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2010-2011 Schedule

LittleBrave said:
How could beating WIU be helpful?

I think if we play Duke tough and lose, and if Duke stays in Top 10 - people will look us, whereas people will gloss over a 30-pt. win over a cupcake team.
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My bad. Meant to say beating Western Illinois at home isn't going to help you with anything.
 
So the solution, squirrel, is a split of D-1, right? That cuts down the cupcake opportunities and forces the best to bump into each other a bit more often.

Of course, a D-1 split opens up a whole new set of classification problems, namely who would be part of it. But there isn't any other solution to the scheduling problem.
 
bdhove12 said:
My bad. Meant to say beating Western Illinois at home isn't going to help you with anything.
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Then tell me why ALL the BCS schools buy several such home games against the likes of WIU, Longwood, and University of Maryland-Eastern Shore!
They ALL do it and some, like Georgetown and Syracuse have as many as NINE home non-conference games against horribly weak, patsy opponents.

Syracuse, by the way, even having NINE such guarantee games against such biggies as St. Francis of NY, Albany, Columbia,
and Maine still finished with a TOP-5 RPI last season and a TOP-10 SOS!!!

So, clearly, again, the proof is in the pudding and Palm's advice might be right for the 50-60 top teams who cannot afford to go on the road and lose...
but it is WRONG, very wrong in regards to the other 300 or so NCAA D-I teams who simply cannot afford to fill their schedule with cupcakes at home like ISU has done, because, as I have said and shown clearly, it is suicide when it comes to getting an At-Large bid.
If you are sure you're gonna win your conference, or if you are a Syracuse or Georgetown and you figure your league is gonna get 6 bids and so you're a lock, then follow Palm's advice.

But if you are among the other 60-70% of D-I teams, then you'd better schedule tough or go on the road and risk a loss.
 
tornado said:
Then tell me why ALL the BCS schools buy several such home games against the likes of WIU, Longwood, and University of Maryland-Eastern Shore!
They ALL do it and some, like Georgetown and Syracuse have as many as NINE home non-conference games against horribly weak, patsy opponents.

Syracuse, by the way, even having NINE such guarantee games against such biggies as St. Francis of NY, Albany, Columbia,
and Maine still finished with a TOP-5 RPI last season and a TOP-10 SOS!!!

So, clearly, again, the proof is in the pudding and Palm's advice might be right for the 50-60 top teams who cannot afford to go on the road and lose...
but it is WRONG, very wrong in regards to the other 300 or so NCAA D-I teams who simply cannot afford to fill their schedule with cupcakes at home like ISU has done, because, as I have said and shown clearly, it is suicide when it comes to getting an At-Large bid.
If you are sure you're gonna win your conference, or if you are a Syracuse or Georgetown and you figure your league is gonna get 6 bids and so you're a lock, then follow Palm's advice.

But if you are among the other 60-70% of D-I teams, then you'd better schedule tough or go on the road and risk a loss.
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Syracuse played those cupcakes, yes... but they also beat 8 teams in the top 50 RPI (one was on a neutral floor and 2 were on the road - better for rpi to win on the road than at home), Plus, Syracuse went 28-4. That's a great record and 50% of the RPI is your own record. AND.... their 4 losses were to teams in the top 37 of the rpi (#7, #15, and #37 twice). They didn't have any bad losses to knock them down.
 
Syracuse also played:

Robert Morris (NCAA team that went to the wire vs. 'Nova)
California (NCAA 2nd round)
North Carolina (NIT Finalist)
Cornell (NCAA Sweet 16)
Maine (19-11, no postseason)
Oakland (NCAA)
Memphis (NIT)
Florida (NCAA 2nd round)

So they had PLENTY of quality to offset those games.
 
The Valley took a good step in signing on to play the Mountain West challenge games, I think they should set up another agreement with the Mac as it would get some other quality teams on the schedule, the BCS teams will not play BU in Peoria so we need to look at alternatives and playing 2 challenges a year would be a good thing.
 
real fan said:
The Valley took a good step in signing on to play the Mountain West challenge games, I think they should set up another agreement with the Mac as it would get some other quality teams on the schedule, the BCS teams will not play BU in Peoria so we need to look at alternatives and playing 2 challenges a year would be a good thing.
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The MAC doesn't have value anymore.

The problem is each MVC team gets 9 non-con slots.

1 goes to the BB game.
1 goes to the return BB game (in every year after this year, there will be some kind of return game)
1 goes to the MVC/MWC challenge

Asking schools to have only 6 flexible non-con spots to begin with is tricky.
 
TheAsianSensation said:
The MAC doesn't have value anymore.

The problem is each MVC team gets 9 non-con slots.

1 goes to the BB game.
1 goes to the return BB game (in every year after this year, there will be some kind of return game)
1 goes to the MVC/MWC challenge

Asking schools to have only 6 flexible non-con spots to begin with is tricky.
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This is a great point and the reason we have to play in tourneys every year, even though some knock them.
 
squirrelgotdead said:
Syracuse also played:

Robert Morris (NCAA team that went to the wire vs. 'Nova)
California (NCAA 2nd round)
North Carolina (NIT Finalist)
Cornell (NCAA Sweet 16)
Maine (19-11, no postseason)
Oakland (NCAA)
Memphis (NIT)
Florida (NCAA 2nd round)

So they had PLENTY of quality to offset those games.
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so.......check Memphis below....Memphis played THREE TOP 10 teams and won 24 games overall, finishing 2nd in their conference with only 3 conference losses (13-3) but guess what killed them??

You are actually strengthening my point greatly by showing no matter HOW many good opponents you might have,
if you do as Jerry Palm says and schedule a lot of softies at home, it can and WILL still kill you!

Syracuse was used as an example that every top team still does buy patsies for guarantee games, but it still threatens to cost you a bid...that was my point...that the big name schools still do it because they like wins and they like the $$ those easy wins bring when they know they're going to sell out anyway...

..so maybe Syracuse was lucky enough to make up for the horrible patsies, but for every team like Syracuse who overcomes such horrible guarantee-game scheduling, there are 5-10 who don't and lose out on an NCAA bid as a result...
Even in Syracuse's own conference...and the ACC & SEC..
you have teams like Virginia Tech --
who finished 23-8, and 10-7 in the toughest league (ACC) which was better than every team in the ACC except Duke & MD..but they missed an AT-LARGE bid for one and only ONE reason...

it is because they must have listened to Jerry Palm's advice and they scheduled Brown, NC-Greensboro, Campbell, Delaware, VMI, Charleston Southern, Maryland-Baltimore County, NC-Central, and Longwood to fatten up their win totals.
That's 10 times that they went with the Jerry Palm advice, and it obviously COST THEM DEARLY!!
Likewise Mississippi State -- they were good, finished in 1st place in the SEC West, advanced to final game of the SEC Tourney and lost to Kentucky by a single point..
but they didn't get a bid to the NCAA because they also followed the Palm plan of scheduling the likes of Rider, SE Louisiana, Bethune Cookman, Texas Pan American, St. Bonnie, Centenary, Mississippi Valley State...

Then there's SLU, Charlotte, ISU, Wichita State, UAB, Marshall, Tulsa, Nevada...
and then MEMPHIS....who won 24 games!!! Finished 2nd in CUSA at 13-3, and had a TOP 50 RPI, and played several TOP opponents (Kansas, Tennessee, Syracuse)
But their schedule was peppered with Jackson State, Tennessee Tech, Central Arkansas, Arkansas State, Arkansas Little Rock, Montana State, UMass, SEMO, Houston Baptist, etc...
Again, the Palm plan was the single feature to their 2009-2010 season that kept them out of the NCAA!


Again, when Palm says...
"I can't think of a single team that missed the NCAA Tournament that would have made it by replacing wins by losing to better teams."..then he's ignoring Memphis and those other schools I have named!
...I just gave numerous examples.......had those guys like Memphis, Va Tech, etc....dropped a few of those 300+ RPI opponents and played Duke, even had they lost, their SOS would have improved greatly, and they
WOULD HAVE GOTTEN A BID TO THE NCAA...I am convinced of it,
thus I disagree with Palm's plan, and maybe some of those schools should look to avoid repeating the same mistake.
 
tornado, you're missing the whole point of the quote from Palm you're attacking. He's saying LOSING to those better teams doesn't do any better than beating softies. That's obvious. If Memphis replaced those cupcakes with more losses to better teams, they STILL miss the tournament. Virginia Tech, if they had losses to better teams instead of their cupcake schedule, they STILL miss the tournament.

And I don't know where I'm missing this, but this "Palm plan" isn't to schedule down and schedule a bunch of wins. I don't see that said anywhere. The supposed "Palm plan" is to not schedule games you have no chance of winning. If you can't win a game, then don't schedule it to RPI boost. That's what he is saying. And virtually no power conference school can possibly schedule by the "Palm plan", because, by definition, virtually every power conference school is capable of winning a game against a top notch team.

He's not saying to schedule a bunch of softies at home. You're completely misinterpreting his point.
 
TheAsianSensation said:
tornado, you're missing the whole point of the quote from Palm you're attacking. He's saying LOSING to those better teams doesn't do any better than beating softies. That's obvious. If Memphis replaced those cupcakes with more losses to better teams, they STILL miss the tournament. Virginia Tech, if they had losses to better teams instead of their cupcake schedule, they STILL miss the tournament.

And I don't know where I'm missing this, but this "Palm plan" isn't to schedule down and schedule a bunch of wins. I don't see that said anywhere. The supposed "Palm plan" is to not schedule games you have no chance of winning. If you can't win a game, then don't schedule it to RPI boost. That's what he is saying. And virtually no power conference school can possibly schedule by the "Palm plan", because, by definition, virtually every power conference school is capable of winning a game against a top notch team.

He's not saying to schedule a bunch of softies at home. You're completely misinterpreting his point.
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It's rather difficult to win these games if the idea is to not schedule them to begin with.
 
TheAsianSensation said:
The MAC doesn't have value anymore.

The problem is each MVC team gets 9 non-con slots.

1 goes to the BB game.
1 goes to the return BB game (in every year after this year, there will be some kind of return game)
1 goes to the MVC/MWC challenge

Asking schools to have only 6 flexible non-con spots to begin with is tricky.
Click to expand...
6 spots is getting harder to fill with quality opponents each year, teams from the MAC are at least better then playing teams that have rpi"s higher then 200.
 
TheAsianSensation said:
tornado, you're missing the whole point of the quote from Palm you're attacking. He's saying LOSING.......
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but I think you're missing the point, too...
no team EVER loses such a game unless.....they schedule it first...
but then you'll never win tougher games either unless they schedule them....so
FIRST and FOREMOST -- they need to go out and schedule tougher!
Palm's Chicken Little philosophy of don't play Duke because you might lose...is suicide for all but a few of the top BCS schools.

Teams need to get the toughest teams they can on the schedule, and we finally see some of the Valley doing it...
then go out and try to win....and some of them you will win....
No team schedules games JUST to lose them, so maybe that's what's he's saying they should avoid??
Anyway...I have given my examples and I think they are SOLID....
had any of those team I cited (and I have cited a dozen or more) played tougher teams, even Duke on the road and lost, rather than dropping their SOS into the UNACCEPTABLE range by staking out Norfolk State at home, then THEY MIGHT just have gotten an at large bid.
I think ISU is an absolutely perfect example...


And you're dead wrong about what Palm says...
Palm is one of the guys who is largely responsible for telling the NCAA Selection committee to stop using the RPI as a determiner...
Palm is into his own stats however meaningless they might appear to others.......
YET -- he tells teams to schedule Western Illinois at home rather than play Duke on the road for the sake of the RPI..and that's th eonly thing a win over WIU will do and we all know it is worthless to any mid-major trying to get an at large bid.

Newsflash and earth to Palm...the NCAA doesn't give a whip about the RPI -- ask any Valley team or Barry Hinson..
They care about scheduling UP and SOS....so I stand by my argument that Palm is wrong and mid-majors need to ignore his advice and stop doing as ISU is doing
 
You're still completely off target. It's not about quality or cupcakes.

It's about depth of quality.

In other words, you schedule good teams you have a reasonable chance of beating.

Those teams missed the tournament because they did lack the overall quality necessary to dance. For some teams, that may mean venturing out on the road. But some refuse to do that.

If those teams add just one game, yes, that could make a big difference, but they would still need to improve at least one more game to give themselves the best chance imaginable.
 
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