Out of curiosity, do you also have the top 50 numbers over that span (aka is there a site that just presents it, or did you go look individually at those years)? I'm relatively new to following college BBall in the offseason.

jpschmack

UD vs top 50 (OOC only), 7-7
2011-12 (1-1)
2010-11 (1-2)
2009-10 (2-3)
2008-09 (1-1) also beat #51
2007-08 (2-0)

It's really hard to predict "top 50" though. Generally, you can predict the top half of each BCS league will be Top 100, plus teams like Gonzaga, SMC, Mason, Creighton, etc.

Look at what Dayton's done. They've played teams that are expected to have great records in a mid-major conference (like New Mexico, Murray St, Mason, Creighton, ODU, etc) that aren't going to be as tough as a team with a similar insanely good record from a power conference (KANSAS. DUKE).

SOS doesn't know that difference between 26-7 Belmont vs 26-7 Duke. OppSOS does, but it's (a) a tiny bit of a massive data pool and (b) a small price to pay for a WINNABLE game.

If you play six games against tough teams and have a good SOS, but go 1-5, you're boned.
If you play two games against tough teams, two games against good teams with great records, and two games against average teams, your SOS could be the same, and you might be 4-2 and dancing.

It really is manipulation.