Not in any particular order, but here’s what I’d like to see next season. Winnable home games against mid-major competition. Chances for resume-building road games. Try to re-establish local rivalries.
@ Wright St.
@ Troy
@ UK (buy)
vs. Illinois St. (1-for-1)
vs. non-D1
@ UD (2-for-1)
@ UC (buy)
vs. Fort Wayne
vs. Oakland
vs. Evansville
2 vs. in-season tourney
vs. Murray St.
vs. MAC/SBC Challenge
See it as follows if we assume 13 OOC games like this past season. No particular order, except the SBC Challenge games bookending the schedule. Preference for a better tourney and mid-major competition of course, less home games while students are on J-term, and midwestern opponents who are easier travel. Also prefer bad buy games but I don’t expect the dregs of the Big Ten/ACC to sign up for us.
Vs Sun Belt Challenge (started away this season)
At Wright State (return game)
At Air Force (return game)
Tourney 1
Tourney 2
Tourney 3
At Power Buy Game 1
At Power Buy Game 2
At Power Buy Game 3
Vs Non-DI Buy Game
Vs Mid Major 1
At Mid Major 2
At Sun Belt Challenge
Generally agree with this scheduling philosophy, but only 3 home games on your list. We’ve averaged 7 OOC home games for the past 4 years with 6 being the minimum.
I would replace one of the P4 road games with a home buy game (D1) and try to start both those new mid major home and home series at home. That gives us 5 home, 5 road, 3 neutral.
First Sun Belt game usually based on NET, so likely opponent will be South Alabama (123) James Madison (158) or App. State (170).
Miami’s Net is 147.
Check that: I think the second game is based on NET. First game based on pre-season expectations. Under that heading, Miami likely plays Arkansas State, likely Sun Belt favortie again, which beat Akron in OT to start the season and lost to Kent in Feb. Both were one possession games.
As for P4 Buy Games. A simple rule of thumb should be, if you’re a good team like Miami try to play mid-level P4 games where you might get an upset. If you’re average to bad, play the Kentucky’s and Bama’s for the NCSOS boost, even with the loss.
Only issue with scheduling winnable P4 games is the other side has to agree. I know High Point was having issues scheduling a game vs a P4 because of how successful they were the year prior
We aren’t getting an at-large and we’re winning the MAC, so lets schedule like we did this year and see if we can win 30.
Except, that if we get our NET up, we could get a better seed.
Would like to see Butler, DePaul or UIC. Doesn’t seem unreasonable.
First game is based on NET from the prior season. South Alabama and Miami are both 3rd in conference NET, so that’ll be the matchup.
High Point didn’t play a single Quad 1 game and only played one Quad 2 game. And yet they are 82 in the NET. Akron didn’t play a single P4 team and was only bought once by St Mary’s. They are 91 in the NET despite playing a weak MAC schedule like us.
It doesn’t matter if we play a hard schedule or not. All that matters is our relative performance in those games. Margin of victory/defeat is what matters in the NET rankings. We weren’t penalized for playing the 4th worse team in the country (Maryland Eastern Shore) at home. We were penalized because we only beat them by 18. We would have been much better off if we beat them by 30.
How much is final margin a factor? Also, is there a cut-off? Like, would beating UMES by 45 helped us more than winning by 30, or does is not make any difference at that point?
Scoring margin was dropped as an input to NET and it was capped at 10 pts anyway. That said, margin is somewhat baked into the efficiency metric that’s used.
Good clarification there. Scoring margin isn’t used per se, but your offensive and defensive efficiency metrics will be better if you win by 30 versus 20.
I don’t think Butler or DePaul would be interested in paying us for a buy game. A home and home with UIC might be possible, unlikely I’d say, but possible.
Re: DePaul and Butler: It would seem reasonable for a cheap home-and-home. Add Loyola Chicago to that list, as well…
My wish has always been to try to play any D1 school who will play us in state. That’s like 14 schools right there (granted 5 of those are in our conference) but you have schools in Indiana and Kentucky that are really close as well. A five hour drive from Oxford hits like 40 D1 schools. Not too bad!
Two things that hurt local interest in a basketball program:
A Miami program that hosts a 2-1 against X, Dayton, and Cincinnati would be really appealing. Going in to the 5 hour drive-time radius, DePaul, Loyola Chicago, UIC, Pitt, Butler, Purdue Ft Wayne, SLU would all be do-able. Miami vs any of these teams would be a good match-up. Hopefully MU can make it happen.
Dare to dream…
No Big East team will play us home-and-home. An A10 team might, I suppose, but I doubt it. (Otherwise UD would be playing us.)
Your schedule has only 3 nonleague home games, one vs a lesser division opponent. That schedule is a nonstarter. Getting into a better Thanksgiving tournament and playing 3 good teams would be the best thing we could do. Home and homes vs other G5’s would be desirable. Dropping the D3 games would be OK with me, buying a couple of lower level 1 games like last year would be good. Play a couple of buy games vs P4 teams. I would like playing UD or X or UC only if there was a home game as part of the agreement. Our power rankings were destroyed last year by losing at home to Wright State and on the road to Vermont, EMU, and WM. Too many losses to weaker teams.
It would be nice not to have our first four conference home games during J-Term. I don’t know how we ever get around that.