(03-06-2015 11:23 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-06-2015 11:09 AM)sfink16 Wrote:  In this thread, I've seen the argument that if ECU, for example, schedules tougher games that they would accumulate more losses and still have a poor RPI. That's the downside perhaps but doesn't eliminate the possibility of upsetting a top team.

On paper, Temple wasn't supposed to beat the highly RPI Kansas team but the did. That win may be the game that sends them to the NCAA tournament.

Moral is, schedule at least some tough games and hope that you can pull out a huge win somewhere along the line. Who knows, beating a Gonzaga-like team on the road could make a season.

For me it's more the realities of how does ECU schedule tougher and still get a decent number of OOC home games. The perception of ECU basketball locally and nationally is unfortunately trash. Respectable mid major programs have zero urge to be a buy game for us, and many don't even view playing us home and home as all that attractive currently. I'm not sure how ECU can overnight change a perception that we've unfortunately earned through years of sucking. It looks to me like the only way for ECU to have a quality OOC schedule is for us to play a bunch of buy games and accept years of maybe only 3-4 OOC home games.

Take a look at Harvard's schedule in the link below. There is nothing special in their OOC schedule other then they didn't schedule any teams that are currently over 300 RPI. They got crushed by Virginia. Did that hurt them or help them?

The Ivy league is clearly worse then the AAC yet Harvard has a respectable 57 RPI, without going nuts on scheduling rdiculously hard teams.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketba...teamId/108

(03-06-2015 11:40 AM)sfink16 Wrote:  

(03-06-2015 11:23 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-06-2015 11:09 AM)sfink16 Wrote:  In this thread, I've seen the argument that if ECU, for example, schedules tougher games that they would accumulate more losses and still have a poor RPI. That's the downside perhaps but doesn't eliminate the possibility of upsetting a top team.

On paper, Temple wasn't supposed to beat the highly RPI Kansas team but the did. That win may be the game that sends them to the NCAA tournament.

Moral is, schedule at least some tough games and hope that you can pull out a huge win somewhere along the line. Who knows, beating a Gonzaga-like team on the road could make a season.

For me it's more the realities of how does ECU schedule tougher and still get a decent number of OOC home games. The perception of ECU basketball locally and nationally is unfortunately trash. Respectable mid major programs have zero urge to be a buy game for us, and many don't even view playing us home and home as all that attractive currently. I'm not sure how ECU can overnight change a perception that we've unfortunately earned through years of sucking. It looks to me like the only way for ECU to have a quality OOC schedule is for us to play a bunch of buy games and accept years of maybe only 3-4 OOC home games.

Take a look at Harvard's schedule in the link below. There is nothing special in their OOC schedule other then they didn't schedule any teams that are currently over 300 RPI. They got crushed by Virginia. Did that hurt them or help them?

The Ivy league is clearly worse then the AAC yet Harvard has a respectable 57 RPI, without going nuts on scheduling rdiculously hard teams.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketba...teamId/108

Well first of all what's killing ECU's RPI is being bad at the beginning of the year and losing to 4 sub 200 RPI teams. ECU played a buy game at UNC and got crushed, which is fine that doesn't really hurt the RPI in any way. The other thing that's killing ECU's RPI is our horrendous road record. Road wins even against bad teams are worth a lot more, but being 1-10 on the road is crushing. ECU got healthy and got better about mid way through the conference season, but by that point ECU's RPI was cemented as being terrible no matter what happened. Ideally ECU should probably play 2 buy games a year and use that money to try to buy 2 slightly higher quality home opponents, but again you have to get those teams to agree to be buy games for ECU and that's not as easy as it sounds.

(03-06-2015 11:56 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-06-2015 11:40 AM)sfink16 Wrote:  

(03-06-2015 11:23 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(03-06-2015 11:09 AM)sfink16 Wrote:  In this thread, I've seen the argument that if ECU, for example, schedules tougher games that they would accumulate more losses and still have a poor RPI. That's the downside perhaps but doesn't eliminate the possibility of upsetting a top team.

On paper, Temple wasn't supposed to beat the highly RPI Kansas team but the did. That win may be the game that sends them to the NCAA tournament.

Moral is, schedule at least some tough games and hope that you can pull out a huge win somewhere along the line. Who knows, beating a Gonzaga-like team on the road could make a season.

For me it's more the realities of how does ECU schedule tougher and still get a decent number of OOC home games. The perception of ECU basketball locally and nationally is unfortunately trash. Respectable mid major programs have zero urge to be a buy game for us, and many don't even view playing us home and home as all that attractive currently. I'm not sure how ECU can overnight change a perception that we've unfortunately earned through years of sucking. It looks to me like the only way for ECU to have a quality OOC schedule is for us to play a bunch of buy games and accept years of maybe only 3-4 OOC home games.

Take a look at Harvard's schedule in the link below. There is nothing special in their OOC schedule other then they didn't schedule any teams that are currently over 300 RPI. They got crushed by Virginia. Did that hurt them or help them?

The Ivy league is clearly worse then the AAC yet Harvard has a respectable 57 RPI, without going nuts on scheduling rdiculously hard teams.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketba...teamId/108

Well first of all what's killing ECU's RPI is being bad at the beginning of the year and losing to 4 sub 200 RPI teams. ECU played a buy game at UNC and got crushed, which is fine that doesn't really hurt the RPI in any way. The other thing that's killing ECU's RPI is our horrendous road record. Road wins even against bad teams are worth a lot more, but being 1-10 on the road is crushing. ECU got healthy and got better about mid way through the conference season, but by that point ECU's RPI was cemented as being terrible no matter what happened. Ideally ECU should probably play 2 buy games a year and use that money to try to buy 2 slightly higher quality home opponents, but again you have to get those teams to agree to be buy games for ECU and that's not as easy as it sounds.

It should be easier though since now many of our games are on tv. In the past if we offered a buy game, the opponent wouldn't even be on tv, now there is a greater likelihood that they could be.

For the record....Houston's RPI is due to our old balls coach who up and left, which im not complaining, and only had 1 team scheduled to play. So by the time Sampson got in, most teams had a scheduled filled already.

I imagine we will be a much improved schedule next year and once he get his players in, it's game on in 2016.

(03-05-2015 10:31 AM)TIGERCITY Wrote:  Not only hurts the RPIs of other teams in the conference but the perception of the conference as a whole. Other conferences have scheduling requirements for it's members. Is there anything in the works for this conference and scheduling?

OOC SOS:

ECU 300
UCF 319
Tulane 326
Houston 330

According to ESPN and the Selection Committee Temple would have been the 'next team selected' for the NCAA Tournament. That's a lot of money. It should be clear now to Aresco that some scheduling rules need to be put into place. Frankly, if this isn't addressed in the off season I'd expect to hear of some reason why. No excuses.

Should demand better

(03-05-2015 10:42 AM)Insane_Baboon Wrote:  I haven't heard anything about this being in the works.

I bet we will hear about it in the near future.

Temple had two bad non-conf losses to teams that weren't even .500 in their conf:

St Joseph's (6-11) and UNLV (7-10).

If Temple wins one of even both of those games...they slide into the NCAA with an at-large.

(03-15-2015 09:25 PM)TIGERCITY Wrote:  

(03-05-2015 10:31 AM)TIGERCITY Wrote:  Not only hurts the RPIs of other teams in the conference but the perception of the conference as a whole. Other conferences have scheduling requirements for it's members. Is there anything in the works for this conference and scheduling?

OOC SOS:

ECU 300
UCF 319
Tulane 326
Houston 330

According to ESPN and the Selection Committee Temple would have been the 'next team selected' for the NCAA Tournament. That's a lot of money. It should be clear now to Aresco that some scheduling rules need to be put into place. Frankly, if this isn't addressed in the off season I'd expect to hear of some reason why. No excuses.

If the top 5 teams win a total of 7 more games SOS would have been better.

You nailed it. A huge problem for the top half of the conference. A big factor that doomed Temple. The top half just have to keep playing strong OOC road games.
For this league to be a success in hoops, the bottom half has to step it up in a big way.

(03-05-2015 10:31 AM)TIGERCITY Wrote:  Not only hurts the RPIs of other teams in the conference but the perception of the conference as a whole. Other conferences have scheduling requirements for it's members. Is there anything in the works for this conference and scheduling?

OOC SOS:

ECU 300
UCF 319
Tulane 326
Houston 330

Will VCU all of a sudden not do a home and home with us like they would 5-6 years ago?

RPI of non ACC teams we could play

VCU-14
Davidson-33
ODU-45
Wofford-48
Richmond-59
George Washington-83
High Point-87
South Carolina-91
William and Mary-95

We have played all of these teams home and homes in the past, and its hard for me to believe any of these teams are suddenly too good to play us. Or that they dont want to play us because we arent as bad as we used to be, except maybe VCU but I have no idea. Lebo is clearly trying to pad his win total, and in all reality its worked for him

(03-16-2015 07:03 AM)KnightLight Wrote:  Temple had two bad non-conf losses to teams that weren't even .500 in their conf:

St Joseph's (6-11) and UNLV (7-10).

If Temple wins one of even both of those games...they slide into the NCAA with an at-large.

They also beat the brakes off Kansas. There's no doubt that some of our OOC scheduling is a problem.

Have you boys even thought that 95% of college teams won't even play teams like this, and I know because we have been one for years, either home it away? With our moderate success under Donnie Tyndall, it made a tough scheduling job near impossible. You guys at the top of the chain don't have that problem.

(03-05-2015 10:31 AM)TIGERCITY Wrote:  Not only hurts the RPIs of other teams in the conference but the perception of the conference as a whole. Other conferences have scheduling requirements for it's members. Is there anything in the works for this conference and scheduling?

OOC SOS:

ECU 300
UCF 319
Tulane 326
Houston 330

This right here is why Temple and Tulsa didnt get the benefit of the doubt. Not flaming, just being real.

(03-05-2015 07:45 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  

(03-05-2015 06:59 PM)200yrs2late Wrote:  

(03-05-2015 06:50 PM)TIGERCITY Wrote:  We have four teams - 4 - with OOC RPIs of 300 or more. Four teams -- that's almost half of the conference. Schedule out all of those bottom dweller RPI teams played OOC and the entire conference's RPI gets better. We play each other more than we play anyone else --- AT LEAST twice a season. Hell - ECU has played two in the bottom 10 of the 351 teams just this season. Drop them for starts.

Correct me if im wrong, but this is ECU's first year in the AAC and this schedule was already set from CUSA days. Hopefully scheduling will improve in the next year or so and at the same time ECU won't have such bad starts to the year.

I know ECU's rpi is bad, but there aren't many here that would have thought ECU would split with Memphis and Cincy, and play UConn tough twice. Bad rpi and all, ECU has been a tough win for the most part and won't be a detriment to the conference for long.

You are wrong about that. Basketball schedules aren't set as far out as football. We had several openings where we could have better opponents. In other words, It was wasn't set prior to the AAC all sport invite.

Actually some portions of OOC schedules are from prior years, because of retun game obligations and the like. In all honesty though ECU scheduling is kind of lazy. If the ECU football team is playing VT every year then why is there no basketball series? Charlotte and ODU should be on ECU's schedule almost every year. Wake Forest, NCSU, Clemson, South Carolina and a bunch of other major programs are nearby as well. So what if ECU has to give a 3 for 2; you have to take those deals.

(03-16-2015 07:03 AM)KnightLight Wrote:  Temple had two bad non-conf losses to teams that weren't even .500 in their conf:

St Joseph's (6-11) and UNLV (7-10).

If Temple wins one of even both of those games...they slide into the NCAA with an at-large.

St. Josephs is a Philadelphia Big 5 game that has been scheduled every year for what seems like forever. They play a round robin series with Villanova, LaSalle, St. Josephs, and Penn each year. These teams know each other very well. Like conference play, you can throw out the records of the teams.

Temple leads the number of all time seasonal wins or shares with 27 and Villanova is second with 23.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Big_5

(03-16-2015 08:27 AM)Bearcats#1 Wrote:  

(03-05-2015 10:31 AM)TIGERCITY Wrote:  Not only hurts the RPIs of other teams in the conference but the perception of the conference as a whole. Other conferences have scheduling requirements for it's members. Is there anything in the works for this conference and scheduling?

OOC SOS:

ECU 300
UCF 319
Tulane 326
Houston 330

This right here is why Temple and Tulsa didnt get the benefit of the doubt. Not flaming, just being real.

Five teams in the AAC finished with overall RPIs worse than 200. That's about half of the conference membership. Ten games on your regular schedule. If teams like Temple were looking for the benefit of a doubt that certainly wasn't a help.

"[NCAA Selection] Committee chair Scott Barnes, said Sunday the RPI will help pool which teams deserve to be in consideration together, but it's not a determining factor for who gets in."

That's what the committee thinks about "RPI."

I don't disagree that scheduling needs to improve, but if you think the bottom teams are going to schedule tough just to make you guys look better, you're just effing stupid.

I don't think UCF will ever schedule very well as long as Donnie Jones us there. He loves to pad his win total with cupcakes (and we couldn't even do that this year) under the guise of "building confidence." Then we crap the bed in conference because we're ill prepared for the more physical style of play.

(03-06-2015 10:58 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  ECU can't get "buy" games against the MAC, C-USA, Horizon, etc for a whole host of different reasons. ECU is only one year removed from being a "mid major" and has always been an awful mid major. Expecting decent mid majors to be agreeable to buy games with us is asking a lot. So for ECU unfortunately in the short term until perception changes it's either play very few home OOC games or be forced to have some low major buy games.

That's a cop out. From the late 90's until Lebo got here we often got quality opponents to minges, usually about 1 P5 at least a year. Georgia, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Ole Miss, Seton Hall (snowed out), South Carolina, Colorado State, NC State, Wake Forest, George Washington, VCU etc etc just off the top of my head. He doesn't want to put together decent schedules. That's the bottomline and there is no defending any of the pathetic schedules we have had.

(03-16-2015 07:57 AM)gopirates11 Wrote:  Will VCU all of a sudden not do a home and home with us like they would 5-6 years ago?

RPI of non ACC teams we could play

VCU-14
Davidson-33
ODU-45
Wofford-48
Richmond-59
George Washington-83
High Point-87
South Carolina-91
William and Mary-95

We have played all of these teams home and homes in the past, and its hard for me to believe any of these teams are suddenly too good to play us. Or that they dont want to play us because we arent as bad as we used to be, except maybe VCU but I have no idea. Lebo is clearly trying to pad his win total, and in all reality its worked for him

I completely agree with you. It is so frustrating seeing our apathy on the basketball side of things. I really hope the league lays into ECU about our scheduling and start stepping it up. Maybe if we play better competition we will also see improved recruiting. I mean seriously, what recruit gets excited to play Univ of Virginia at Wise (yes that's a real school we played recently).

Even if it means going on the road more to play teams like State, UVA, UNC, etc. then we need to do it.