Feeding on the bottom feeders

[Plebe]

In a separate thread I looked at how the elite teams of WCBB trail far behind their volleyball counterparts in scheduling marquee OOC matchups.

I went ahead and looked at the other end of the spectrum: how frequently the top 10 teams in both sports schedule weak nonconference opponents. The contrast is similarly stark.

 

[Plebe]

And here's the breakdown of the WCBB top 10 (per AP poll):

 

[DefenseBB]

I see you have added an aggregate total column to showing many teams with 5 and Oregon State with 6! Ok, I need my esteemed colleague @LoTrader to help us understand why his quality coach is doing this disservice to his program he is building. Aspire to be more like Geno and NOT Kim, Vic or Brenda.
So with @Plebe clarifying my understanding (thank you) I have edited my comments above!

 

[Plebe]

I wish you would have added a total column to show the aggregate with MSU having 14 (so yes Vic is a wimp!), Baylor-12, Ore State-12, Maryland-11 showing similar wimpyness. Thus making SC’s 9 patheticness looking downright Herculean. I am sure our colleagues will try to defend this deploredness with much illogic to make themselves feel better and tout some defense wizardry on how well they defend as a positive.

Well, these aren't discrete intervals so that wouldn't be an aggregate. Each column going left to right represents an increasingly broad range of teams -- the bottom 20% is included in the bottom 35%, etc.

 

[jonson]

I wonder if it might be telling as well to track the number of true road games and games on a neutral court vs. home games for each of these teams? For Oregon, the numbers are 3, 3, and 6; for Baylor 1, 3, and 8; for UCONN 6, 0, and 6: and so on.

 

[LoTrader]

I see you have added an aggregate total column to showing many teams with 5 and Oregon State with 6! Ok, I need my esteemed colleague @LoTrader to help us understand why his quality coach is doing this disservice to his program he is building. Aspire to be more like Geno and NOT Kim, Vic or Brenda.
So with @Plebe clarifying my understanding (thank you) I have edited my comments above!

I cannot comment re: what I don't understand.

 

[nwhoopfan]

I cannot comment re: what I don't understand.

OSU should play bad teams from P5 conferences like UConn has been doing so far maybe?

 

[Lorcan]

I think it’s also tricky. If Geno didn’t have the conference that he has, would he be more inclined to schedule some cupcakes to let some fresh meat hit the floor and get good video against other teams?

Would you want teams like Stanford to not play teams that the coaches have a close connection to like San Francisco or UC Davis?

Northern Colorado was supposed to be on the upswing before Etheridge left, and they still will be alright. Cal Baptist, Stanford didn’t have control over and they are 6-0. It’s hard to fault Stanford.

I guess it’s hard, because if you added in conference affiliation, UConn I would imagine would be close to the top.

 

[Lorcan]

I went back and did some research. In the 2012-2013 National Championship Season the Huskies played the following while still in the Big East:

#164 College of Charleston
#161 Wake Forest
#236 Colgate
#292 Oakland
#255 Oregon (Yes, they were THIS bad back then.)

Stanford by comparison played:

#160 Santa Clara
#149 Hawai'i
#181 Long Beach State
#211 UC Davis

As a fan, I absolutely support the idea that teams should be scheduling up to tougher teams -- but sometimes it's a privilege for some of these teams to play in front of fans in Starkville, Storrs, Maples, and other arenas. I also might speculate that teams like Oregon State have a MUCH harder time finding quality opponents that are within reasonable travelling distance on a yearly basis as opposed to Virginia who can drive to plenty of schools.

#66 Virginia Tech
#110 Old Dominion
#37 James Madison
#54. Georgetown
#77 Radford
#75 American

That's just off the top of my head. There may be other schools I'm not thinking of. Oregon by comparison has....

#104 Portland State.

So, yes, we can nitpick Mississippi State's cupcakes, but I will always defend teams out West given the huge challenges of scheduling these teams face while maybe only being able to make an east coast swing once or twice a year. I don't exactly know what the answer is apart from looking more into how often quality teams from the east make the trip west.

 

[DEpup]

OSU should play bad teams from P5 conferences like UConn has been doing so far maybe?

I'm not sure those P5 schools UConn is playing are that bad....

 

[DaBball]

I went back and did some research. In the 2012-2013 National Championship Season the Huskies played the following while still in the Big East:

#164 College of Charleston
#161 Wake Forest
#236 Colgate
#292 Oakland
#255 Oregon (Yes, they were THIS bad back then.)

Stanford by comparison played:

#160 Santa Clara
#149 Hawai'i
#181 Long Beach State
#211 UC Davis

As a fan, I absolutely support the idea that teams should be scheduling up to tougher teams -- but sometimes it's a privilege for some of these teams to play in front of fans in Starkville, Storrs, Maples, and other arenas. I also might speculate that teams like Oregon State have a MUCH harder time finding quality opponents that are within reasonable travelling distance on a yearly basis as opposed to Virginia who can drive to plenty of schools.

#66 Virginia Tech
#110 Old Dominion
#37 James Madison
#54. Georgetown
#77 Radford
#75 American

That's just off the top of my head. There may be other schools I'm not thinking of. Oregon by comparison has....

#104 Portland State.

So, yes, we can nitpick Mississippi State's cupcakes, but I will always defend teams out West given the huge challenges of scheduling these teams face while maybe only being able to make an east coast swing once or twice a year. I don't exactly know what the answer is apart from looking more into how often quality teams from the east make the trip west.

I thought Geno NEVER scheduled easy teams regardless of what conference he was in. Clearly, not the case.

 

[nwhoopfan]

I'm not sure those P5 schools UConn is playing are that bad....

Cal certainly made a case today. I wasn't really including Ohio St. in this. We'll have to wait and see about Virginia and Vandy.

 

[Lorcan]

I also have a question on the data. Which rankings are you using? RealtimeRPI for this season or the end of season RPI for Women's Basketball last year?

 

[Gamecockfan77]

I am a little embarrassed at scheduling Clemson but they are an instate school that really enjoys the chance to get a shot at the flagship university of the state.

I think it's worthwhile to play those sorts of games.

 

[Plebe]

I also have a question on the data. Which rankings are you using? RealtimeRPI for this season or the end of season RPI for Women's Basketball last year?

Season-ending RPI from last season. Obviously, that's a limitation. Will be interesting to revisit this data set later in the season with current RPI or Massey rankings.

 

[Lorcan]

Season-ending RPI from last season. Obviously, that's a limitation. Will be interesting to revisit this data set later in the season with current RPI or Massey rankings.

That's interesting. By using the arbitrary cutoff of 123, you conveniently make it so that UConn only has two instead of three. It sticks out to me that Dayton is only ahead of #123 Youngstown State by .002 RPI points, and it conveniently makes your case!

#122 Dayton
#154 Oklahoma
#210 Vanderbilt

It will be interesting to see if UConn does better in the SOS this season, as last year they played #210 Vanderbilt, #183 St. Louis, #237 Ole Miss, #154. Oklahoma which combined with the American resulted in the #20 strongest schedule in the nation. In contrast, Stanford was #4, Iowa was #5 despite being in the BIG, Oregon St. was ranked #40 with all their cupcakes. I don't see the SOS hurting Oregon State until they get bumped a seed line in the tourney due to their RPI or Schedule. Mississippi State eked them out for #39. Georgetown, Marquette, and Kansas State all supposedly had tougher overall schedules than the mighty Huskies out of Storrs strictly according to the numbers despite UConn's willingness to play the top teams. Playing in the Big East should restore some normalcy to these numbers for the Huskies.

 

[Plebe]

That's interesting. By using the arbitrary cutoff of 123, you conveniently make it so that UConn only has two instead of three. It sticks out to me that Dayton is only ahead of #123 Youngstown State by .002 RPI points, and it conveniently makes your case!

Good grief.

Any cutoff is arbitrary by definition. To mitigate the arbitrariness, I decided ahead of time, before looking at any of the actual data points, to survey multiple percentiles — in this case, the bottom 20%, 35%, 50% and 65% — and each percentile was given equal treatment. Most teams had multiple data points near one or another threshold.

Would you like me to add another column for the bottom 80%? I'm happy to, if that would be helpful.

 

[Lorcan]

Good grief.

Any cutoff is arbitrary by definition. To mitigate the arbitrariness, I decided ahead of time, before looking at any of the actual data points, to survey multiple percentiles — in this case, the bottom 20%, 35%, 50% and 65% — and each percentile was given equal treatment. Most teams had multiple data points near one or another threshold.

Would you like me to add another column for the bottom 80%? I'm happy to, if that would be helpful.

I was just toying with you. I understand that there is a need for some arbitrariness, I was just laughing that this number that you chose helped you make your case. I didn't mean to be nitpicky, and I guess that I should've made that more clear!

 

[Plebe]

I was just toying with you. I understand that there is a need for some arbitrariness, I was just laughing that this number that you chose helped you make your case. I didn't mean to be nitpicky, and I guess that I should've made that more clear!

To be honest I wasn't thinking about UConn at all. As you can see from my highlighting, I was keener on pointing out which teams were playing the most games against weak teams.

 

[Moose]

Well, I see it a bit differently. Some teams are stuck in weak conferences and only have a chance at the NCAA tournament if they get the automatic bid OR knock off a big fish in out of conference games. Think of Quinnipiac during the Marist years. Give the little guys a chance - put 'em on the schedule.

 

[Undercovervol]

I think teams schedule cupcakes to work on execution, build confidence, and work on defense. They aren't meaningless games, but no one would call them entertaining, unless you're a homer fan. Football does the same thing.
I also think teams schedule cupcakes to lessen the chance of injuries. I would say that injuries are most likely in practice and in tough, competitive, physical games. Usually lopsided games aren't physical at all, so the risk of injury is less.

 

[Undercovervol]

At the end of the day tough schedules probably only benefit you, with some exceptions. I think if you don't have a deep team, maybe you shouldn't play the deepest schedule and therefore save yourself for the tournament. I honestly thought that UConn could've benefited from a lighter schedule the last few years when they were only playing 6 for most games. UConn looked (understandably) tired in several big games last season, like the Baylor game and even the Texas game.

 

[Plebe]

At the end of the day tough schedules probably only benefit you, with some exceptions. I think if you don't have a deep team, maybe you shouldn't play the deepest schedule and therefore save yourself for the tournament. I honestly thought that UConn could've benefited from a lighter schedule the last few years when they were only playing 6 for most games. UConn looked (understandably) tired in several big games last season, like the Baylor game and even the Texas game.

UConn didn't play Texas last season.

It's easy to second-guess in hindsight. Notre Dame played only 6 in 2018 and still managed to peak for the big games.

What's not easy is predicting a year or two in advance (in time to schedule accordingly) that you'll only have a 6-player rotation. At least I sure hope that wasn't Geno's intention.

 

[DallasBUFan]

UConn didn't play Texas last season.

It's easy to second-guess in hindsight. Notre Dame played only 6 in 2018 and still managed to peak for the big games.

What's not easy is predicting a year or two in advance (in time to schedule accordingly) that you'll only have a 6-player rotation. At least I sure hope that wasn't Geno's intention.

Can't the same almost be said about scheduling? Between injuries, transfers, etc? I mean anyone who scheduled UT or ND last year was not expecting them to be in the situations they are in.

 

[meyers7]

I went back and did some research. In the 2012-2013 National Championship Season the Huskies played the following while still in the Big East:

#164 College of Charleston
#161 Wake Forest
#236 Colgate
#292 Oakland
#255 Oregon (Yes, they were THIS bad back then.)

I thought Geno NEVER scheduled easy teams regardless of what conference he was in. Clearly, not the case.

Just for some clarification, both Wake Forest and Oregon are P5 although they weren't very good. Also Wake Forest was from the Virgin Island Tourney, where UCONN really didn't schedule Wake. And the Oregon game was a Knight (Nike) Classic which wasn't so much for cupcakes as for Corporate goodwill.

 

[Gamecockfan77]

The great thing about college basketball is that playing games against great teams is an almost no lose scenario.

You can only get credit for it. No demerits.

That's what I don't understand schools that don't look to push themselves. The act of playing the games is helpful to recruiting.

South Carolina has a bunch of good genes this year and play 7 of the first 10 away from home. Awfully challenging for a young team, but when it is done, it should look like a downhill finish.

 

[DEpup]

That's interesting. By using the arbitrary cutoff of 123, you conveniently make it so that UConn only has two instead of three. It sticks out to me that Dayton is only ahead of #123 Youngstown State by .002 RPI points, and it conveniently makes your case!

#122 Dayton
#154 Oklahoma
#210 Vanderbilt

It will be interesting to see if UConn does better in the SOS this season, as last year they played #210 Vanderbilt, #183 St. Louis, #237 Ole Miss, #154. Oklahoma which combined with the American resulted in the #20 strongest schedule in the nation. In contrast, Stanford was #4, Iowa was #5 despite being in the BIG, Oregon St. was ranked #40 with all their cupcakes. I don't see the SOS hurting Oregon State until they get bumped a seed line in the tourney due to their RPI or Schedule. Mississippi State eked them out for #39. Georgetown, Marquette, and Kansas State all supposedly had tougher overall schedules than the mighty Huskies out of Storrs strictly according to the numbers despite UConn's willingness to play the top teams. Playing in the Big East should restore some normalcy to these numbers for the Huskies.

I think we may just have to bake in the homecoming games and not fret about them... Vanderbilt and St. Louis for instance are on the schedule for a reason. In addition, VA is on the schedule for Walker next year. They are what they are and I bet Geno just has to take what he can get for these. I'd hate to see us stop doing the homecoming games.

 

[JonathanXIV]

I think we may just have to bake in the homecoming games and not fret about them... Vanderbilt and St. Louis for instance are on the schedule for a reason. In addition, VA is on the schedule for Walker next year. They are what they are and I bet Geno just has to take what he can get for these. I'd hate to see us stop doing the homecoming games.

And homecoming games aren't always in our control. Remember when we tried to play Syracuse for Stewie's homecoming game and they refused our request. We ended up playing at Cornell. But Karma can be sweet, as we played and beat up Syracuse in the Final Four that year.