jpschmack

Yeah, actually it does. Because the RPIs will be so high they'll have to count as a marquee win.

Look at the Mountain West. You know how many at-large calibre teams those top four MWC teams beat last season? ONE (UNLV vs UNC). They split games with each other. All are were in the Top 30 of the RPI, all made the dance.

Colorado State split with UNLV, New Mexico, SDSU. Beat Montana and Colorado teams that wasn't getting an at large.
Lost to #5 Duke, #21 So Miss, #73 No Iowa, #83 Wyoming, #97 Stanford, #113 TCU and #173 Boise St.

Seriously compare UMass and Colorado State's resumes. The difference is that the MWC manipulated the math better.

xavierhoops

Again, it probably helps teams in the middle and near the top but playing 10 cupcakes in OOC does not help the very very top.

You'll never convince Xavier and Temple that they need to drop marquee OOC games against the likes of Vanderbilt, Florida, Duke, Memphis, Gonzaga, Cincinnati, Tennessee, Purdue, Kansas St, Villanova etc etc and pick up 10 OOC cupcake games... With the reasoning their marquee OOC games will now be made up by the likes of Richmond, La Salle, St Bonaventure, Dayton, UMass and SLU who will have better RPI's...

jpschmack

You'll notice I have said multiple times "Schedule for 9-10 wins." If you're a top team like Xavier, Temple, etc, that's not a problem.

Xavier OOC

2011-12: 9-5
100+ RPI: 6-1; 1-100 RPI: 3-4

2010-11: 9-5
100+ RPI: 7-1; 1-100 RPI: 2-4

2009-10: 9-5
100+ RPI: 6-0; 1-100 RPI: 3-5

2008-09: 12-2
100+ RPI: 5-0; 1-100 RPI: 7-2

2007-08: 12-3
100+ RPI: 7-0; 1-100 RPI: 5-3

This concept is what Xavier and Dayton have been doing the entire time. There's a reason schools like Duquesne and St. Bona have hired new ADs from the UD and XU administrations recently. They've ALWAYS understood this.

For Xavier, teams in the 50-100 range like Creighton, Belmont, Kent St, Va Tech, Auburn, LSU are beatable teams. They assume they'll go .500 in their 6-8 top 100 games, and have an impressive 9-5 or 10-4 OOC record.

That's exactly what I laid out before. It's recognizing who you are and what you can do. The Top of the A-10 schedules extremely well. The bottom half needs to back off a little bit. The problem is no one wants to admit they are a "bottom half" team.

jpschmack

Here's the rest of the A-10 last year:

Temple (11-3)
4-2 vs Top 100
7-1 vs 100+

SLU (11-2)
1-1 vs Top 100
10-1 vs 100+

UMass (11-3)
1-2 vs Top 100
10-1 vs 100+

LaSalle (11-4)
1-2 vs Top 100
10-2 vs 100+

Dayton (10-4)
3-3 vs Top 100 -- probably a little more ambitious than they should have been, but Buffalo and Murray St were better than expected.
7-1 vs 100+

SJU (10-5)
2-4 vs Top 100
8-1 vs 100+

Duquesne (8-5)
2-4 vs Top 100 -- probably too much, but Valpo was #95.
6-1 vs 100+

Richmond (9-6)
1-5 vs Top 100 -- One too many.
8-1 vs Top 100

Charlotte (8-5)
1-2 vs Top 100 -- could have not played Miami. MEM/ARK was fine.
7-3 vs 100+ -- don't lose at ETSU at home.

GW (5-9)
0-6 vs Top 100 - Totally unnecessary. SU, Harvard, VCU is good. Don't play at K-State and Cal...
5-3 vs 100+ - … when you can't beat UAB, JMU and Bradley at home.

URI (3-12)
0-4 vs Top 100
3-8 vs 100+ Play Texas and Providence. GMU, Nebraska, Va Tech are unnecessary.

Fordham (7-6)
1-2 vs Top 100 -- Great! Harvard, Lehigh, Syracuse
6-5 vs 100+ -- Loaded up on road games to get the RPI bonus. Loved their scheduling last year.

xavierhoops

Except that's NOT what you said earlier.

Your concept of OOC scheduling is NOT what Xavier and Temple have always been doing. Xavier and Temple (and once Temple leaves I assume Butler and VCU) will never schedule "10 easy wins" OOC. They will always schedule between 4-6 projected "easy wins" and 8-10 projected challenging games against relatively marquee opponents.

Again, take a look at the pre-season OOC scheduling analyses from last year. In many, Xavier's was ranked toughest in the nation. That doesn't come from a philosophy of scheduling "10 easy wins." That comes from a philosophy of scheduling 4 projected easy wins.

URIrx

using URI last year is hard. they are who they were.. which was bad, but the scheduled the same as they did when they were winning 20 games a season for the previous years

UMass87

jpschmack - the A10 does, in fact, try to do what you are advocating. It's just that it's not an exact science. I think that the A10 has done a very good job of OOC scheduling for the past few years (IIRC Linda Bruno was responsible for mandating that teams OOC schedule better and it has worked). UMass' schedule was almost perfect - had UMass not choked in conference play (at URI in particular) then they would have been a bubble team.

X-man47

Well, Katz is wrong. It will be a 16-game schedule with each team playing 14 teams once and 1 team twice...as Coach Mack stated.

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Xavier always goes to the NCAA tournament, and almost always makes some noise while there. Projecting anything less than that this season feels like folly.
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jpschmack

After the first 6-16 times, I figured people got the idea. 9-9-9-12-12. That's Xavier's OOC win total. They're doing what they need to be doing. Like I said, some of those teams are "easy" for Xavier even though they are "challenging games." We can rely on Xavier to beat someone who's NIT calibre 70-100 RPI range most the time. For them, someone like a Robert Morris or Oakland is "easy."

For the teams that aren't Xavier's level of talent, they need to get the same WIN TOTALS OOC, even though it means playing easier opponents.

For the flag bearers like Temple and X, keep doing what you're doing.

jpschmack

Oh, of course it's not an exact science. The biggest problem however is that teams don't want to admit they're gonna finish in the bottom half of the league.

UMass' was almost perfect.

But the other way they could have been a bubble team is if the bottom four teams scheduled easier and won more OOC games.

Let's say instead of 5-9, 3-8, 7-6, and 8-5 for our bottom four teams; last year they were 7-7, 6-5, 9-5, 10-3. You know what that does to the SOS/RPI for the rest of the league?

buckswope

Majerus confirmed on the radio today that SLU will indeed play Butler twice.

He also mentioned that VCU, UMass, St Joes, and either Dayton or X will be playing at SLU.

Steve81

Sounds like the November X and Butler game would not be count as a conference game.

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LastMinuteman

I'd prefer VCU at home and Butler on the road, but I suspect UMass will get the opposite since we're already making two trips west to SLU and X and none south.