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Our remaining schedule is pretty awesome


aphilso1

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50 minutes ago, aphilso1 said:

So for all the talk about how the schedulers "did us no favors," I believe they actually did.  We got two of our toughest road games during Christmas break while the students were away, and the final 16 conference games lineup favorably for a run.  Obviously it's an uphill battle and the boys still have to execute, but at least we have a schedule that gives us a chance.

 

Yup. Couple no Saturday games at the PBA with the enjoyment of griping about things and you get 'did no favors' coming at you.

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16 hours ago, aphilso1 said:

If I were to design the perfect conference schedule for a B1G bubble team to go dancing, it would be the following combination:

1. Play the best teams in conference only once, and play them at home.  You're probably not going to beat the elites twice in the same year, so don't play them twice. Maximize your chance at pulling the upset by playing the game in front of your own fans.

2. Play the worst teams only once, and play them on the road.  It's not like beating them twice will help your resume or RPI.  And if you're a tourney caliber team, you should beat the 1-17 and 2-16 B1G doormats anywhere.  No sense in wasting home games on them.

3. Play the other middle of the road/bubble teams both at home and on the road.  That means more opportunities to prove yourself against other potential tourney teams; also, these teams are still very beatable.  

 

So of your 13 conference opponents, you will play 5 in a home-and-home, 4 only on the road, and 4 only at home.  Using the current KenPom rankings and the principles listed above, an ideal conference schedule  is not that much different from our actual remaining conference schedule this year--

 

Ideal: play the top 4 teams (Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, & Michigan) once each at home

Reality: Play top 2 teams (Wisc & Pur) once at home.  Already beat Indiana on the road.  Have to play Michigan twice, but the home game could be No Sit Sunday Part II as it's the regular season finale; they also don't look as good as their rating indicates.

 

Ideal: Play 5 middle-of-the-pack teams (OSU, Northwestern, Minny, Sparty, Maryland) twice

Reality: Play 3 twice (OSU/N'western/MSU).  Already beat Terps on the road.  Have to play Gophers on the road with no return trip to Lincoln, which is probably the worst remaining break on our schedule.

 

Ideal: Play bottom 4 teams (Illinois, Iowa, PSU, Rutgers) once on the road.

Reality: Play 3 out of 4 only once, with a home-and-home against Iowa.  We also don't waste a home game on the ultimate cellar dweller, as the  Rutgers match-up will be in Jersey.

 

So for all the talk about how the schedulers "did us no favors," I believe they actually did.  We got two of our toughest road games during Christmas break while the students were away, and the final 16 conference games lineup favorably for a run.  Obviously it's an uphill battle and the boys still have to execute, but at least we have a schedule that gives us a chance.

Great post.  I was just talking to a friend the other day about how in a way, its not terrible to play the first two games on the road in the sense that students are gone.  

 

Now, I don't know when UNL starts back up (so somebody help me here) but I'm hoping the students are back for Thursday night vs Iowa?  

 

 

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Good look at the schedule, but I'd put Minnesota in that upper group - from what I saw during last week's B1G basketball binge, Gophers are for real.

 

Taking NU and my homer-ism out of the equation, for me, they were the most impressive team in the first 2 games, outside of about a 10-min stretch vs MSU. I was kind of hoping their strong non-con play was a fluke, but I was disappointed. They are really young, so they'll probably have some ups and downs, but they're very talented.

 

You're right, the schedule sets up very nicely if NU can protect home floor. Won't be easy as evenly matched as B1G appears to be, but doable with what we saw from NU last week. Now the key is repeating that effort and mindset when you're in a friendlier environment as the favorite.

 

Sometimes young teams feel pressure at home when they're expected to win, but relax and play loose on the road as a 'dog. Hopefully that won't be the case this week for NU. Coaching staff really needs to find the right buttons to push mentally with the guys this week. And we need to keep Webster out of foul trouble and on the floor. The team just has so much more confidence when he's out there.

Edited by throwback
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20 minutes ago, throwback said:

Good look at the schedule, but I'd put Minnesota in that upper group - from what I saw during last week's B1G basketball binge, Gophers are for real.

 

Taking NU and my homer-ism out of the equation, for me, they were the most impressive team in the first 2 games, outside of about a 10-min stretch vs MSU. I was kind of hoping their strong non-con play was a fluke, but I was disappointed. They are really young, so they'll probably have some ups and downs, but they're very talented.

 

You're right, the schedule sets up very nicely if NU can protect home floor. Won't be easy as evenly matched as B1G appears to be, but doable with what we saw from NU last week. Now the key is repeating that effort and mindset when you're in a friendlier environment as the favorite.

 

Sometimes young teams feel pressure at home when they're expected to win, but relax and play loose on the road as a 'dog. Hopefully that won't be the case this week for NU. Coaching staff really needs to find the right buttons to push mentally with the guys this week. And we need to keep Webster out of foul trouble and on the floor. The team just has so much more confidence when he's out there.

 

Truer words might not have ever been written about that subject.

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The schedule really sets up better than it has in any previous season since we've been in the BIG.

We were able to steal a couple of games on the road but in reality those games were not in front of a truly hostile road crowd.

We play Michigan Sat Jan 14 @1pm and that will be our next road and will be a real test of how well this team plays in front of hostile road crowd.

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The schedule is going to set up pretty nicely no matter what it is when you beat a front runner and a solid mid pack club on the road.   Mostly agree with the original post.  I disagree about preferring to play Purdue at home.  I would rather play them on the road since we are likely to lose either way.  I wish we could trade that game and Minny.  Gophers are going to be very difficult to beat on the road.  But a young team that I think we could clip at home.  In any event, the schedule is workable to have a realistic shot to get to 11-7.  I cannot possibly overstate how important it is to go 2-0 this week. 

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What this schedule does is give us an opportunity to play our way out of the loss to GW and onto the bubble.  Beat enough good teams and we can climb the ladder.  But the team has to take care of business.  We won't back our way into anything good at this point.  All we can ask for is an opportunity and the remaining schedule lays that opportunity out for us about as well as we could hope.

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I really think the GW loss is the only thing preventing ppl from jumping all in and saying this is a tournament team. And I'm not just referring to the repercussions it had in terms of W-L record, RPI, etc. I'm talking about just overall feel and assumptions about this team.

 

I think we can agree, at this point in time, we have played 8 tourney teams already. We are 3-5 in those games. One of those losses (Clemson) was oh so close to being a W and if you like to play the game of almost and what ifs it prob shouldve been a win. 

Three more of those losses were to current Top 10 teams and there is a good chance those three could all be 1-2 seeds in the tournament. And we were not completely outclassed in those games by any means. We played UCLA tight until about 4 minutes left. We hung around with Creighton for 22 min before things got away from us. We beat Kansas in a second half in which they still had their big dogs in the majority of the half (sure you could question their effort and intensity being up 12-15 points most of the second half but still).

Lastly you have a VT loss where we just came out flat as hell and lost. Which with 7 underclassmen in your top 9, flat as hell is gonna happen from time to time.

 

Basically what I'm saying is I'm all in on this team. Are we an elite team? Heck no, not even close. But are we good enough to go dancin? I sure as hell think so.

 

 

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Yes, thank you for remembering that.  I did say that a lot.  There was a little more to the quote, though.  The rest of it was "... and I think they're good enough."  This was in response to people talking about sites that gave percentage chances of winning the next game or winning however many of the next several.

 

And my attitude was, hey, we're either good enough to win these games or we're not, and I think we are good enough.

 

That was 2014.  Now, my feeling is that this team is playing like I expected they would be able to play when I watched them in the early season.  This is why I said all those weeks ago that, even without Whatever His Name the Third, this team is better than we've been picked.  I get why other people picked us low, but we know more about this squad than they do. 

 

And now those other people will be seeing what we saw:  We have a silky smooth PG; a tough-as-nails, defensive-minded 2 guard who can get to the rim and score; and we have a beast playing the PF.  Fill in around those 3 guys with solid depth and role players and we're going to be able to beat some teams.

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