How big is this Cincy game?

[intlzncster]

Getting out and running would be huge too but not convince that's in the DNA. My sense is Coach Miller has won the zone debate - I am not a big fan of UConn playing zones - and for every defensive liability it covers up - I hope it doesn't make us too passive.

What are you on about? You have a hard on about Miller and this zone. EOD, we are still predominantly man to man, with a sprinkle of zone. And if Ollie didn't think a zone was the way to go, he wouldn't do it. Nothing to do with Miller winning some mythical debate. When did Glen Miller become some zone disciple? I missed that one.

 

[Stainmaster]

What are you on about? You have a hard on about Miller and this zone. EOD, we are still predominantly man to man, with a sprinkle of zone. And if Ollie didn't think a zone was the way to go, he wouldn't do it. Nothing to do with Miller winning some mythical debate. When did Glen Miller become some zone disciple? I missed that one.

Given how much Chief complains about it, I don't understand why he doesn't just put a call in to KO's office and overrule Miller.

 

[intlzncster]

You should tweet that at Bilas.

Why? What's his take?

And what's the deal with RPI? Does the NCAA have some sort of trademark on it? Why does the committee keep using it, when everybody and their dog knows it's a sh!te metric?

Why don't I run things?

 

[SixRings]

 

[intlzncster]

Given how much Chief complains about it, I don't understand why he doesn't just put a call in to KO's office and overrule Miller.

Better yet, get him fired and replaced with Clyde. Why hasn't this been done?

 

[gtcam]

I look at it as a must win in this context - this team seems doomed to have one (at least thats all i hope it is) WTF loss to USF or that ilk.
This win would, in my opinion, overshadow one of those blips.
These are the games that seperate the has from the has nots, the men from the boys.....
Protect the home turf

 

[intlzncster]

I think we all agree that we should schedule more middle-of-the-road teams rather than absolute garbage teams, but the trick is predicting them in advance.

It's hindsight to say that X team with a 250 RPI shouldn't have been scheduled, but the trick is to predict what their RPI will be years in advance.

Sure, some teams are more or less likely to fall into a certain range, but we all know how hard it is to even predict the performance of some of our conference foes even as close as midnight madness.

Think about how hard it is to predict the top 50 each year, and that's with everybody in America paying attention. Those teams are all on TV, all scouted, followed, covered blogged. Now try to rank the bottom 100 teams or so. What with not watching them, nor knowing their personnel, changeover, coaching, etc, it's damn near impossible to do imo.

Honestly, it's even harder than people imagine, getting it to work out with both monetarily and schedule-wise between both programs. And obviously, it gets harder to pick and choose the more games you add (ie the more full your schedule becomes) each season.

The solution, is that you shoot even higher into that mid major bracket. But then you are setting yourself up for way more losses and less home games. It's a tough nut to crack.

 

[SirHypeAlot]

It's a must win and there should be no argument it isn't

 

[upstater]

Yeah, it's crazy.

Using RPI Wizard, I took out 5 of the 200+ teams (Western Carolina, Robert Morris, Arkansas Pine Bluff, Southeastern Louisiana and Morgan St.) and added 5 teams currently ranked 195-199 in RPI (Western Kentucky, NJIT, Hampton, Furman, and Western Michigan).

SOS for Cinci went from 92 to 38. RPI went from 59 to 27. Kind of absurd.

And there you go. Proof positive.

Just schedule NJIT instead of Robert Morris.

 

[Tenspro2002]

Yeah, it's crazy.

Using RPI Wizard, I took out 5 of the 200+ teams (Western Carolina, Robert Morris, Arkansas Pine Bluff, Southeastern Louisiana and Morgan St.) and added 5 teams currently ranked 195-199 in RPI (Western Kentucky, NJIT, Hampton, Furman, and Western Michigan).

SOS for Cinci went from 92 to 38. RPI went from 59 to 27. Kind of absurd.

This analysis is brilliant. I'm sure the story is the same for us, if you replace our sub-250 teams with those in the 150-200 range.

We can complain all we want about how absurd it is that the RPI works this way. The point is, the RPI works this way, and it's the primary tool the Committee uses to evaluate teams. Either we adapt to it or we will suffer. It's too late for this year, but there may be a harsh lesson for us for next year.

Our cupcakes just cannot continue to be the dregs of these horrible, local, northeastern conferences. It's gotta be either the expected champs of those conferences or mediocre mid-majors (think the middle third of conferences like the Ivy, A-10, Colonial, Horizon, Conf. USA, MVC, MAC). Geography isn't the factor it used to be. We got Eastern Washington to come out, why not schools like Marshall (RPI 146), Northern Iowa (150), Columbia (153), Central Michigan (156)?

 

[OkaForPrez]

Why? What's his take?

I haven't seen him outspoken on the matter, but he's a pragmatic proponent of fairness in the game and this is a shining example of the futility of a measure that is consistently cited by the tourney committee.

I want to see the following analysis: At what point is a bubble teams' record vs. a team of TCF's substitution class within 5 winning % points of peers in the same class vs. the bottom 10% of RPI.

Said another way. Historically, if the top 70 teams in the RPI have a 90% win percentage against teams ranked in the RPI 190-225 tier, and a 95% win percentage against teams in the bottom 50 of the RPI, then a win vs. any team ranked 190 or higher should count for the same. We can debate at what point that % spread defines an insignificant difference, is it 1% 3% 10%, but whatever it is, its surely not as linear as the formula suggests today. It should be linear to a plateau. We don't have to go all the way to kenpom, but we should slice the tail.

 

[Hurleyman216]

Think about how hard it is to predict the top 50 each year, and that's with everybody in America paying attention. Those teams are all on TV, all scouted, followed, covered blogged. Now try to rank the bottom 100 teams or so. What with not watching them, nor knowing their personnel, changeover, coaching, etc, it's damn near impossible to do imo.

Honestly, it's even harder than people imagine, getting it to work out with both monetarily and schedule-wise between both programs. And obviously, it gets harder to pick and choose the more games you add (ie the more full your schedule becomes) each season.

The solution, is that you shoot even higher into that mid major bracket. But then you are setting yourself up for way more losses and less home games. It's a tough nut to crack.

I disagree, you don't need to predict the top 50 or top 100, all you need to do is avoid playing teams that are 200+. When we schedule the likes of Maine (RPI 292), New Hampshire (RPI 201), Furman (RPI 198), Sacred Heart (RPI 308), UMass-Lowell (RPI 296) and Central Connecticut (RPI 351) we are shooting ourselves in the foot. You have to be able to look at those teams and know they aren't going to be in the top 150. Just a note, CCSU currently has the WORST RPI in all of division 1. You can't schedule 6 games like this if you're in the AAC. I like the challenging portion of our schedule, but you need to wipe out these cupcakes. Those 6 games are currently the difference between us being solidly in the tournament and us being talked about as being an 8-10 seed or possible bubble team with a couple more losses. We have a big enough name that we don't need to schedule a home and home to get East Tennessee St. to come play us in Connecticut.

And don't tell me you can't predict who some of the mediocre Top 100-150 teams will be because you can. Take a conference like the America East and go back 5 years through the standings. You have a pretty good idea of what teams will be decent (Stony Brook, Vermont, Albany). Replace those 3 teams with 3 of the above and our RPI skyrockets.

 

[tcf15]

For UConn:

Take out wins against Maine (294), UNH (201), Sacred Heart (304), UMass Lowell (286), and CCSU (351)

Replace with wins against Bowling Green (194), Western Kentucky (195), NJIT (196), Hampton (197) and Western Michigan (199)

Record stays the same at 14-5.
RPI goes from 67 to 32.
SOS goes from 116 to 57.

Sigh.

 

[Tenspro2002]

For UConn:

Take out wins against Maine (294), UNH (201), Sacred Heart (304), UMass Lowell (286), and CCSU (351)

Replace with wins against Bowling Green (194), Western Kentucky (195), NJIT (196), Hampton (197) and Western Michigan (199)

Record stays the same at 14-5.
RPI goes from 67 to 32.
SOS goes from 116 to 57.

Sigh.

Can someone on campus please print this out and plaster it to the walls of the Athletic Department? Maybe a 36x48 poster in KO's office?

 

[kobe]

Caupain is still only a junior.

He's also only 2 weeks older than Jalen Adams. Caupain is probably the youngest junior in the country.

 

[tzznandrew]

Can someone on campus please print this out and plaster it to the walls of the Athletic Department? Maybe a 36x48 poster in KO's office?

I know it's hard to figure out which teams are going to be that bad, but each of the teams @tcf15 identified were terrible last year and the year before and the year before...

 

[kobe]

The RPI is such a horrible rating system is the main reason why. It's hard to see how Cincinnati's non-conference RPI is so bad. Their current NC-SOS is #148. Yet they played @ #3 Xavier, #8 Iowa State, (n) #32 GW, @ #44 VCU, #59 Butler. How does a team play those 5 teams (2 true road games and 1 neutral site) and have a NC-SOS of #148? I guess the bottom couple of teams really kill them, but that's really silly. Any team >200 is about the same amount of difficulty for real teams.

As a part of the Barclay's Classic, we also had to play Arkansas Pine-Bluff (RPI #285)and South East Louisiana (RPI #340). Then, we scheduled Robert Morris who we thought was going to be decent (RPI #307) and Morgan State was just another buy game (RPI #347). Western Carolina and @ Bowling Green weren't that bad of OOC games.

 

[James]

Clearly a must win . Cincy hates our guts they are going to come out like gangbusters . Pretty worried/doomed etc.

 

[intlzncster]

And don't tell me you can't predict who some of the mediocre Top 100-150 teams will be because you can. Take a conference like the America East and go back 5 years through the standings. You have a pretty good idea of what teams will be decent (Stony Brook, Vermont, Albany). Replace those 3 teams with 3 of the above and our RPI skyrockets.

As a counterpoint:

Here's my point, it really can be tough to tell when a team is going to be in the Top 150 - 200, 200-250, 300+ range. Just take Maine for example:

YEAR - RPI
2000 - 115
2001 - 125
2002 - 268
2003 - 216
2004 - 155
2005 - 174
2006 - 281
2007 - 248
2008 - 327
2009 - 286
2010 - 154
2011 - 215
2012 - 283
2013 - 265
2014 - 330

4x in approx Top 150 (a few borderline cases counted as effectively top 150 to illustrate the point)
1x in 150-200
3x in 200-250
5x in 250-300
2x in 300+

Maine can jump from effectively Top 150 to Top 300 in one year. And that's just Maine. Every bottom team can make these swings. How are you supposed to tell what year a team is going to be 150-200 vs 200-250? It's a simple exercise in hindsight. I don't know that anyone can accurately predicted that 1-2 years ahead of time.

You are assuming it's easy to schedule 100-200 teams all the time. Every other school is trying to do the same thing. So not only do you have to 'outbid' every other team for those games, you can only have games that fit into both of your schedules. Obviously, you'd like to lock up as many good games as you can, so the scheduling dance becomes more difficult as you move along.

Add in forced opponents through early season tournaments, and it makes it even more difficult.

 

[Tenspro2002]

I know it's hard to figure out which teams are going to be that bad, but each of the teams @tcf15 identified were terrible last year and the year before and the year before...

As a counterpoint:

CCSU (351 this year): 293, 343 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
Sacred Heart (306 this year): 343, 244 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
Maine (287 this year): 327, 338 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
UMass-Lowell (285 this year): 283, 264 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
Furman (197 this year): 337, 292 in 2014, 2015 [we were lucky they turned out better than in years past]
New Hampshire (202 this year): 340, 194 in 2014, 2015 [if they're a steady #200 team, that was a good choice and we should keep playing them]

In 4 out of 6 cases, we knew we were scheduling horrible programs and that held true.
In 1 out of 6 cases, we were fortunate that a horrible program was merely-bad this year.
In 1 out of 6 cases, we wisely scheduled a program that was merely-bad.

 

[Tenspro2002]

Here's my point, it's tough to tell when a team is going to be in the Top 150 - 200, 200-250, 300+ range. Just take Maine for example:

YEAR - RPI
2000 - 115
2001 - 125
2002 - 268
2003 - 216
2004 - 155
2005 - 174
2006 - 281
2007 - 248
2008 - 327
2009 - 286
2010 - 154
2011 - 215
2012 - 283
2013 - 265
2014 - 330

4x in approx Top 150 (a few borderline cases counted as effectively top 150 to illustrate the point)
1x in 150-200
3x in 200-250
5x in 250-300
2x in 300+

How are you supposed to tell what year a team is going to be 150-200 vs 200-250? I don't know that anyone can accurately predicted that 1-2 years ahead of time.

You are assuming it's easy to schedule 100-200 teams all the time. Every other school is trying to do the same thing. So not only do you have to 'outbid' every other team for those games, you can only have games that fit into both of your schedules. Obviously, you'd like to lock up as many good games as you can, so the scheduling dance becomes more difficult as you move along.

Add in forced opponents through early season tournaments, and it makes it even more difficult.

I see 1 year, maybe 2 in the past 10 when Maine wasn't a complete RPI killer.

Sure, you can't always tell exactly where a given team will end up in a given year. But you play the probabilities. If you shoot for 6 teams that average 150-200, you'll get probably 1 Top 100 pleasant surprise, 1 in the 100-150 range, 2 in the expected 150-200 range, 1 minor disappointment at 200-250 and 1 unpredicted sub-300 disaster.

 

[intlzncster]

I see 1 year, maybe 2 in the past 10 when Maine wasn't a complete RPI killer.

Sure, you can't always tell exactly where a given team will end up in a given year. But you play the probabilities. If you shoot for 6 teams that average 150-200, you'll get probably 1 Top 100 pleasant surprise, 1 in the 100-150 range, 2 in the expected 150-200 range, 1 minor disappointment at 200-250 and 1 unpredicted sub-300 disaster.

I get that, but remember, I just used Maine as an example, as that was one of the first teams listed. Look at the possible swings year to year. It's this way for all teams. How can you predict who they are going to schedule, which is a huge component of these teams RPI? You can't. It's effectively a very, very large combinatorics exercise.

The only real world solution is to schedule a ton of Top 100 teams, and hope they stay up there. Unfortunately, this leaves you open to a lot of losses, especially as most of these games are going to be in the first half of the season. You'll also have to give up home games to get it done.

It's a really tough conundrum, and not as simple as ya'll are making it out to be, that's all I'm saying.

An idealistic scenario would be for teams to only play other teams that are normally in the top 150 by average, and eliminate all games with 'lesser' programs. But that's not fair to those schools and kids.

 

[August_West]

For UConn: Take out wins against Maine (294), UNH (201), Sacred Heart (304), UMass Lowell (286), and CCSU (351) Replace with wins against Bowling Green (194), Western Kentucky (195), NJIT (196), Hampton (197) and Western Michigan (199) Record stays the same at 14-5. RPI goes from 67 to 32. SOS goes from 116 to 57. Sigh.

Except we probably lose on of those

 

[tzznandrew]

As a counterpoint:

CCSU (351 this year): 293, 343 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
Sacred Heart (306 this year): 343, 244 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
Maine (287 this year): 327, 338 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
UMass-Lowell (285 this year): 283, 264 in 2014, 2015 [always terrible]
Furman (197 this year): 337, 292 in 2014, 2015 [we were lucky they turned out better than in years past]
New Hampshire (202 this year): 340, 194 in 2014, 2015 [if they're a steady #200 team, that was a good choice and we should keep playing them]

In 4 out of 6 cases, we knew we were scheduling horrible programs and that held true.
In 1 out of 6 cases, we were fortunate that a horrible program was merely-bad this year.
In 1 out of 6 cases, we wisely scheduled a program that was merely-bad.

I'm not sure if you misread my post, because this isn't so much a counterpoint as exactly what I was suggesting.

 

[Tenspro2002]

I'm not sure if you misread my post, because this isn't so much a counterpoint as exactly what I was suggesting.

Yup. Completely misread your post. I got through "it's hard to figure out which teams are going to be that bad" and started composing my rebuttal. It looks like my post was just the quantitative version of your qualitative statement.