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nustudent

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This is why I'm leery of going overboard on the OOC scheduling.

 

Looking back at the last 5 years....

 

The Big 10 had 7 100+ RPI teams this year.   The most of any year in the last 5.   In fact the conference average the previous 4 is just 4.25.  A significant difference.

It also only had 2 teams rated from 51-100.   Only one other time in the last 5 years has it had that.   The average is 3.75.   Again...nearly cut in half compared to the average.

 

The average RPI rating per conference team was 90.36.   Two years ago, the average was 96.5, heavily skewed by Rutgers (294) and Minnesota (254).  The other 3 years....66, 74 and 63.   That's a lot of Q1/Q2 opportunities right there.

 

We had 4 Q1 opportunities in regular season conference play this year (@MSU, Mich, @Ohio State, @Purdue).   If you use the RPIs from last year with this year's schedule...we would have had 8 opportunities.   7 opportunities each from 13-14, 14-15 and 15-16.   Averaging 7.25 opportunities a year.   Again...nearly cut in half this year.

 

That's where the difference is coming from.   That and losing the opportunities we did have in the non-con.

 

People are frustrated and I get that....but the vast majority of the issue came from stuff completely out of our control.     As I mentioned last week....we got dealt a ton of bad luck this year that you can't account for.  And we didn't make any luck for ourselves early on either.    Odds are....it won't be this way again. The question then will be....what is the criteria the committee is using in the future.   The changing goal posts of the committee is where my frustration lies.

 

Edited by nustudent
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2 minutes ago, nustudent said:

This is why I'm leery of going overboard on the OOC scheduling.

 

Looking back at the last 5 years....

 

The Big 10 had 7 100+ RPI teams this year.   The most of any year in the last 5.   In fact the conference average the previous 4 is just 4.25.  A significant difference.

It also only had 2 teams rated from 51-100.   Only one other time in the last 5 years has it had that.   The average is 3.75.   Again...nearly cut in half compared to the average.

 

We had 4 Q1 opportunities in regular season conference play this year (@MSU, Mich, @Ohio State, @Purdue).   If you use the RPIs from last year with this year's schedule...we would have had 8 opportunities.   7 opportunities each from 13-14, 14-15 and 15-16.   Averaging 7.25 opportunities a year.   Again...nearly cut in half this year.

 

That's where the difference is coming from.   That and losing the opportunities we did have in the non-con.

 

People are frustrated and I get that....but the vast majority of the issue came from stuff completely out of our control.     As I mentioned last week....we got dealt a ton of bad luck this year that you can't account for.  And we didn't make any luck for ourselves early on either.    Odds are....it won't be this way again. The question then will be....what is the criteria the committee is using in the future.   The changing goal posts of the committee is where my frustration lies.

 

Good stats and points. It's absolutely the most Nebrasketball thing ever, that this down year lined up with Nebraska's best team in 2 decades.

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You're right — it's not about scheduling. It's about performance and perception of the importance of the non-conference schedule. Sure, we all would have loved to have beaten St. John's, UCF and Creighton on the road, or Kansas at home. But even as we went 0-4 in those games, at least my perception was "OK. So no signature wins, but no stumbles either. Perform in conference games, and we're in." Then as we continued to excel (mostly) in the B1G, it started to become clearer that our non-conference losses would matter. A lot. But it wasn't until last night and the ultimate revelation of the NIT bracket that we should have considered each of those four early losses as having been critical to our post-season chances.

 

At the time of the games, I thought:

St. John's loss: Bad matchup from the start, and this team is just starting to play together. No big deal.

UCF loss: Tough start doomed us, but at least we'll pick up a couple of victories to give these guys some confidence.

Creighton loss: We were there at the end, and could have won if we'd gotten a couple of calls. Creighton's a top 25 team, so this close loss may actually help.

Kansas loss: Damn, that was a tough one. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Either way, another top 25 game will help our RPI and SOS, right?

 

What I should have thought:

St. John's loss: Damn. I hope St. John's doesn't suffer any debilitating injuries going forward. This one could really hurt if St. John's doesn't finish in the upper half of the Big East.

UCF loss: Killer. Needed to win one even if it means two losses over the next two games. UCF is good, but if they lose Fall, they fall.

Creighton loss: Crap. It'd be just like Creighton to fall apart down the stretch and lose games they shouldn't, hurting us as well. We HAVE TO BEAT KANSAS.

Kansas loss: That's it. We now pretty much have to go 18-1 the rest of the way to make the tournament. The Big One that got away.

 

Next year, every game is gonna have to be, in the words of Joe Biden, "a big f*ckin' deal."

Edited by jayschool
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good points, student. Most of us agree with the proposition that the committees search for the "perfect formula" has probably led them astray. 

And that's not including the NCAAs voracious expansion of what constitutes a D1 program in the first place, which is playing no small role in these fiascos. 

 

That conf programs that traditionally do well year in and year out were down this year is, as well, a function of some pretty rotten luck on the schedule-ometer. 

 

But I still think we need to look at playing a balanced schedule anyway--playing *every* team twice--just to be on the safe side of rpi. After all, the worst that can happen is that you add some more tough game (or some easier ones) at the expense of some non conference games. My preference would be to tweak the conference measurements that serve as the rpi base to require far fewer samples if possible. 

 

We're in a 14 team league. We could play an entire season within the conference itself, with about 4-5  warm up games. Of course, the rise of the superconference is also part of the problem. These weren't discussions in the recent past when about 10 teams was the max of most conferences. 

 

I guess I'm meandering around to the point where I think the NCAA has to have a "come to Jesus" moment rethinking the core philosophy of how they want basketball to be played at the div 1 level and then structuring the championship system around that. Limit conference sizes, reduce the number of div 1 conferences, that sort of thing. And most importantly, stop trying to get the "perfect" bracket. Just admit that there's always going to be quality programs that deserve to be there but won't due to the arbitrary nature of the invitational system. Maybe even just say "screw it, let's cancel a few non-conference games and make a national tourney and seed *everybody*. 2-3 games gets the field down to traditional size, and every school would have a crack at it. 

 

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31 minutes ago, nustudent said:

This is why I'm leery of going overboard on the OOC scheduling.

 

Looking back at the last 5 years....

 

The Big 10 had 7 100+ RPI teams this year.   The most of any year in the last 5.   In fact the conference average the previous 4 is just 4.25.  A significant difference.

It also only had 2 teams rated from 51-100.   Only one other time in the last 5 years has it had that.   The average is 3.75.   Again...nearly cut in half compared to the average.

 

The average RPI rating per conference team was 90.36.   Two years ago, the average was 96.5, heavily skewed by Rutgers (294) and Minnesota (254).  The other 3 years....66, 74 and 63.   That's a lot of Q1/Q2 opportunities right there.

 

We had 4 Q1 opportunities in regular season conference play this year (@MSU, Mich, @Ohio State, @Purdue).   If you use the RPIs from last year with this year's schedule...we would have had 8 opportunities.   7 opportunities each from 13-14, 14-15 and 15-16.   Averaging 7.25 opportunities a year.   Again...nearly cut in half this year.

 

That's where the difference is coming from.   That and losing the opportunities we did have in the non-con.

 

People are frustrated and I get that....but the vast majority of the issue came from stuff completely out of our control.     As I mentioned last week....we got dealt a ton of bad luck this year that you can't account for.  And we didn't make any luck for ourselves early on either.    Odds are....it won't be this way again. The question then will be....what is the criteria the committee is using in the future.   The changing goal posts of the committee is where my frustration lies.

 

 

Great analysis! I find it so ironic that people are saying we need to massively overhaul our non-conference schedule because it's not tough enough. Seems like about 12 months ago some of those same people were bitching about how Miles consistently over-scheduled in the non-conference and didn't give his teams enough easy wins to build confidence. Seems like some people have selectively forgotten that we were top 10 in SOS last year. As you pointed out, this year was an anomaly in the lack of strength (real or perceived) in the BIG. That is not likely to continue in the coming years. If Miles has shown anything, it's that he understands how to build a competitive schedule that builds your resume toward the tourney. This year some of the chips just didn't fall our way. 

 

So we just need to get over it, cheer for the guys Wednesday, and hope they all come back next year with a fire like the 94 Husker football team did with "unfinished business"!

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I thought our schedule was good. In the non con we had the opportunity to play up to 4 NCAA teams (KU, Creighton, Mizzou, West VA) and a couple NIT teams (BC and UCF).

 

Big Ten will not be that bad very often. Plus we drew an unfavorable schedule in the Big Ten, which we have no control over.

 

If we play all of next year like we did the second half this season, we will be a 5 or 6 seed minimum next year (NCAA not NIT ?)

 

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Here is a far out there idea....

 

Flip the Conference and Non-Con schedules.  Play Conference games from November-Mid-January and then Non-Con from Mid-January to March.

 

Keep the non-con holiday tournaments in November and December.  That'd give you 3 early non-con games.

 

Then in December, start scheduling non-con games for Jan-March.  Each power conference will be required to play another power conference team at least once with 2 of the games being away and 2 being home and then one neutral site.  The other games are up to the school to schedule.

 

That'd be 20 conference games, 2-3 in a holiday tourney, 5 power 5 games, and then 4 for the schools to schedule.

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It's a good bet that next year our double plays in the conference are much tougher.  Sine Maryland and Rutgers joined, there are seven teams we've faced twice in a season once; Maryland (2015), Indiana (2016), Purdue (2016), Iowa (2017), Michigan (2017), Michigan State (2017), and Ohio State (2017). There's not a lot of logic to how the conference schedules - we played Northwestern twice in back to back years for example - but of those seven teams we'll probably have double plays against at least four of them.

 

Here are our double plays every year so far.

 

2018
Penn State 9-9 21-13 NIT
Wisconsin 7-11 15-18  
Minnesota 4-14 15-17  
Illinois 4-14 14-18  
Rutgers 3-15 15-19  
2017
Michigan State 10-8 19-14 NCAA
Michigan 10-8 24-11 NCAA
Northwestern 10-8 23-11 NCAA
Iowa 10-8 18-14 NIT
Ohio State 7-11 17-15  
2016
Indiana 15-3 25-7 NCAA
Purdue 12-6 26-8 NCAA
Northwestern 8-10 20-12  
Penn State 7-11 16-16  
Rutgers 1-17 7-25  
2015
Wisconsin 16-2 31-3 NCAA
Maryland 14-4 27-6 NCAA
Iowa 12-6 21-11 NCAA
Illinois 9-9 19-13 NIT
Minnesota 6-12 18-15  

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, hhcdimes said:

Time to stop laughing about conference foes losing in the non-con...even Iowa.

This X 1000.  The lesson we need to all learn from this year is that what matters most is the collective success of ALL Big 10 teams in the non-conference.  When our fellow B1G teams struggle or have bad losses in the non-conference, it absolutely crushes the chances of teams like Nebraska trying to get into the Dance because even 13 wins in conference play don't mean a thing because the conference is seen as being full of bad teams.  Once league play starts, all the low (or even average or middle) RPI Big 10 teams hurt all the other teams and the cycle never ends.  The factor of most importance is to have ALL (or as many as possible) Big 10 teams do well in non-conf. and all have good RPIs going into to conference play because if they don't then it is almost impossible for a team to move up in RPI no matter how many wins.  Those terrible losses by teams like Iowa and Penn State this season in non-conf. were killers, for all teams in Big except the top 3 which just were so good and had such good non-conf. wins to overcome it.

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1 hour ago, hskr4life said:

Here is a far out there idea....

 

Flip the Conference and Non-Con schedules.  Play Conference games from November-Mid-January and then Non-Con from Mid-January to March.

 

Keep the non-con holiday tournaments in November and December.  That'd give you 3 early non-con games.

 

Then in December, start scheduling non-con games for Jan-March.  Each power conference will be required to play another power conference team at least once with 2 of the games being away and 2 being home and then one neutral site.  The other games are up to the school to schedule.

 

That'd be 20 conference games, 2-3 in a holiday tourney, 5 power 5 games, and then 4 for the schools to schedule.

 

There is some value to mixing the con/non-con schedules.  I really believe the Big 12/SEC scheduling games January 27/28 really helped them in the committee's eyes.  Alabama beat Oklahoma.  Baylor lost to Florida.  Kentucky beat West Virginia.  Ten years ago mid-majors used to have a late January/early February showcase for the same reason.  It helped their tournament resume.  Duke has been scheduling Big East games (mostly Georgetown and St. Johns) the last 10-15 years during the same period with some great results.  

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There's a good chance our 20 game conference schedule next year looks something like this:

 

@ Michigan State

@ Penn State

@ Maryland

@ Michigan

@ Wisconsin

@ Ohio State

@ Iowa

@ Indiana

@ Purdue

@ Illinois

H Michigan State

H Maryland

H Michigan

H Ohio State

H Iowa

H Indiana

H Purdue

H Minnesota

H Northwestern

H Rutgers

 

A lot depends on who goes pro early - for example Penn State could be a top 15 team or they could be sub .500 depending on Carr & Stevens - but that schedule doesn't exactly look easy.

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5 minutes ago, Dead Dog Alley said:

There's a good chance our 20 game conference schedule next year looks something like this:

 

@ Michigan State

@ Penn State

@ Maryland

@ Michigan

@ Wisconsin

@ Ohio State

@ Iowa

@ Indiana

@ Purdue

@ Illinois

H Michigan State

H Maryland

H Michigan

H Ohio State

H Iowa

H Indiana

H Purdue

H Minnesota

H Northwestern

H Rutgers

 

A lot depends on who goes pro early - for example Penn State could be a top 15 team or they could be sub .500 depending on Carr & Stevens - but that schedule doesn't exactly look easy.

 

It won't be, but if we bring back everyone with eligibility, I'll take our chances in all the home games.

Edited by uneblinstu
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Next year will give us chance to become a consistent program.  We have inconsistent players (Roby, Jordy, Watson) and we have a program that has made two runs by getting hot at the end of the year.  The next step in building the program in my opinion is another post season birth next year and some good non-con wins.  We are going to have some roster turnover and everyone has an off night now and again but we need to bring it early and often.

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6 hours ago, Dead Dog Alley said:

There's a good chance our 20 game conference schedule next year looks something like this:

 

@ Michigan State

@ Penn State

@ Maryland

@ Michigan

@ Wisconsin

@ Ohio State

@ Iowa

@ Indiana

@ Purdue

@ Illinois

H Michigan State

H Maryland

H Michigan

H Ohio State

H Iowa

H Indiana

H Purdue

H Minnesota

H Northwestern

H Rutgers

 

A lot depends on who goes pro early - for example Penn State could be a top 15 team or they could be sub .500 depending on Carr & Stevens - but that schedule doesn't exactly look easy.

 

Well that would be a tough go.  But I would hope that the Big would give us at least one home game in our first 10. :mellow:

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