I think this season will be the most competitive in a long time for C-USA. Because of that, I wanted to see if any of the contenders had a clear schedule advantage during conference play. First, I developed a rating for each team based on composite rankings from trusted sources (i.e. KenPom.) The rankings here do not include any of my biases, only algorithmic rankings. Also, I did not include RPI since I think it is too early in the season for it to be useful. I won’t get into all the raw numbers behind the scenes, just the overall rankings they produced.

Composite Rankings:
1. Louisiana Tech
2. Southern Miss
3. Charlotte
4. UAB
5. MTSU
6. UTEP
7. East Carolina
8. Tulsa
9. Marshall
10. North Texas
11. FIU
12. Old Dominion
13. Rice
14. FAU
15. Tulane
16. UTSA

The computers love Louisiana Tech and Southern Miss. The biggest gap in the raw numbers is between them and Charlotte. Next I plugged that raw scores into each team’s schedule and adjusted for where the game will be played. Every team in the conference plays almost the same schedule, so the only differences are the home/road splits and the mirror games.

Strength of Schedule (Easiest to Toughest):
1. Southern Miss
2. Louisiana Tech
3. East Carolina
4. UAB
5. North Texas
6. UTEP
7. Charlotte
8. FAU
9. Tulsa
10. Old Dominion
11. MTSU
12. FIU
13. UTSA
14. Marshall
15. Tulane
16. Rice

You might notice that the two lists are similar. This is expected for the most part, since the rankings are incestuous. Louisiana Tech has one of the easiest schedules because it doesn’t have to play itself, but everyone else has to play the top-ranked team in the conference. Rice plays them twice, which is why it has the hardest schedule. Southern Miss has the easiest schedule overall because Tulane is its mirror opponent, it doesn’t have it play itself, and it gets Louisiana Tech at home.

The differences are the interesting part. Ten teams are within three spots on both lists. The other six teams stand to be helped or harmed the most by their schedules.

FAU has the easiest schedule relative to its rankings. North Texas and East Carolina are second and third respectively. These teams stand to gain the most from their schedules.

On the other side, MTSU has the hardest schedule relative to its rankings. Marshall and Charlotte are second and third respectively. These teams may struggle to meet expectations due to tougher conference slates.

The main caveat here is that SoS will not vary much in a conference schedule that is as balanced as C-USA. The difference between the toughest schedule and say the sixth-toughest schedule isn’t that significant, but in a conference as crowded at the top as C-USA it might be enough to alter the year-end standings. Again this is all based on computer rankings, I am not hating on MTSU or Charlotte as contenders. My opinion is that both will be in the hunt regardless.

The second caveat is that the season is still young. I plan on updating these numbers again prior to the conference schedule starting on January 9. I think there is only one more non-conference game after that, so I will have a clearer picture then. Now that the algorithm is built, it will be easy to plug the updated numbers into it and have it spit out the results.

Good job but I don't think that we will finish on top this season.

do we have one of these for football

Composite Rankings:
1. Louisiana Tech
2. Southern Miss
3. Charlotte
4. UAB
5. MTSU
6. UTEP
7. East Carolina
8. Tulsa
9. Marshall
10. North Texas
11. FIU
12. Old Dominion
13. Rice
14. FAU
15. Tulane
16. UTSA

Great. so no more lip from ODU for awhile.