Titans96 wrote:It is a great concept to schedule a soft non-conference schedule, but I thought we did that this past year except for the Florida St. and Illinois games. We went 2-12 in our mostly cupcake schedule. Even when we schedule D3 and D2 teams we go 1-2. Is there a chance we can schedule 12 - D3 teams this upcoming year?
Problem is, you lose to those D3 teams and you fall further into the deep end of the NCAA D-1. Remember, we were losing in the first half against Adrian until the final minute of the half. There were only 60+ D1 teams worse than the Titans this year.
It really comes down to recruiting good players and having a good coaching staff. Therein lies the problem!!!
It's certainly true that in the end you just have to win games.
But we actually played a pretty tough schedule this year. Not as tough as some years, but a good schedule. I was critical of it because it was a) difficult, but b) as Rogobob says, not something fans would recognize as difficult, or come out to see. Per RPI Forecast, our non-conference schedule ranked #133 of 351 NCAA teams. That was 4th toughest in the Horizon, after CSU (#34), Valpo (117) and Wright State (124). But top to bottom it may have had fewer easy games than their schedules. Almost every game (except, of course, Adrian, which doesn't count in SOS) was tough. East Tennessee State, for example, probably strikes most casual fans as a cupcake. The Buccaneers won 27 games, made the NCAA, and had an RPI rank of 55. And the game was on the road. New Hampshire? There's a cupcake. But the Wildcats finished 20-12 with a 127 RPI. And the game was on the road. Beating a 127 team on the road is as tough as winning at home against teams in the 75-100 range. IPFW finished 24-12. I think most casual fans would say ETSU, UNH, and IPFW is the definition of a cupcake schedule. But those three teams won 71 games, and two of the games were on the road. Toledo (on road), EMU, Murray State (on road), Western Kentucky --those are tough outs. Then you add in Illinois and Florida State. That's not murderer's row, but it's by no means a cupcake schedule.
You can compare that to, say, Oakland. Their non-con SOS ranked #272. The games with Georgia (at home) and at MSU and against Nevada (neutral floor) make it look superficially tougher than ours, but then they played Southern Utah (341), Chicago State (318), and Oral Roberts (290), three teams all with RPIs substantially below the worst team the Titans played (Manhattan, #261) and all played at home. They played Bowling Green at home, whereas we played them on the road. They played 2 non-DI opponents to our 1. They got Western Michigan at home early in the year, when Western was really struggling. They played 8 games at home, just 3 (including D-II AlaskaAnchorage) on the road, and 2 at neutral locations. (They will pay a price for that this year, with lots of return road games). I dare say instead of our 2-10 record, we would have had 5-6, maybe even 7 wins against their non-conference schedule (they went 10-3). BTW, Georgia's RPI was 54, one ahead of ETSU. KenPom had Georgia 61, ETSU 67. I will say it--playing on the road at ETSU was a tougher game than playing Georgia at home.
Here's a real cupcake schedule: UIC.
They're top RPI opponent was San Francisco, #94. They played home games with two non-DI opponents, plus Texas San Antonio (264), Eastern Illinois (265), Chicago State (318), and Northern Arizona (335). Then they played Cal-Poly (294) in nearby DeKalb. That's almost a guaranteed 7-0. They also played Northern Illinois (241) and DePaul (233). Other than San Fran, the only top 150 team they played was Grand Canyon (#131). That schedule ranked #328.
Anyway, I'm in overkill mode here, I know. I'm not suggesting we need to go as weak at UIC did, either. But our schedule was not "cupcake" last year at all--it was, as Rogobob says, the worst kind of schedule, one with few opportunities for a marquee win but lots for losses.
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