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- Aug 29, 2011
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I get through life just fine, Merry Sunshine. Here's the reality. Top 5 RPI in last year's Big EastI'm not sure how you get through life ... you are always so "worst case" kind of thought guy.
UL-3, GTown 10, Marquette 12, Notre Dame-36.
AAC Memphis 14, temple 41, UConn 49, Cincy 50, UCF 102,. Playing worse teams makes it harder to generate a high RPI which makes it harder to get a high seed, and the worse the seed, the tougher it is to make a deep run. Since 1985, 76% of Elite 8 teams have been seeded 3 or better, 70% of Sweet 16 teams have. If you are seeded 5 instead of 3 because you were stuck playing half you games against Houston, SMU, ECU, Tulane etc your chance of getting out of the 2nd round went way down.
Attendance, by the way, is influenced by many things including a weak home schedule, but also because UConn has become a post-season program. frankly, the regular season doesn't mean all that much. Win 22 games, and wake us when the real season starts. Now that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not completely. I also think that College basketball hasn't done itself any favors by extending its season to the beginning of November. Up until the mid-90s most teams started the season after Thanksgiving. The "pre-season" tournaments were that week but you could only play in 1 every 3 years. then they opened it for everyone, and opened the season on November 15. this year we opened on November 8. My guess is that within a few years we'll be opening in October. The overlap means that you are expecting your fans to essentially spend all their free time going to UConn sporting events. And they won't do that. the fact that UConn has a highly successful Womens basketball program just adds to the problem. Next weekend is a case in point. Friday night Women are home vs UCDavis, Saturday afternoon football vs memphis and Saturday night mens basketball vs Maine. Now some of these teams have there own fan bases, but there is enough overlap in to make this a real problem when seasons overlap like they do this time of year. Extending the football season into early December and beginning the basketball season earlier and earlier in November just exacerbates the problem.