Knobby

And one more thing to add to my other post. Your ideals on scheduling while mostly correct in theory, are still too reliant on a perfect storm of availability and willingness of other teams to play our teams. Many of your comments are also Monday morning quartebacking - Saying Butler wasn't a marquee win last year is an easy call now, but two years ago you could not predict that coming into the 11-12 season......

To your point #1 - those teams you mentioned don't have to go on the road to get quality opponents, many teams are willing to go to their barn for the game. As I have pointed out too many times with respect to Dayton - what school in its right mind with something to lose would go to Dayton - that is a crushing loss on your NCAA resume if you are not a top 20 team - that is precisely why the A-10 teams have to take some chances on the road. At the very least you get some exposure, and some battle testing so maybe you don't drop that LaSalle game at the end of the season that dooms you to the NIT....

Ultimately you are pushing a socialist scheduling program. Umass has no more control over Dayton's schedule than Dayton does over X than X has over the Bonnies etc...... You propose a schedule for the betterment of the conference but, if every team does what is best for itself, the conference should gain benefit by default.

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

X-band '01

If we can say Buffalo beat Duke, the transitive principle can't be all bad.

jpschmack

If you act like a mid-major, you'll be a mid-major.

No. Going 25-4 without beating anyone OOC is going to hurt you if all the teams in your conference lose OOC games. Which they'll do if they play the hardest OOC SOS. If you go 25-4 and have six conference teams in the RPI top 50, you're going to the dance.

It's really not. History is littered with incidents of the majority being wrong.

You have to beat someone. But they don't have to be OOC.

The Mountain West's NCAA teams last season combined beat 16 legit NCAA teams (1-10 seeds). FOURTEEN were against each other. TWO were OOC.

If your RPI is in top 30, it's really not going to matter. Case in point:

Colorado State, New Mexico and San Diego State (see above).
Southern Miss (beat ONE team safely in the tournament: Memphis. Went 1-2 vs Marshall. Lost to #93 Denver, #111 UAB, #147 UTEP, #215 Houston). But their RPI was #21, so no one questioned their inclusion.
Wichita State (beat UNLV, split with Creighton. Lost to Temple and Alabama, and #100 Illinois St and #134 Drake)
Creighton (beat Wichita St, San Diego State. Lost to Wichita St, St. Joe's, #73 UNI, #123 Missouri St, #131 Evansville.
SAINT LOUIS: Best OOC win was #71 Washington.

But your conference foes will play you. They have to. Which is all the more reason to say "We control the value of our conference SOS." You talk about how no one will go play Dayton (mainly because they're 5-2 against their last seven RANKED Big East teams), but you recognize that had Dayton gone 11-5 or better in the A-10, they'd have made the dance in most, if not all, of those years they were 9-7, 8-8, 7-9.

That's the fundamental disagreement I have in a nutshell. If everyone does what's best for itself, we all lose. Because EVERYONE acts like they HAVE to get their marquee wins OOC. They don't. They fail to understand how SOS actually works.

SOS is ALL your games. Not just OOC. We tried the "load up OOC" and when we had bad records from playing so many good teams, our conference games were 14-16 vs 14-16 instead of 20-10 vs 20-10. And we got ONE BID. In 2005, we had three of the top eight hardest OOC SOS's and six of the top 52. And went 30-36. When 16-13 Temple is playing 16-12 UMass, neither of them are making the dance.

"Hey, the league is gonna be weak this year, so we have to get our wins OOC!" is what MAKES YOUR LEAGUE WEAK.

It's really NOT a perfect storm required. It's actually an easier road.
It's also not "socialist" as it is very minor tweak to our scheduling policy. Again, we're not talking about making everyone avoid anyone they could remotely lose to. We're talking about making the policy "Make sure you get 10 OOC wins."

You talk about hindsight and how difficult it is to predict who's going to be a marquee opponent. But it's far easier to predict who's going to be bad than who's going to be good. What's easier to get? Games against marquee opponents, or games vs bad opponents? Bad opponents. Heck, if the cost of playing them at home is too much, play them on the road, since you get more RPI credit for road wins.

And again, this isn't about Xavier. If everyone schedules like Xavier, we're only sending Xavier, because they can actually back it up, and someone else can't.

This is about manipulating a flawed system (like others are doing). Is there anyone here who actually thinks that Xavier, Dayton, Temple, Saint Louis, UMass, etc couldn't hold their own with the big boys? Butler and VCU showed what they can do against BCS teams. Xavier does it every year. Dayton's got a winning record in their last 10 vs the Big East (including beating two Top 10 teams and an NCAA win over WVU).

When you act like a mid-major, you get treated like one. If we act like a major conference, we'll look like a major conference. It's that simple.

cpico

Knobby, you mean like the 2 La Salle games that UMASS lost last year.

xavierhoops

The top 2-3 teams in the A-10 HAVE to get their marquee wins OOC. Not sure why you continue to think they don't.

You also keep saying "act like a mid-major, get treated like one" multiple times in your post. What programs are you referring to? The first time you said it in your previous post sounded like it was referring to Xavier. I don't think Xavier has acted like a mid-major program in the last decade plus.

Knobby

Yes - exactly like those two losses. Once all records were compiled and rated, Umass was basically the same as LaSalle; and we lost to you guys TWICE. All we need to do is split and we are elevated to the bubble of bubble of one tourney and you are lowered to the bubble of the other tourney.

Oh then there was that awesome home game you got in the NIT that you layed an egg in, and Umass went and won three in a row on the road.... LaSalle has already peaked and is on the downward part of the arc (again), while Umass continues to move upward........

Enjoy those two wins...

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

cpico

Well, I can't wait to see how the season plays out.

La Salle is thin up front, but has a lot back and a tremendous group of guards (right there with anyone's group of guards in the A-10). I'm expecting a pretty good season, and if 1 or 2 guys can step up to help out Jerrell Wright in the front court it could be a very good season. Also, La Salle will still have a lot of underclassman this season who will be back for 2013-2014, so things don't look as bleak as you portray.

Also, just fyi, the team La Salle lost to in the NIT, Minnesota, made it to the NIT championship (Stanford did beat them up pretty good, but the fact is that Minnesota made it to the finals).

As a La Salle fan I'm looking forward to the season to begin, and hopefully La Salle can build off the decent year they had last season.

jpschmack

Because they don't.

It was NEVER in doubt that Saint Louis would be in the NCAAs las season. Their RPI never left the top 40 from Feb. on, and was as high as #22. Let's look at all the OOC marquee wins the Billikens racked up.

Saint Louis' Top 100 RPI wins:
#41 - Xavier
#41 - Xavier
#69 - Saint Joe's
#71 - (WASHINGTON)
#81 - Dayton
#86 - LaSalle
#86 - LaSalle

Marquee wins are wins over teams with good RPIs. Not teams with big names, big reputations, big arenas or a big football team.

I'm referring to anyone. "Mid-Majors" like Butler, Memphis, Gonzaga, Long Beach State, etc* go out and schedule every big time opponent they can, because they know they're going to have between 14 and 18 conference wins and no more than two losses. They need to get marquee wins OOC because no one in their conference is remotely close.* Which for them, is fine.*

If you act like that in the A-10; you won't have any marquee wins in conference! We'll all enter conference play 8-5 and 7-6 instead of 11-2. Then when you play in conference, your 4th place team is 17-12 instead of 21-8. And that MAKES YOU A MID-MAJOR CONFERENCE.

Look at our OOC SOS from the one-bid year. It's insane. We went out and said "Well, the league is down, so we have to get our wins OOC." The result was disastrous. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.


In the eyes of the NCAA, the definition of a good team is circular logic. "What's a good basketball team?" A team that wins games, and beats other good teams." You don't have to beat GOOOD TEAMS. You have to beat teams with GOOD RECORDS.

Team A is 13-2
Team B is 13-2
Team C is 13-2
A beat B; B beat C, and C beat A.

No one would blink twice if those teams were Duke, UNC and Florida State.
But it worked for SDSU, New Mexico and Colorado State as well.

In the eyes of the NCAA, they're all good teams. The strength of your league in the eyes of the selection committee is in a computer printout, not on the court. With the exact same talent, you can be a 1-bid league, or a five-bid league based on how you administrate a schedule.

(*- I know they're joining major conferences. And I know SMC is close to Gonzaga. And it's fine really for just LBSU and Memphis, not for the WCC or Butler anymore).

xavierhoops

And St Louis also had a #9 seed. Maybe if they scheduled (much) better OOC they would have got a better seed cause the only "marquee" win they really had was Xavier.

Marquee wins, in my opinion, are 2 to 3 wins per year (if you have any) that you can really point to as stand-out wins when you're fighting for an invite or seeding.

I also wouldn't really consider Butler, Memphis and Gonzaga mid-majors.

jpschmack

Sure, if they WON those games. But if they lost to Alabama, Texas, Illinois and Tennessee instead of Ala. St, Texas So., So. Illinois and Tenn. State; they're probably in the NIT. And Xavier and Temple would lose FOUR marquee games combined and get worse seeds.

When SLU played the #189 OOC SOS and went 11-2, they became a marquee game.
If SLU played the #1 OOC SOS and went 6-7, they're not a marquee game.

That's what happened in 2005: We didn't win those kind of games, and none of our conference games were marquee games because of it.

That's my opinion, too. I just think it's more important that they be conference games.

Xavier played five marquee OOC games: Cincy, Purdue, Vandy, Memphis and Gonzaga. How many of those are guaranteed wins? Zero. You played hard, did you job and went 3-2.
Xavier, Saint Louis and Temple played five marquee games AGAINST EACH OTHER. Five guaranteed wins!

What if we had a FOURTH team? That would be NINE guaranteed marquee wins in the A10 instead of five.

How do you get a fourth team?
Had the Bonnies won four of the five OOC games they blew late, they'd have been 24-7 and between #30 and #35 in the RPI.

But you don't need to wait for another Andrew Nicholson to come along so the Bonnies can start beating marquee OOC opponents. You can get it done with math at the bottom of the league. I'm not advocating Xavier scheduling "easy." I'm advocating almost everyone else scheduling slightly easier.

xavierhoops

Yet you have so strongly advocated throughout this thread Xavier needs to play Detroit and Butler St Johns for the good of the conference.

In that scenario: guaranteed A-10 wins = 0
With Xavier-Butler playing each other: guaranteed A-10 wins= 1

jpschmack

I've strongly advocated IMPROVING our OOC win percentage (which is basically your conference SOS) to create marquee games.

I also said "you become a marquee opponent by WINNING OOC GAMES." And someone is losing that game.

Butler and Xavier are only a marquee games if they win 9+ OOC games, and have a high RPI. And one of them is starting in the hole 0-1.

The RPI effects for the rest of us, are bad. Not as bad as if you both lost your substitute games, but still bad. It's slightly less than 2 RPI points, but so was the difference between #51 and #50 last season.

It probably won't end up costing us dearly. But considering how VCU and Butler both set up their schedules assuming they were in weaker conference, and given the inability of the bottom half of our league to acknowledge that they're crushing our souls by losing so many tough OOC games, it's not a good thing.

Knobby

I am generally getting where you are coming from JP, but you just cannot avoid playing some high calibur teams OOC. There is such a thing as a good loss. If you play a bunch of pansies in your OOC, besides a guady record, what are you really learning? You will have momentum, but are you learning how to win? Your season is made or broken on 3 point wins and losses not the 15 point wins and losses.

What you are preaching is a fantastic concept - lets get 5 or even 6 teams into the NCAA, but there may be an expense to that if all of them are gone before the first weekend is over. Having a tough conference is great but there is a level of familiarity and comfort level that comes with that. You have to go and play some tough games out of your comfort zone before you get thrown into the Alamo Dome to play BCS flavor of the day in NCAA Round 1.

This is a great debate, but unless any of us works for the conference or is an actual A-10 AD, we might as well be arguing how to solve world peace......

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

Blue Blobster

Really? like how bad? end of the world bad? just stepped in gum bad? This argument is such a joke.

If your team is at the #50 #51 RPI range. THAT IS ON YOUR TEAM. not any other team and who they played. Your team did not win enough or SCHEDULE tougher games in your own schedule to establish a higher RPI. Conference SOS? who gives a Rats A$$. I care about Xavier's and it is a stronger SOS if they play Butler which will in turn get Xavier into YET another NCAA tournament.

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Xavier likes to Play in the NCAA tournaments
Dayton likes to host them while they play in the NIT

xavierhoops

No, you have strongly advocated that Xavier needs to play Detroit and Butler St Johns for the good of the conference. Even going so far as to posting Detroit's numbers from last year and their returning players saying that they would likely be a tough opponent this coming year when Xavier fans balked at the idea.

Again, in your scenario there is ZERO (0) guaranteed wins for the A-10. How devestating that would be in your quest to build the A-10 OOC's win percentage if both Xavier and Butler started off 0-1, which is a definite possibility. If the schedules remain as they are, there is at least ONE (1) guaranteed win for the A-10.

This is so silly though. It is a one-time, isolated event that will not occur again in the future. The Xavier-Butler game certainly is NOT going to determine whether UMass, St Joes, VCU, Temple or any other A-10 teams gets into the NCAA tournament. It's just not. Further, it's probably a good thing for the A-10 to have arguably the conference's 2 best programs playing each other on national TV to kick off the season in the ESPN marathon.