(08-30-2011 03:40 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:37 PM)PTJR Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:35 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 02:24 PM)LRTrojan Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 08:57 PM)mjs Wrote:  I haven't seen ASU's schedule, but I will almost guarantee that they play someone like Philander. Williams Baptist or somebody like that. The difference is that Philander simply doesn't count when you are figuring your nonconference RPI. UCA kills it. As long as the conference allows it, we and everyone else (except maybe WKU) will be playing a nonDI game. Personally, I'd just as well give Philander a few bucks, than anyone else. An historically Black school in our capital city.

I'm not concerned about who ASU plays, but I am concerned with who we play. I'm not interested in games against NAIA schools, or NCAA DII schools for that matter. I'd much rather play a bad UCA(if they're all that bad)than a good Philander(if they're any good). If we had to play an NAIA school, I'd agree with you that we play them and give them a few extra bucks. Playing them is about as exciting as playing one of the local high schools, and about as interesting.

I would also rather play UCA than one of these other schools.

I guess you guys missed the memo about the RPI scheduling requirement.

I would have thought I'd hear from the commissioner personally.

It is possible that our coaches and AD would rather have played UCA, as well. Fact is, if we want to follow the concern "rules" we can't play them and keep our OOC RPI under 150. You can't balance out playing a team ranked #340, even by playing the #1 team in the country the next game. As someone mentioned, Brady apparently doesn't care about Sun Belt guidelines.

(08-30-2011 04:08 PM)mjs Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:40 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:37 PM)PTJR Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:35 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 02:24 PM)LRTrojan Wrote:  I'm not concerned about who ASU plays, but I am concerned with who we play. I'm not interested in games against NAIA schools, or NCAA DII schools for that matter. I'd much rather play a bad UCA(if they're all that bad)than a good Philander(if they're any good). If we had to play an NAIA school, I'd agree with you that we play them and give them a few extra bucks. Playing them is about as exciting as playing one of the local high schools, and about as interesting.

I would also rather play UCA than one of these other schools.

I guess you guys missed the memo about the RPI scheduling requirement.

I would have thought I'd hear from the commissioner personally.

It is possible that our coaches and AD would rather have played UCA, as well. Fact is, if we want to follow the concern "rules" we can't play them and keep our OOC RPI under 150. You can't balance out playing a team ranked #340, even by playing the #1 team in the country the next game. As someone mentioned, Brady apparently doesn't care about Sun Belt guidelines.

Or he's smart enough to know that the RPI is stacked against us anyway, and the only way he'll probably get a post season bid it to win the championship, and/or the tournament. Playing Kentucky and others like that on the road doesn't give us much chance of increasing our RPI, unless we could win some of those games, or play those teams at our place, which won't happen, so as I've said before, forget the RPI and just schedule not only good teams, but teams that would be a natural rivaly and just have fun.

(08-30-2011 04:57 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 04:08 PM)mjs Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:40 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:37 PM)PTJR Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 03:35 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  I would also rather play UCA than one of these other schools.

I guess you guys missed the memo about the RPI scheduling requirement.

I would have thought I'd hear from the commissioner personally.

It is possible that our coaches and AD would rather have played UCA, as well. Fact is, if we want to follow the concern "rules" we can't play them and keep our OOC RPI under 150. You can't balance out playing a team ranked #340, even by playing the #1 team in the country the next game. As someone mentioned, Brady apparently doesn't care about Sun Belt guidelines.

Or he's smart enough to know that the RPI is stacked against us anyway, and the only way he'll probably get a post season bid it to win the championship, and/or the tournament. Playing Kentucky and others like that on the road doesn't give us much chance of increasing our RPI, unless we could win some of those games, or play those teams at our place, which won't happen, so as I've said before, forget the RPI and just schedule not only good teams, but teams that would be a natural rivaly and just have fun.

It does not appear that you understand how the RPI works. Playing Kentucky, even with a loss, improves your RPI not harms it. Now you can't load up with too many unwinable games like UAPB does, but scheduling a Kentucky or two certainly doesn't hurt. Playing UCA's though, even with wins, does hurt.

But if you have teams in the conference that don't follow the guidelines, then all the others get hurt by their behavior. Whether ASU has followed the guidelines or not I don't know. But, as pointed out, it takes a lot to offset a game like UCA.

Maybe UCA will be better this year and scheduling them will be possible in the future. That's what you should be advocating for- them to get better, rather than us lowering our standards.

(08-29-2011 11:54 PM)PTJR Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 11:17 PM)mjs Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 11:12 PM)mjs Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 10:54 PM)hb8 Wrote:  stAte plays: Missouri State, Kent State, SEMO, UCA, Seattle and Lyon in Jonesboro and at St. Bony, Ohio U., Louisville, Murray State, Austin Peay, St. Louis, Lamar and Seattle.

At one time the conference was going to attempt to outlaw the scheduling of non D1 teams. They backed off that. Now I think the conference requirement is that the overall non conference schedule be at a certain overall number on the RPI. I doubt our scheduling UCA will prevent us being compliant with whatever the conference requirement is or harm the conference in any way.

You're schedule looks a lot better than it has been. Still, my guess is that you are quite a ways from meeting the conference requirement of an OOC schedule with an average RPI of 150. Tough to meet the requirement when you're playing UCA and SEMO. I doubt playing Seattle, twice, helps a lot either. Actually, not only do I know nothing about them, I don't think I've ever heard of them.

Okay. Did a little research. They are an independent who went 11-20 last season. And like I figured, their RPI of 290 (while quite a bit better that UCA-340 and SEMO-306) will certainly not help you meet the Sun Belt requirements.

Seattle was quite a power back in the days when Texas Western under Don Haskins was making NCAA history. They dropped out of Division I basketball for whatever reason for many years and have just recently come back as a provisional Division I program. They are trying to gain admittance to the WCC along with all those other Catholic Universities, and now also BYU. So far they haven't gotten in. They are rumored as a possible addition to the WAC who seems to be willing to accept just about anybody to survive.

Actually, I agree with you, now that I've seen the non conference opponents for ASU, they have upgraded from years past. Some of those teams will be very hard to beat. Other than SEMO, which sucks, the OVC teams Murray State and Austin Peay will be hard to beat. A-10 teams St. Louis and St. Bonaventure will be a very tough outs, as will Ohio and Kent State of the MAC, not to mention Louisville of the Big East.

This schedule might well be stong enough to overcome the RPI's of bottom feeders UCA, SEMO, Lamar, and Seattle to reach the required 150 number.

PTJR, I know you love the Red Wolves but they will be no where close to meeting the required 150 number. I agree that St. Louis and St. Bony will be good teams. But the numbers are based on past RPI's. While it may be based on a 3 year average, last year's numbers probably tell us a lot. The only team above 100 was Kent State at 78. The others were Murray at 117, St. Bony at 122, Austin Peay 130, Ohio at 163, St. Louis at 175. Louisville at 17, balances out one bottom feeder. None of these other schools really do that. It appears quite clear that Brady "doesn't care" about meeting the guideline.

Yeah, let's just schedule low-tier programs like Brady says. I mean, look how well that policy has helped the Sun Belt in recent years..!

(08-30-2011 04:08 PM)mjs Wrote:  It is possible that our coaches and AD would rather have played UCA, as well. Fact is, if we want to follow the concern "rules" we can't play them and keep our OOC RPI under 150. You can't balance out playing a team ranked #340, even by playing the #1 team in the country the next game. As someone mentioned, Brady apparently doesn't care about Sun Belt guidelines.

I don't have a problem following those rules, but I do have a problem with us playing a NAIA school. Don't see why playing one of those schools is okay, but you can't play a bad NCAA team. I don't want to pay to see a Philander Smith.

(08-30-2011 09:11 PM)LRTrojan Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 04:08 PM)mjs Wrote:  It is possible that our coaches and AD would rather have played UCA, as well. Fact is, if we want to follow the concern "rules" we can't play them and keep our OOC RPI under 150. You can't balance out playing a team ranked #340, even by playing the #1 team in the country the next game. As someone mentioned, Brady apparently doesn't care about Sun Belt guidelines.

I don't have a problem following those rules, but I do have a problem with us playing a NAIA school. Don't see why playing one of those schools is okay, but you can't play a bad NCAA team. I don't want to pay to see a Philander Smith.

There were years in the past were we played 3 nonDI schools- and had no where near the quality home schedule we do know. Like PTJR, I can accept a game with Philander when I'm getting a bunch of quality home games. The quality of our schedule is really pretty unbelievable, when you compare to what we had just a few years ago.

(08-30-2011 08:40 PM)mjs Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 11:54 PM)PTJR Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 11:17 PM)mjs Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 11:12 PM)mjs Wrote:  

(08-29-2011 10:54 PM)hb8 Wrote:  stAte plays: Missouri State, Kent State, SEMO, UCA, Seattle and Lyon in Jonesboro and at St. Bony, Ohio U., Louisville, Murray State, Austin Peay, St. Louis, Lamar and Seattle.

At one time the conference was going to attempt to outlaw the scheduling of non D1 teams. They backed off that. Now I think the conference requirement is that the overall non conference schedule be at a certain overall number on the RPI. I doubt our scheduling UCA will prevent us being compliant with whatever the conference requirement is or harm the conference in any way.

You're schedule looks a lot better than it has been. Still, my guess is that you are quite a ways from meeting the conference requirement of an OOC schedule with an average RPI of 150. Tough to meet the requirement when you're playing UCA and SEMO. I doubt playing Seattle, twice, helps a lot either. Actually, not only do I know nothing about them, I don't think I've ever heard of them.

Okay. Did a little research. They are an independent who went 11-20 last season. And like I figured, their RPI of 290 (while quite a bit better that UCA-340 and SEMO-306) will certainly not help you meet the Sun Belt requirements.

Seattle was quite a power back in the days when Texas Western under Don Haskins was making NCAA history. They dropped out of Division I basketball for whatever reason for many years and have just recently come back as a provisional Division I program. They are trying to gain admittance to the WCC along with all those other Catholic Universities, and now also BYU. So far they haven't gotten in. They are rumored as a possible addition to the WAC who seems to be willing to accept just about anybody to survive.

Actually, I agree with you, now that I've seen the non conference opponents for ASU, they have upgraded from years past. Some of those teams will be very hard to beat. Other than SEMO, which sucks, the OVC teams Murray State and Austin Peay will be hard to beat. A-10 teams St. Louis and St. Bonaventure will be a very tough outs, as will Ohio and Kent State of the MAC, not to mention Louisville of the Big East.

This schedule might well be stong enough to overcome the RPI's of bottom feeders UCA, SEMO, Lamar, and Seattle to reach the required 150 number.

PTJR, I know you love the Red Wolves but they will be no where close to meeting the required 150 number. I agree that St. Louis and St. Bony will be good teams. But the numbers are based on past RPI's. While it may be based on a 3 year average, last year's numbers probably tell us a lot. The only team above 100 was Kent State at 78. The others were Murray at 117, St. Bony at 122, Austin Peay 130, Ohio at 163, St. Louis at 175. Louisville at 17, balances out one bottom feeder. None of these other schools really do that. It appears quite clear that Brady "doesn't care" about meeting the guideline.

"PTJR, I know you love the Red Wolves" - Yeah, right! So does Scotto! We're starting a fan club for them right here in Little Rock and will have meetings at The Jack. Hope you will join to celebrate all the good things about ASU ---- NOT!

(08-30-2011 08:40 PM)eh9198 Wrote:  Yeah, let's just schedule low-tier programs like Brady says. I mean, look how well that policy has helped the Sun Belt in recent years..!

I think our schedule, which included Kentucky and Michigan State, among others, could afford to schedule a natural rivalry right up the road in Conway once a year, home and home. Or at least once at our home.

I'd love to play UCA, truly. But because the conference is in crisis mode and losing RPI by the minute, I'm all for the RPI requirement, and UCA doesn't factor into those plans yet.

(08-31-2011 07:18 PM)eh9198 Wrote:  I'd love to play UCA, truly. But because the conference is in crisis mode and losing RPI by the minute, I'm all for the RPI requirement, and UCA doesn't factor into those plans yet.

The question is, are we serious about trying to meet the RPI requirement? To me it appears that we are. Thus, UCA is off the table until they improve by a couple of hundred RPI spots. I guess if they improve by 100 spots, we might consider them (or have no excuse not to) since that will put them about where NW La. in right now. Back when our home schedule was made up of a bunch of SWAC schools and 3 nonDI schools, I would have been arguing to play UCA big time. At this point, I'd rather play the quality of schools we are playing, than UCA.

(08-31-2011 07:26 PM)mjs Wrote:  UCA is off the table until they improve by a couple of hundred RPI spots.

We could get there even if they don't improve, but it will have to be fitted into the overall scheme of things and balanced into the rest of the opponents, and there are more important cogs in a good schedule than playing UCA. I want to, but I can wait.

(08-31-2011 07:50 PM)MICHAELSPAPPY Wrote:  

(08-31-2011 07:26 PM)mjs Wrote:  UCA is off the table until they improve by a couple of hundred RPI spots.

We could get there even if they don't improve, but it will have to be fitted into the overall scheme of things and balanced into the rest of the opponents, and there are more important cogs in a good schedule than playing UCA. I want to, but I can wait.

It is simply possible that we don't want to schedule UCA for whatever reason. But them coming in with an RPI of 340 gives us a very rational excuse for not scheduling them. We'll see what happens if they improve in a couple of years.