Scheduling is everything

[HuskerFever]

10 minutes ago, Chuck Taylor said:

The BIG schedule screwed us, not the noncon. We had opportunities in noncon and didn't produce. Our conference schedule was crap, and again, we didn't take advantage of opportunities that were there. There's no need to nitpick the metrics, just look at the wins: ONE against a tournament team, FOUR against sub-100 RPIs. I don't get why everyone makes this so hard with conspirators around every corner.

 

I agree with the premise, but we can't forget that we nearly lost to Eastern Illinois and had some missed opportunities with St. John's and UCF. It just took a little bit for our team to start figuring themselves out. And had we beat UCF we would've had a shot at West Virginia.

[49r]

If you look at KenPom.com you'll see we had 3 teams of 300+ on our schedule.  Creighton had 4.  It's not the number of cupcakes, it's the fact that we had more 150-250-ish teams than them in the non-con, and they got a win over top 50 UCLA.  I agree with @nustudent here, we shouldn't overreact.

 

Keep in mind also we had an unusual amount of luck with injuries this year (none, that I can think of) and some of our opponents in the conference suffered an abnormal amount of bizarre bad luck.  Wich probably inflated our win total in the end, and perhaps gave us some false hope of sneaking into the tourney.

Edited March 12, 2018 by 49r

[Ron Mexico]

Just now, nustudent said:

 

I wont disagree with trying to get away from MEAC and SWAC schools.   But it was the Big 10 conference schedule (which we have no control over) that hurt us more than the non con

It did hurt us but that can be mitigated. We had too few opportunities in our non-con for Q1/Q2 wins. 

[Dead Dog Alley]

38 minutes ago, Ron Mexico said:

Miles and Boehm better had learned something from all of this.

No more MEAC, SWAC, etc conference teams should ever appear on our schedule again...ever.

It is all about metrics and not about how you play. 

We have no control over our conference schedule so we should always schedule assuming the worst possible BIG schedule. With the conference schedule expanding to 20 games our non-con schedule becomes even more important.

 

In a big way we screwed ourselves with scheduling.

 

We can not longer tailor or schedule to the type of team we think we may have. Record doesn't matter once you get to 18 wins what matters is who you beat and not who you lost to. 

Losing to UCF and Illinois did not hurt us. What hurt us and what we were reminded of ad nauseum was the lack of Q1 wins. The way you get Q1 wins is by playing a high volume of potential Q1 teams and just beat a few of them. Think of this. Trade UCF, Eastern Illinois, North Texas, Marist, and Delaware St for projected Q1/Q2 teams. You don't sweep a better schedule but you have more opportunities to improve our "Team Sheet".

 

Everything we do going forward has to be geared towards schedule manipulation.

 

We had four quadrant one wins in 2017 (Dayton, Indiana, Maryland, Purdue).  Didn't do us much good because the schedule in whole bashed our brains out.

[nustudent]

3 minutes ago, Ron Mexico said:

It did hurt us but that can be mitigated. We had too few opportunities in our non-con for Q1/Q2 wins. 

We had the same amount as Texas, OU, Syracuse, Arizona State and it would have been more had we beat UCF

[cornfed24-7]

Well our seed in the NIT seems to suggest our schedule was nowhere close to what it needed to be ?

[Ron Mexico]

4 minutes ago, Dead Dog Alley said:

 

We had four quadrant one wins in 2017 (Dayton, Indiana, Maryland, Purdue).  Didn't do us much good because the schedule in whole bashed our brains out.

Last years team wouldn't have been much better than they were with this years schedule.

[Ron Mexico]

3 minutes ago, nustudent said:

We had the same amount as Texas, OU, Syracuse, Arizona State and it would have been more had we beat UCF

OU Non-Con Games of substance: Arkansas, Oregon, USC, Wichita St and Northwestern

Our non-con wasn't even close to that. Their non-con is why they are in the tournament.

OU is a perfect example of smart scheduling.

[nustudent]

Just now, Ron Mexico said:

OU Non-Con Games of substance: Arkansas, Oregon, USC, Wichita St and Northwestern

Our non-con wasn't even close to that. Their non-con is why they are in the tournament.

OU is a perfect example of smart scheduling.

Our non con is very comparable to that.   There are two tourney teams there.   We had 2 in ours.   THey had 5 Top 100 teams.   So did we.   And it would have been more had we beat UCF.

[HuskerFever]

It turns out we were doomed since Christmas.

[royalfan]

We have to be playing better earlier.  Miles can't afford to wait 10-12 games too long to start our best lineup etc.  It is ridiculous that those games matter as much as down the stretch, but as long as idiots are in charge of it, it will be the case.  

[swmckewon]

About the only scheduling thought I could provide is: Stop allowing the tournament to pair you with the team host. Losses to Hawaii and UCF both stung in their respective years, and it got Doc one year too. 

[hhcmatt]

Just now, swmckewon said:

About the only scheduling thought I could provide is: Stop allowing the tournament to pair you with the team host. Losses to Hawaii and UCF both stung in their respective years, and it got Doc one year too. 

 

That would be getting Missouri State this year in KC

[swmckewon]

1 minute ago, hhcdimes said:

 

That would be getting Missouri State this year in KC

Oh, I dunno if that's quite the same - Nebraska would have 5000 fans there - but it'd be nice to draw the non-mid major team, yes. But I'm guessing USC isn't coming all the way out here to play Missouri State in the first game, and Texas Tech, as the best team, wouldn't get paired with the Bears. 

[Ron Mexico]

6 minutes ago, swmckewon said:

About the only scheduling thought I could provide is: Stop allowing the tournament to pair you with the team host. Losses to Hawaii and UCF both stung in their respective years, and it got Doc one year too. 

Agreed, but that loss in an of itself didn't hurt us. Where that loss hurt us was in the potential opportunity to play West Virginia.

What hurt us was the lack of Q1 wins. It is all about Q1 wins.

[Dead Dog Alley]

22 minutes ago, Ron Mexico said:

OU Non-Con Games of substance: Arkansas, Oregon, USC, Wichita St and Northwestern

Our non-con wasn't even close to that. Their non-con is why they are in the tournament.

OU is a perfect example of smart scheduling.

We had to compress our early schedule so that Jim Delaney could chase his great white whale.  When you've got Michigan State sitting there right in the middle of non-conference games, and Kansas already on the slate, I don't know that you want a lot more as far as top 50 games.

[Ron Mexico]

5 seed in the NIT  for a team that was 22-10/13-5 and rematch on the road again with Miss St.

We did not get that seed because we lost to UCF.

[colhusker]

I could careless who OU played early.  Bottom line is that how you finish which they did NOT do should count as much.

[throwback]

32 minutes ago, Dead Dog Alley said:

We had to compress our early schedule so that Jim Delaney could chase his great white whale.  When you've got Michigan State sitting there right in the middle of non-conference games, and Kansas already on the slate, I don't know that you want a lot more as far as top 50 games.

Agreed - but we may be in a similar boat in 2018-19 with 20 conference games.

 

Next year the Big Ten Tourney should be March 13-17 2019. So that gives us 10 weeks from Dec. 31 through March 10 to play 20 conference games. If they want to give teams any byes in there, they may choose to play a couple of conference games in early December again.

 

Beyond the 2 early December games, this 2018 league schedule had 16 games in 8 weeks (Jan. 1 thru Feb. 25) and they had to condense it (like having 4 games in 8 days) to give one 7-day bye in there.

 

So in 2019 they either have to repeat what they did this year with two games in December to spread out the last 18 games over 10 weeks to create natural byes or they have to play 20 games in 10 weeks with no byes or they'll have to condense it a bit again to get 20 games in 10 weeks with a 7-day bye. (They could start league play Dec. 23 or 24 and play the week between Christmas and New Years to get 11 weeks for 20 league games, but I can't see that happening. Maybe they start Dec. 27 or 28 with the first league game, but that's in the heart of football bowl season, so not likely.)

 

My guess is we get early December conference games again to squeeze in 20 league games. I'd imagine the TV ratings were pretty good for those games, and you get students in the building, which is good.

 

Since we're playing fewer non-con games it won't feel as squeezed early, but I'm not sure we want to draw 3 Top 15 teams plus a trip to Omaha again like we did this year in a 13-day span. So there's part of the challenge of scheduling, because you don't know who you're going to draw in league play in that early December slot before your non-con schedule is done. I'd guess the B1G just tells you to leave those dates open.

 

Edited March 12, 2018 by throwback

[ladyhusker]

One thing to keep in mind is that the non-conference schedule is set before the Big Ten releases the conference schedule. Teams have no way of knowing if they'll have a tough lineup in conference or not. Had we known what we'd get from the Big Ten, especially in the back half of the year, would we have scheduled the non-con differently? I don't know, maybe, maybe not. But had we scheduled much tougher in the non-con, and gotten a tougher slate in conference, we potentially get a repeat of last year's landmine road. If this is how NCAA selection is going to work, maybe the conference should give teams their Big Ten schedules in June (God knows we have the football schedules set from now until my hypothetical grandkids are in middle school, so figuring out a hoops schedule two months early shouldn't be too hard) so they can try to fill out the non-con accordingly. Still takes a hell of a crystal ball to figure out who may or may not be good, but at least you're not flying quite so blind as you set your non-con.

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[49r]

I wish we could move the Gavitt Games or Big Ten/ACC Challenge to the weekend before the Super Bowl like the Big 12 and SEC did with their challenge.  It clearly helped both of those leagues.

[Dead Dog Alley]

17 minutes ago, throwback said:

Agreed - but we may be in a similar boat in 2018-19 with 20 conference games.

 

Next year the Big Ten Tourney should be March 13-17 2019. So that gives us 10 weeks from Dec. 31 through March 10 to play 20 conference games. If they want to give teams any byes in there, they may choose to play a couple of conference games in early December again.

 

Beyond the 2 early December games, this 2018 league schedule had 16 games in 8 weeks (Jan. 1 thru Feb. 25) and they had to condense it (like having 4 games in 8 days) to give one 7-day bye in there.

 

So in 2019 they either have to repeat what they did this year with two games in December to spread out the last 18 games over 10 weeks to create natural byes or they have to play 20 games in 10 weeks with no byes or they'll have to condense it a bit again to get 20 games in 10 weeks with a 7-day bye. (They could start league play Dec. 23 or 24 and play the week between Christmas and New Years to get 11 weeks for 20 league games, but I can't see that happening. Maybe they start Dec. 27 or 28 with the first league game, but that's in the heart of football bowl season, so not likely.)

 

My guess is we get early December conference games again to squeeze in 20 league games. I'd imagine the TV ratings were pretty good for those games, and you get students in the building, which is good.

 

Since we're playing fewer non-con games it won't feel as squeezed early, but I'm not sure we want to draw 3 Top 15 teams plus a trip to Omaha again like we did this year in a 13-day span. So there's part of the challenge of scheduling, because you don't know who you're going to draw in league play in that early December slot before your non-con schedule is done. I'd guess the B1G just tells you to leave those dates open.

 

 

The selection criteria this year proves that going to 20 conference games is a bad idea - the overall RPI of the league is established by the non-conference schedule, the conference slate is a wash.  If you're a coach who looks at his conference schedule and thinks his ceiling is 9-11 or 8-12, is he going to make his non-conference schedule tougher so that he might go sub .500 overall?  Or will he keep the easier games and drop one of the tougher ones he otherwise would have played.

[hhcmatt]

1 minute ago, Dead Dog Alley said:

 

The selection criteria this year proves that going to 20 conference games is a bad idea - the overall RPI of the league is established by the non-conference schedule, the conference slate is a wash.  If you're a coach who looks at his conference schedule and thinks his ceiling is 9-11 or 8-12, is he going to make his non-conference schedule tougher so that he might go sub .500 overall?  Or will he keep the easier games and drop one of the tougher ones he otherwise would have played.

 

Unless we all beat teams in the non-conf and it's really good

[Handy Johnson]

1 hour ago, nustudent said:

Thats one year and it was a fluke.

 

Worst thing we can do is overreact

If you would've told every board member when the season started we'd finish 4th in the B1G with a 13- 5 record and NOT make the Tournament, there isn't one single person who would've believed you. Not one.

[nustudent]

Just now, Handy Johnson said:

If you would've told every board member when the season started we'd finish 4th in the B1G with a 13- 5 record and NOT make the Tournament, there isn't one single person who would've believed you. Not one.

Exactly.  No one could have foreseen the Big 10 being as weak in the middle as it was.  And its highly highly unlikely that it will be that way again anytime soon