Full MBB non-conference schedule announced
There was a thread on the Cazzie game yesterday but nothing showing the entire non-conference schedule.
Some exciting names on here.
| Date | Opponent | Time/TV |
| 11/4 | vs Armstrong State (ex) | TBA |
| 2K Sports Classic | ||
| 11/11 | vs Howard | TBA |
| 11/13 | vs IUPUI | TBA |
| 11/17 | Marquette# | 9:30pm/ESPN2 |
| 11/18 | Pittsburgh/SMU# | TBD/ESPN2 |
| 11/23 | at South Carolina | TBA |
| 11/26 | vs Mount St. Mary's | TBA |
| B1G/ACC Challenge | ||
| 11/30 | vs Virginia Tech | TBA |
| 12/3 | vs Kennesaw State | TBA |
| 12/6 | vs Texas | TBA |
| 12/10 | at UCLA | TBA |
| 12/13 | vs Central Arkansas | TBA |
| 12/17 | vs UMES | TBA |
| 12/22 | vs Furman | TBA |
Our conference slate-
- Home & Road games with Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, Nebraska, Wisconsin
- Single Home games with Maryland, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue
- Single Road games with Iowa, Minnesota, Northwesten, Rutgers
they apparently have never heard of the RPI
Just awful. 300+ RPI teams kill your NCAA resume. They need to schedule more MAC, Horizon, Sun Belt schools (i.e. mid to high 100 RPIs).
Michigan's RPI will go down after it (knock on wood) beats the Howards of its schedule.
which also means that it will go down further when you beat an even more inferior opponent (I assume by "go down" you mean get worse...because beating a 300+ RPI team doesn't do you much good)
RPI is your winning %, your opponents' winning %, and the opponents' opponents' winning %. So, small schools are likely to lose a lot (get whooped in the non-conference and then stink in their own conference) and have a low winning %. That hurts you. The people your small opponents play will also have a lower winning % as they'll get their butts kicked in the non-conference (they're sacrificial lambs to the big conferences too), though the winning % of either your opponent or the opponent's opponents may be evened out during conference play since somebody has to win the small conference title.
Basically, you want to play winners and winners who play other winners. Those schools are in larger conferences, by and large.
I meant "get worse."
Michitgan plays in a great conference. It's non-conference slate has seven "warm-up" games and six games against "legit" opponents. A 10-3 or 11-2 record going into Big Ten play will be more than enough to let Michigan determinte their tournament position by their performance in the conference.
I like the idea of this team havingn a few "breathers" before teh grind of conference play begins. It would be ince to see them get through a season healthy for once.
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From start to finish. You thinking losing a couple more games vs better teams compared to beating garbage teams would have made any difference?
If you are good enough to make the tournament, it doesn't matter what you do in non-conference, the conference stuff truly matters. Maybe a weak schedule gets a great time a slightly lower seed, but that ultimately doesn't matter.
Win, get in. Michigan deserved to be in the play-in game last season, no matter who they had in the non.
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in the pre-big ten, 2 at home, 2 on road, 2 neutral and a nice big ten road single shake out
agree with above comment that we seem to lack a bit in RPI, we either play 200-300 level team or top 50ish teams with nothing in between
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I knew I was going to be disappointed before I even clicked on the thread.
Why?
Marquette, Pitt or SMU, South Carolina, VTech, Texas & UCLA. What teams play more than 6 other P5 teams in the non-conf? Seems like a significant upgrade from last year to me.
Those are all pretty good teams that we still have a good shot at beating. Isn't that the non-conf cheat code everyone was looking for?
really. The issue is that we schedule teams that actively work against our RPI. We have to fill the schedule with some "cupcakes" but it is counter-productive and frankly irrational to have your cupcakes be "no-win" scenarios. If you schedule teams that are around 100-150, you stand a slightly higher chance of being upset but even that is less damaging than playing some of teams we schedule.
It is a good non-conference schedule in terms of some of the matchups, but it is again the kind of non-conference schedule that can work against you if you find yourself near the bubble.
...or a student, that's not an exciting home schedule. VTech hasn't been to the NCAA tournament since 2007, so it's understandable for people to not be excited about a team that "might" be good. Texas is a good name program, but that's a midweek game right before finals. Why not play it on Saturday like the we did during the Duke series or when we hosted Arizona and UCLA?
In terms of other teams' schedules, MSU plays Arizona, Kentucky and Duke. They are in the Bahamas tournament where Louisville and three other tournament teams from last year are in it. I think it's important to have a non-conference schedule that is comparable or better than what our chief in-state competition for recruits has.
And this pretty much sums it up. I hope Warde understands this perspective better than Dave.
This is a very weak schedule with - basically - one marquee non-conference game (Texas). Admittedly though, I did just yonder to OSU's site to check their schedule and it appears to be equally crappy. On the same token, MSU's is legit.
Blah.
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UCLA called -- they wanted to let you know their non-marquee program just the biggest athletics dept deal (w Under Armour) in NCAA history a couple months ago.
Yes, big name. They finished 6-12 in the pac12 last year. The issue is how our rpi sucks every year.
That is crazy. They had one bad year. They are a top 5 program in the history of college basketball.
But who cares about history; let's look at next year and why scheduling UCLA should be good for our RPI:
http://collegebasketball.nbcsports.com/2016/05/26/the-nbc-sports-2016-1… (UCLA #15)
http://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/duke-is-no-1-in-the-ri… (UCLA #11)
...etc
I'm not thrilled about UM playing Furman either. But to complain about playing UCLA, a team universally expected to be better than UM, and has a history basically only exceeded by Kentucky, Kansas, NC and Duke? Get some perspective.
is a certain L. We don't fair well against teams with obnoxiously long acronyms.
that there's only 1 day off after the brutal matchup with Howard, and this is a suicide mission
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Was the following. And it's how I view the schedule too (woof).
Did Cincy want to reschedule the bball games? I don't see anything on UM's schedule that would give the players a prolonged break for finals.
Like others, I am intrigued to see play the likes of Marquette, Texas, UCLA and a few others, but again it seems like we run into the problem of following up chances to build tournament resumes with game that don't seem like they would count for much towards that. I would agree with the person that said even changing some of the low RPI teams out with some MAC opponents would probably make a world of difference. I am really only guessing there, but it seems like we undersold ourselves on the OOC schedule.
This is from an article discussing how Texas Tech manipulated it's RPI a few seasons ago with a not so great team:
1. Avoid Road Games Like The Plague*
*1A. Road games are okay if they are against truly elite (Top 15 or so) teams.
2. Avoid playing the dregs of Division I (RPI 250+).
2A. If you require a couple of true "cupcake" games, try to replace them with non-Division I opponents and with .500+ teams from bad conferences.
3. Schedule as many home games as you can against RPI Top 50 opponents.
We don't do a very good job of this. There are so many D1 basketball schools, it shouldn't be very difficult to pay teams that win more than 3 or 4 games per season in terrible conferences to come to Ann Arbor. Why don't we play any local teams? Oakland? Toledo? It is not rocket science.
Personally I hate it; I think we should be playing at least 6 Michigan teams a year from Oakland to the Titans to eastern western, MSU on through central
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It's too bad. After the EMU loss, though, it's hard to see them playing any of the smaller state schools (except D-II ones like Northern).
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