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Scheduling ideas

Does the OOC schedule matter when the A10 is a 2 bid league at best? Maybe if the regular season champion loses in the conference tournament semifinals it matters. Otherwise it is Forum fodder.

It is disappointing that there is no marquee home OOC game, but that is par for the course and the same dedicated fans are going to buy season tickets and come to games regardless. It does almost guarantee a half empty Student section though.
 
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With the decline of the A-10, the OOC is really the only place for an at-large worthy team to prove they belong. Very few Q1 opportunities in conference play anymore unless the A-10 reverses trends.
 
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I think they perhaps need to revisit their strategy from a decade ago that out some obligations around how to schedule OOC. It wasn’t perfect but in totality seemed to put the conference in a better overall position.
 
I think the OOC matters even more when the A10 is weak, because you have no reliance on A10 to help your numbers or resume at all. SO - if your thinking an at-large bid is possible, you need to have a top tier OOC schedule. Otherwise - your hoping to with A10 regular season, and likely make the A10 tourney finals to have a shot at a bid with a mediocre OOC schedule.

I agree - I don't think an OOC has cost us an at-large bid, but that is simply because we just have not won enough games in our OOC most years. Costing us a bid would be we finish the OOC at like 12-2, then finish top 3 in A10 and we still are not being mentioned in the bubble conversation - that would mean our OOC cost us. Don't think that has happened.
 
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Yeah, strictly speaking, even with a weaker A-10 it's hard to say any OOC schedule could cost us a bid by itself. Running the table against just about any schedule would probably be enough.

The problem is that even a solid team is going to drop some games they shouldn't, and that's where a weaker schedule hurts. More opportunities for "upset" losses and fewer for "upset" wins.

I agree this schedule is similar to last year's...which isn't great. OOC NET SOS last year was 219.

But I also don't think we're an at-large quality team this season, so I'm not sure it matters much. Would love to be wrong though!
 
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VT4700 said:
I don't think we are "scheduling for wins" at all here. If so, why play 3 and possibly 4 power teams? Why play quality mid majors? Why play games away from home against BC, Florida, Wichita, and No. Iowa in addition to the tourney we are in? This schedule seems very similar to most of our OOC schedules.....a mixture of some easy ones (who everyone plays), some toss ups, and some quality games against some high majors and mid majors. This is a very good schedule, and one of the better OOC schedules in the A-10.

And, doing well enough in OOC will no question put us in position for an at large going into conference play. How can you say we are not scheduling for an at large? If we go 10-3 or better with this schedule (even the 9+ you mentioned if we get the right wins), we would be in great shape going into conference play.
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Damn it. It's Monday morning and I have to agree with 4700, two things that make me cranky:) I'd be the first to call out Mooney if he set up a schedule specifically just to get wins but this is not that.

Is this a schedule to put us in contention for an at large, probably not? Is our roster set up to compete for an at large, nope? I think this is a good schedule for our team. It has some challenging BCS opponents (BC, Florida, Colorado (possibly Florida State), some tough road environments (Wichita State, Northern Iowa, BC again) that should prepare us for conference play. The home slate blows, but it often does, it is tough to get good teams to come to the Robins Center.

At the end of the day, we need to win games. We need to find a way to win at least 3 of our road/neutral games and then either run the table or win all put one of our candy cake home schedule (it's Mooney, so you know we are going to choke the chicken on at least one of those lay-up games). If we can do that, that puts us at 9-4, not at large worthy, but enough to give us some confidence going into conference play that we may not be a bottom of the barrrel A-10 team as we are currently predicted.
 
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The home schedule is definitely the most disappointing aspect. Charlotte will hopefully continue momentum and be a solid addition, but with Wichita and UNI being away this year really wish we could have started up another solid mid-major home-and-home at the RC. (UNI has certainly underpeformed relative to what we'd hoped for when we started the series, but I don't fault us for doing that one.)

Drake and Toledo series finished up, but we only added Charlotte. With the current landscape of scheduling, I really like having four of those home-and-homes going at any given time. Buffalo could have been one in years past, but they've fallen apart and that appears to be a buy game.
 
SFspidur said:
Yeah, strictly speaking, even with a weaker A-10 it's hard to say any OOC schedule could cost us a bid by itself. Running the table against just about any schedule would probably be enough.

The problem is that even a solid team is going to drop some games they shouldn't, and that's where a weaker schedule hurts. More opportunities for "upset" losses and fewer for "upset" wins.

I agree this schedule is similar to last year's...which isn't great. OOC NET SOS last year was 219.

But I also don't think we're an at-large quality team this season, so I'm not sure it matters much. Would love to be wrong though!
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The schedule is similar in strategy/formation. Last year's was definitely weaker by the NET. But this year imo should be better simply bc Colorado and Florida r both projected as higher NETs than anyone we played last year OOC. Also UNI will be better and that's away. Last year we had 6 200+ NET teams on OOC, including 5 that were 270+. This year looks equally as bad, but if our bottom 6 improve a little that will help too. I'm assuming it won't be worse but could easily be a push.

There is so much fluctuation in SOS too. By everyone I've seen who tracks it. I don't know why. Our non conf SOS by RPI was 99, Torvik 108, Team Rankings 121, Kenpom all the way down at 243. Lot of disparity.

But best to defer to NET since that is NCAA developed metric and would be at top of their list.
 
OT - I was looking at our full schedule on website and looks like Davidson did a redesign on their wildcat logo. Kinda similar to old one which was fine. Not an improvement.
 
SFspidur said:
I don't like the new wildcat as well as the previous one. But I do like the new logo with the linked D and C, as well as the text font.

www.davidson.edu

Connections and a More Wild 'Cat: Davidson College Expresses Its Identity in New, Exciting Ways

Davidson College competes at the highest level academically and athletically. Today the college unveiled a new logo and visual identity that reflects the qualities that distinguish Davidson. Learn more.
www.davidson.edu www.davidson.edu
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& Duquesne should go back to their old school Detroit Tigers "D" too. We had the same issue when we tried to be an Arena League team with some of our fonts and lettering.
 
Thank you A10 for not giving Mooney any of the ESPN Friday night A10 games to save us the embarrassment.
 
ManiBenton said:
I’ll get it to over it as soon as he leaves the Richmond program. Kinda of hard to get over it when he’s still here losing games with his boneheaded coaching
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I can’t argue with you but you can’t keep beating a dead horse over and over again.
 
gcarter52 said:
I can’t argue with you but you can’t keep beating a dead horse over and over again.
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Maybe the "dead horse" should actually win some games instead of lose them. Until that happens I will continue to share my frustrations. Dude is getting over a million dollars for what?? He deserves this type of treatment, hell everyone on the board was clowning this dude during the billboard era.... What changed? One tournament appearance and now people changed their minds??? It took him 10 years btw
 
SFspidur said:
I don't like the new wildcat as well as the previous one. But I do like the new logo with the linked D and C, as well as the text font.

www.davidson.edu

Connections and a More Wild 'Cat: Davidson College Expresses Its Identity in New, Exciting Ways

Davidson College competes at the highest level academically and athletically. Today the college unveiled a new logo and visual identity that reflects the qualities that distinguish Davidson. Learn more.
www.davidson.edu www.davidson.edu
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I think the wildcat is fine, but not sure about the DC. Makes you think of Washington, D.C. instead of Davidson College, IMO. They should have stuck with something distinguishable.
 
GKiller said:
ACC coaches want return to 18 game league schedule. Could return for 2024-25 season. Along with sanity.

richmond.com

Teel: Move back to 18-game league basketball schedule possible for ACC

Stung by consecutive seasons of sending only five teams to the NCAA tournament, ACC basketball coaches are pushing for a return to an 18-game conference schedule.
richmond.com richmond.com
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While 18 might make more sense to a conference like the ACC, I still say 20 makes more sense to the A-10. How much are those 7 home OOC games really helping us this year? I say it would be better to play 5 of them with 2 extra A-10 games. Yes, it could be 2 below average A-10 teams, but it could also be one or 2 top 100 ones.
 
Oof. Pretty weak for national TV exposure. Didn't realize we don't have a single Friday night ESPN game (we don't play a single Friday A10 game for that matter).

Last year, both legs of the VCU matchup were on ESPN2, now the game @ VCU is on ESPNU and the game vs. VCU is on CBSN. Quick comparison to the last few regular seasons:

2021-2022: 4 games on ESPN2, 7 games on CBSSN
2022-2023: 4 games on ESPN2, 1 game on ESPNU, 1 game on CBSSN
2023-2024: 3 games on CBSSN, 1 game on ESPNU (Florida State/UNLV and Florida games pending)
 
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