Year-end look of our Schedule Strength

[BoilerPride08]

Since this topic has been much discussed throughout the year and it being the last week of the regular season. I think it's time to look back and analyze our overall schedule. After Sunday - we will have played a total of 27 regular season contests.

The OOC victory against Oklahoma State is looking really good now - Cowgirls sit 3rd in the B12 and are 20-7 - they just had a big win yesterday against Iowa St. The 1 pt loss against FSU is fine - they are a top 25 caliber team as well with a 22-7 overall record and tied for 4th place in the ACC. The victory vs. Syracuse is also looking good as well as the Cuse (17-11 overall record) are a bubble team as well with Creme currently having them as a 12th seed in his bracketology. That shouldn't be changing much as they scored a huge W yesterday vs. Miami. The 13 point W vs. Illinois State is looking great as well as the Redbirds currently sitting atop a VERY competitive MVC with a 19-7 record and 13-3 conference record with 4 relatively easy contests left. Very possible they make the tournament.

So while someone on this board was harping about how weak our OOC schedule was - 3 P5 teams (FSU, OSU and Syracuse) are extremely likely to make the NCAA tournament with Illinois State making a total of 4 teams.

So of our projected 27 games played - there's a strong possibility that 10 were against NCAA tournament teams.

As of today - We have 1 loss that would be considered "bad" on the year (at PSU). Obviously a L at Minny will make that 2. Loss vs. Nebraska isn't great - but the Huskers have talent and they are making a late charge to put themselves in contention for a tourney spot. At worst they will be NIT bound. Rest of the conference losses were against top 10-15 opponents.

All of this to say - This is why I wait to analyze our schedule AFTER the games are played - and not make sweeping negative generalizations strictly on how teams finished the year prior.

 

[GemstateBoiler]

Good post. And in January, someone on this board said Oklahoma State was not a very good team this year and only had a prayer's chance of making the tournament. I guess they have been praying. Just funnin' with that poster now.

 

[MichaelRR]

OkSU started B12 play losing to KU and KSU but beating a wildly inconsistent Baylor. They looked like a bottom half of the conference team in January. Syracuse, FSU, and OkSU were all teams scheduled for us. ISU was a good opponent, but I notice you are no longer trying to prop up Marshall and the rest of the weak teams we played. I never said we only played poor teams, and to state it that way is disingenuous and intellectually dishonest. You also tried using RPI in December saying we had played a to 20 schedule, which was easy too early to use RPI and it now has us in the mid 50s for SoS.... There is no justification for us playing SIUE, they are always a horrible team. In short, you were right about OkSU, wrong about most of the rest of the schedule, and not being honest on how you are presenting what I said.

 

[BoilerPride08]

Ah the ole "Scheduled for Us" argument. Wow. So you don't think that when KG was putting this schedule together she didn't already know that the team was scheduled to face 2 P5 schools at a OOC tournament - a field that is set at least a year in advance and then another P5, ACC school for the yearly ACC-B10 challenge. Also a P5 school in another OOC invitational, the usually tough TAMU (yes this was a rare off year for them). That is 4 P5 programs, 3 of which have great recent histories, out of 10 OOC games. You're saying that she should have scheduled another 3-4 tough P5 opponents on top of all that? Just so we can then take on an absolutely loaded Big Ten conference - in which we would be face an absolute killer stretch - at times - of top 25 teams night in night out.

You're saying that a projected mid-level program - still in rebuilding mode - just fighting to get enough W's to get into the dance for the first time in years - should have scheduled all tough P5 teams in their OOC schedule and not include any low major "practice' games or potentially good mid majors??

No coach ever in existence would do this. If you were ever a coach your teams would be horrid.

 

[BoilerPride08]

Also you should maybe tell the coaches of highly ranked Louisville and Iowa State oh and also Washington that as they all scheduled SIUE this year as well - SIUE and recently successful Harvard were the only "low majors" in our OOC schedule.

 

[MichaelRR]

Harvard is not a team I object to. TxA&M has been weak for a while now, so this was not "just an off year" as you seem to intimate. I also would put Murray St and Marshall in the very weak catagory. You contended this was a top 25 schedule in December, I stated I thought it would be a millstone around this teams neck come NCAA seeding time. I think we were both incorrect to some degree. OkSU rising up has helped us, as has Syracuse being a little better than expected. As to your assertion that the tournament fields were known well before the rest of the schedule was created, that is pure conjecture on your part trying to make a straw man argument and I can neither refute nor can you prove the validity of those statements either way.

Also I NEVER said we should schedule all P5 teams (this is you being intellectually dishonest and using strawman arguments again), but nearly every team we scheduled out of the tourneys was expected to finish in the bottom half of weak conferences with the notable exception of Illinois St. Clearly Northwestern showed the folly of over scheduling, and I am not suggesting we should emulate their schedule going forward. That said, not scheduling to play a true road game until we went to MSU was a possible grave mistake IMO as well. I think playing nearly all cupcakes led to KG not being forced to consider her starting lineup until AFTER the upset at PSU, and even then I do not think she played the five players best able to compete in the BT, but that is personal bais on my part. I would liked to have seen one of the three really poor teams on the schedule replaced with someone like Wake Forest, Missouri, or Florida away just to give the players a taste of an away game environment in a P5 environment without overscheduling us in terms of difficulty.

 

[BoilerPride08]

Harvard is not a team I object to. TxA&M has been weak for a while now, so this was not "just an off year" as you seem to intimate. I also would put Murray St and Marshall in the very weak catagory. You contended this was a top 25 schedule in December, I stated I thought it would be a millstone around this teams neck come NCAA seeding time. I think we were both incorrect to some degree. OkSU rising up has helped us, as has Syracuse being a little better than expected. As to your assertion that the tournament fields were known well before the rest of the schedule was created, that is pure conjecture on your part trying to make a straw man argument and I can neither refute nor can you prove the validity of those statements either way.

Also I NEVER said we should schedule all P5 teams (this is you being intellectually dishonest and using strawman arguments again), but nearly every team we scheduled out of the tourneys was expected to finish in the bottom half of weak conferences with the notable exception of Illinois St. Clearly Northwestern showed the folly of over scheduling, and I am not suggesting we should emulate their schedule going forward. That said, not scheduling to play a true road game until we went to MSU was a possible grave mistake IMO as well. I think playing nearly all cupcakes led to KG not being forced to consider her starting lineup until AFTER the upset at PSU, and even then I do not think she played the five players best able to compete in the BT, but that is personal bais on my part. I would liked to have seen one of the three really poor teams on the schedule replaced with someone like Wake Forest, Missouri, or Florida away just to give the players a taste of an away game environment in a P5 environment without overscheduling us in terms of difficulty.

Murray State was 22-10 last year and a NIT team and was returning their overall best player from a season ago. Illinois State was an NCAA tournament team a year ago. Texas A&M was a 27 win team and made the S16 team 2 years ago. Also had the 3rd overall incoming freshman player in the country - and we decided to move it from a neutral court to an away court.

Of the 27 games played - 21 were P5 schools - 4 were mid majors - I guess you could label ISU, the only team sub .500 team as the "cupcake" and 2 were "low majors" with 1 (SIUE) being the "cupcake".

So basically you're going from - awful, weak, cupcake filled schedule - to - oh well, maybe we could've added ONE more meddling P5 school to it. Because scheduling P5 schools OOC is just so easy now adays. Had we done that - it would've done absolutely nothing to our seeding chances, RPI or SOS.

Also - that away game environment theory makes no sense - we have 5 players on this team who have 4-5 years experience playing at the collegiate environment. They didn't need experience "playing away games" so there's nothing to "prepare" for. Thus they have subsequently been an excellent road team - going 6-3 in away games.