How To Schedule In College Basketball

The non-conference SOS argument doesn't hold much weight for teams who are solidly in the bracket.

Where it helps are for the last teams in and in differentiating top seeds (Drexel/Iona and Michigan State/Missouri). Michigan didn't need a strong non-conference slate because of their conference schedule. In most seasons, power six conference teams can get away with two to three tough non-conference games and the rest being easy wins.

Want to see why a tough non-conference schedule isn't always the best? Ask Long Beach State. Had they not won the Big West's automatic bid, they likely would not have been in the NCAA Tournament as an at large team.

The front page of MGoBlog...this is truly the most proud I have ever been for being a Towson Alum

It is very annoying - but a fact of life - that scheduling tomato cans that are the tomato cans of other tomato cans drags you down.  Alabama A&M must be replaced with Hofstra, as dumb as that sounds. 

I like that caption.

I totally agree with ND point and to add I don't understand why we never play Butler either

They just get no respect.  They are 50 feet away from Penn's campus, always get snubbed, and can't even play in Philly's fake conference. 

Not just because it would make my life really difficult, because next year they will be scary good.  Like Butler 2009 good--take it from someone who won every pool and nearly $10K from ESPN that year mostly for having them in the national championship game. </hbrag>

I remember going to watch Valpo play UM in the WNIT when I was there and it was simply weird.  Either way I was going home happy...and sad.

I didn't realize how awful the out of conference strength of schedule is as a criteria for comparison.  If the selection committe is going to rely on it, they need to do one of two things:  recalculate based on the best 5 or 6 opponents, or treat all opponents above a certain RPI number as the same.

I have always felt there should be an intangible bonus given to scheduling when there had been the possibility of a game being tough.  Maryland is a good example, IMO.  It wouldn't be surprising to see them at #25.  At least, not more surprising than at #124.  They are a big time program from a big time conference.  In that example, Iona is clearly trying to schedule a good game.  I understand that not all of the smaller schools can actually obtain contests with good schools.  But if you do, and then that school has a down year, you should still get points for trying.  Just my opinion. 

I wrote a post like this a couple weeks back and took a slightly different route (full RPI rather than simply SOS) to come to the same conclusion: Stop scheduling the dregs.  You can even schedule from the SWACs of the world, just, only once a season.  I did some RPI estimation and came up with the following (from UVA's schedule, but applies to Michigan's since we took similar routes):

- UVA scheduled two MEAC teams - and they happened to be the worst-ass ones.  If they'd scheduled the worst-ass team from practically any other conference instead of UMES (I used Radford from the Big South) it would've been worth one spot in the RPI.  That's right: you can schedule an equally shitty team from a different conference and still give yourself one RPI spot.  It's that simple.  The problem was that the entire MEAC showed up at least twice, usually three or four times, in UVA's opponents'-opponents section of the RPI.  Bad.

- If UVA had replaced Towson and SC State with Northeastern and Coppin State, it would've been worth fifteen spots in the RPI.  I picked those four teams because the first two sucked ass last year and sucked ass this year, and the latter two were medium-bad last year and medium-bad this year.  So it's obviously predictable. 

UVA would clearly have beaten both Northeastern and Coppin.  So for the same record, the same monetary price of scheduling, the same everything, fifteen places in the RPI.  That's what this is worth.  That's at least one higher seed in the tourney, depending on where you are.  Same team, same everything, higher seed, just through wiser scheduling.

Generally I agree with Brian on this.  I don't mind scheduling 1-2 tomatocans in the +250 range, but put them right at the beginning of the year almost like they're exhibition games.  Build some confidence.

But here's a question - how much swing in rankings are there from the time schedules are agreed upon?  I know it isn't as bad as football where schedules are completed years in advance, but I have to wonder how well a predicted RPI would hold up.  We thought UCLA would be a feather in our caps and they weren't to use a mediocre example. 

I would be cautious of the other end of the spectrum.  A few years ago Izzo scheduled a crazy number of top programs and I think it hurt his team early in the season. 

An anomaly in team rankings can arise because most rankings use arithmetic averages of opponent teams' SOS.  Arithmetic averages are very sensitive to extremes.  Geometric means are less so.
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To illustrate, Michigan's SOS is only midway between that of the two other schools based on the arithmetic mean rank of opponents

=156 (vs 130 for Iona and 183 for Drexel),

However, Michigan clearly has the more difficult schedule based on the geometric mean rank

= 88 (vs 110 for Iona and 146 for Drexel).

Thus, one of several ways that the selection committees can at least partly reduce the impact of very bad teams on SOS is to calculate the geometric rather than arithmetic mean of the opponent team rankings.*

*In the above calculations, I used the opponent team ranks given in the above table.  However, more complex computerized methods would ideally be used to similarly revise the SOS numbers for the opponent teams themselves.  That revision would alter the rankings given in the table.

Simple solution: all games again RPI 101-199 should be weighed equally in the SOS formula, and all games against 200+ should be weighed equally.  Only for the top 100 should there be more specific differentiation.

My system calculates SOS as the sum of the probabilities of an average tournament team (think 50th best team in the country) winning each game (opponent and location matter). In simpler terms, it's the expected losses this baseline team would have against the given schedule.

I ran the numbers for non-conference games only:

Michigan: 66th

Iona: 77th

Drexel: 274th

If you're interested in the full details of the system, you can try here and here.

-Monte

outsidethehashes.com

I always wanted to see us try and perpetuate this rivalry with them, where we've had some pretty decent performances (and awful ones as well).  Does the B1G-ACC challenge make it impossible for this to happen every year like the idea for ND?

Instead of worrying about exactly what kind of cupcakes we schedule, how about dropping some nonconference games and instead pushing for a return to a full round robin home-and-away conference schedule. I would much rather see four more conference games.  It would give more weight to the regular season conference tile and eliminate arguments about who had the weakest schedule.  It will put more fans in the seats earlier in the season.  It's good for the fans and good for the conference.

If nothing else the picture of the Obamas a classic - have to have  asense of humor - I'm sure they do