jpschmack

Yes, but playing a conference team an extra time OOC is stupid. Hurts both your team and your conference in a variety of ways.

Xavier shouldn't need a name opponent to sell tickets. You're not selling Butler vs Xavier, you're selling Xavier basketball.

Heh heh.
Detroit 22-13, 125 RPI, NCAA Tournament.
Butler 20-14, 112 RPI, CBI
St. John's 13-19, 159 RPI, No postseason

SOS Impact:
113 Detroit 0.5672
119 Butler 0.5602
200 St. John's 0.4600

Detroit returns three of their top five scorers, including their best player.

All of us take the SOS hit of that "quality loss." The whole point of OOC is to make your SOS number for the rest of us good. The A-10 shouldn't allow conference teams to meet OOC.

stophorseabuse

Butler gets way, way, waaayyyyy better this year.

Again, if ESPN lines up a viable opponent, fine. Another buy type game, I'd rather play Butler twice.

I think this is stupid, and. If the A10 wants to pay X the buyout that is fine. However, X knows how to build a schedule. Replacing a team who has been to 2 of the last 3 nation championships that is coming to our arena with F'n Detroit is stupid for X.

xavierhoops

Soooo I think your argument lost me again. Explain to me how in the world it would be advantegous for Xavier to play Butler and Detroit next year as opposed to Butler twice?

Knobby

Dayton would make that trade in a heartbeat.......

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Well, we were smaller, but at least we were slower!

Chalmers0

The Xavier/Butler rivalry is a pretty fast growing one, at least within the Xavier student population. As a senior this year, I'm glad we will get the home game against them, especially an ESPN marathon game. We are already counting down the days....

Gormin71

He's arguing from the RPI/SOS side of things. Playing Butler is a great game, and something both teams and fanbases would show up for. It would be a great match-up, but, one of them has to lose. And, when someone loses it affects you record, and then your conference members opponents record.

So, he is saying it's better for Xavier/Butler to meet once, and have Xavier beat Detroit and Butler beat St Johns instead of one of them beating the other. 2-0 is better than 1-1.

xavierhoops

So it's better for Xavier to beat Butler once and Detroit once than Butler twice? Really?

Perhaps for the conference as a whole, but Xavier schedules to position themselves to get into the Dance every single year... not to see how many teams from the A-10 Xavier can get into the Dance.

stophorseabuse

I see the argument, and typically of course we don't play OOC games with conference rivals.

However, X is NOT a team that owes the conference shyt at this point. They aren't one of those teams that needs to schedule like a big east team. X schedules on the premise we aren't going to lean on the A10 to make us. We have done fine when the league was great, and also churned out NCAA wins when the league sucked.

Knobby

THANK YOU! There-in lies the f-ing point!

Any team in this conference that has aspirations to be in the top 6 in this conference should be scheduling to the tournament with their OOC schedules - every year.

Umass is a perfect example of what NOT to do. We in Amherst think they have an NCAA worthy team. The problem is that they could easilly get 10 OOC wins with no notable wins, then all it takes in one schitty performance versus a team like LaSalle or GW later in the confernece schedule and we are Phucked! One game should not screw you that much.

There is no perfect schedule but in general you gotta play a few real road games and you gotta play at least 3 or 4 top 50 teams (not to mention avoiding all of the 250+ teams). It is frustrating to see the Dayton's of the world pad their schedules with a bunch of home "buy games" because nobody worth their arse will go there to play - then cry when they are out on selection Sunday - instead of crying about ot take a decent road game. Umass has put themselves in a similar position this year if they don't get two decent wins in their OOC (with limited chances to do so).

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Well, we were smaller, but at least we were slower!

jpschmack

Absolutely it is. Keep in mind that your OppSOS is part of your RPI as well. So, you're not just putting 1-1 on the rest of the league, you're putting that exact same amount of mediocrity on your RPI as well.

When you play a team OOC, like Detroit, you'll get their final SOS on your OppSOS.
When you play 16 A10 games, you'll get their final SOS on your OppSOS.

Since one of you is going to lose, you get 16-16 on your final OppSOS.


The SOS of your conference games will be between your OOC win pct and .500 (your conference win pct). The more conference games you have, the further it drives it down towards .5000.

The MWC for the past few years, why are their RPIs so high? Because they have nine teams playing 14 conference games each. Most their wins don't put a loss on someone else in the league.

A) That's arrogant, egotistical, and makes people not want to like you.
B) That's what made the league suck in the first place: "Every man for himself!"

Xavier has scheduled for the mutual benefit of the league and Xavier for a long time. No one has any argument with their past. But...

WHY THE ---- WOULDN'T WE WANT TO SCHEDULE LIKE THE BIG EAST WHEN THEY GET 8-11 BIDS EVERY YEAR!?!??!?

Last season, Big East: 153-47 vs D-I. 8 bids.
Last season, A-10: 120-74 vs D-I. 4 bids.

Their conference was 30 games better than we are! No wonder they get the bids. We can't do that!

Why not? You know what the Big East was versus GOOD teams last season? 25-25 vs BCS conferences. We were 25-26.

All their extra wins came against WORSE teams. They trounced us by 30 games and five bids because they played WEAKER OOC opponents and crushed them.

BE OOC SOS: .4963
A10 OOC SOS: .5141

If you work together and take care of business OOC, you can get a ton of bids and everyone get rich. What helps Xavier more down the road? Ensuring they're one of three in the dance, or being in a conference getting 5 bids a year and changing it to "Power Seven" conferences?

cpico

Hey Knobby - not quite sure I understand why you would use a team like La Salle in your example above. Remember La Salle was in the same post season tournament as UMASS was last season, and La Salle beat UMASS twice last season.

Also La Salle returns 6 of their top 8 players from last season and additionally will have the services of impact transfer Tyrone Garland at the conclusion of the first semester. They will have arguably the best group of guards in the A-10 (and I said arguably - I know there are other teams with nice groups of guards, but I would put La Salle's up there with any of them).

So not quite sure why you would choose to use La Salle in your example. Seems like using another team would have made more sense.

xavierhoops

^^So one more loss in A-10 OOC schedule is really going to make that much of a difference in RPI and SOS? Using last year's record that you pointed out, it's moving from 120-74 to 119-75.

It's such an isolated, one-time event that isn't going to make much (if any) of a difference in the big picture. Whether UMass or St Joe's or any other team gets a bid to the Dance is NOT dependent on whether Xavier plays Butler or Detroit in OOC game.

I don't think you'd ever, ever be able to convince Mercurio or Bobinski (who have done a hell of a job with Xavier's OOC schedule for the last decade) to drop Butler in the ESPN tip-off marathon so X could play Detroit.

ChicagoX

It's more than just getting into the NCAA Tournament for Xavier. They schedule not only to put together a strong tourney resume, but to also be battle tested so once they get there they are in a position to advance past the first couple rounds and into the second weekend. It seems to have worked well for them the past decade.

Had Xavier not scheduled the way they did last year, they might not have earned an at-large and advanced to yet another Sweet 16. It's also hard to get good seeding when your OOC schedule is mediocre.

jpschmack

It's not just moving from 120-74 to 119-75. It's moving from 120-74 to 119-75… TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY SEVEN TIMES.

That's the effect of conference play. That's how the math works. That's how one A-10 team went out and rolled two top 10 Big East teams, then watched the NCAAs on TV, featuring the 10th-place Big East team that couldn't match those marquee wins.

If you're arguing that one loss for Butler isn't going to hurt the entire league, the easy argument back is that one Xavier win over Detroit instead of Butler isn't going to hurt ANYONE PERIOD.

Everything you said here is 100% accurate. But entirely irrelevant to this issue.

You want to play Butler in the Tip-Off to be more battle-tested?

A - The conference added two legit programs, and instead of facing Charlotte a second time, you'll have Charlotte once and VCU among the A10 slate. That's more battled-tested in conference than before.

B - Detroit made the NCAA's last year and return a decent squad. You should beat them, but it's not like you wouldn't break a sweat against them. This isn't Morgan State we're talking about here.

C - You played Morgan State in last year's season opener! And were still battled-tested enough to go to the Sweet 16.

D - The battle-tested concept is based on the relative truth that teams play to the level of their competition. Teams that have historically been the class of their lesser conference and should run the table in it will usually falter a bit late in the season because they begin "playing to the level of their competition" and lose a game they shouldn't.

Gonzaga for example had a Top 10 OOC SOS in 2008 with SEVEN NCAA teams on their schedule. Santa Clara took 'em to OT and San Diego upset them. In other words: "That sh*t wears off."

Which renders the battle-tested argument for Butler in game #1 ridiculous.
You'd be just as battle-tested come March if you play Detroit because you're also playing in Anaheim, playing Vandy, Memphis, Purdue, Cincinnati, Tennessee, and then the whole A-10 schedule, which...

E - INCLUDES BUTLER LATE ON YOUR SCHEDULE. There's no benefit from playing them in game #1 than you're not going to get in February when you play them in the league game.



With regards to past scheduling, I agree that Xavier has scheduled extremely well for both themselves AND the conference. They have found the right level of challenging games to bring them and the A-10 marquee wins, while enough cupcakes to make sure their SOS impact for the league is very positive. However, all of that means exactly zip to this issue, because:

-- Xavier hasn't scheduled A-10 teams OOC before.
-- Making the change to Detroit benefits their chances of making the dance as an at-large from the numbers standpoint for the RPI reasons I've illustrated.
-- Not playing Butler in the tip-off doesn't make the OOC schedule mediocre. Anaheim Tourney, Vandy, Memphis, Purdue, Cincinnati, Tennessee are still on it.
-- It also assumes that Butler in the A-10 will be the same as Butler in the Horizon with a Final Four Team. That remains to be seen. Also, without Butler in the league, isn't Detroit gonna be the class of the Horizon? Why isn't THEIR W-L gonna go up a pair of games without Butler to beat them?
-- With a tougher A-10, you can schedule easier OOC. Your SOS would be going up from the addition of VCU and Butler to the conference. Swapping out a second game vs Charlotte with a game against VCU, and adding two teams who will rack up OOC wins to add to our collective SOS is going to make our power numbers better.


I don't know how how many arguments I've made here for why this is a bad idea (but I've got eight more). And there's only ONE decent reason to go through with it.

X-band '01

You also have to win a few of the noncon games. To their credit, Temple always tried to go all-out with their schedule in the late Chaney era. But the wins stopped.

Vanderbilt and Purdue were critical wins for Xavier, especially Vandy on the road.