A10 Scheduling

[Pistol]

Can someone explain to me why we're losing our home-and-home with Xavier next year? The A10 is taking steps not to kill the RPI of its teams, but how is this helping? SLU and XU were two of the highest RPI teams, so they should still be playing one another. This is ridiculous. I wanted that XU rivalry going strong. Nothing against St. Joe's (I'd rather have them as our third home-and-home instead of URI, but we still have Dayton and URI), but XU makes a lot more sense to me. But this league unfortunately hasn't been run with much common sense.

The way to improve the league RPI is not to mess up everyone's home-and-home games, it's to make sure that coaches aren't scheduling too soft. There should be a league-wide push to avoid the worst teams in D1 as non-conference opponents. SBU and some of the others are bad enough as it is, the last thing they need to do is give themselves the worst schedule on top of that. If you look at XU's non-conference opponents next year, they seem to be the one doing it right; I'm pissed we don't play them twice because it would only be good for us. Shame on UMass, GWash, and some of the other decent teams in the league who load their schedules up with predominantly home games against cupcakes in the early going. This is what needs to change, not the rivalry games.

[billiken_roy]

wanna bet that bruno is trying to keep the dayton, xavier and slu trio from becoming too solid?

she may be a horrible administrator, but she isnt stupid. she knows that the three of us together can become the core of a nice new conference.

[Pistol]

Roy, I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not starting a conspiracy theory that she's keeping that trio of schools down, I'm just dumbfounded that SLU and XU won't be playing each other twice this year. If she knows that those three teams can become the core of the new conference, then why weaken the link between two of them?

[RF1]

URI fan here. I am with you as well. Pairing URI and SLU does not make much sense for either school. The distance between the two is the most in the league and the schools have little in common. I accepted the pairing for the first two years as I felt they probably had to have a few odd groupings to make it work for the entire league. I however do not understand continuing the home and home for both schools. Duquesne is also announcing that URI will be one of its home and home partners. URI will then have SLU and Duquense as two of its three home and home partners. This makes little sense from a URI perspective.

[dewey33]

could it be because they want to make sure X is playing the remaining top teams?

did they replace us with UMass or GW?

Thats a better reason than a conspiracy theory....

[Pistol]

Even so, SLU had a better RPI than either UMass or GWash for most of the season, and still had a much better SOS when everything was said and done. We did our part to help the conference's overall RPI, while they could have done much more than playing soft non-con schedules. Granted, they both played better in conference down the stretch, but it still doesn't make sense.

[dewey33]

our better rpi did not get us jack.....

[Pistol]

In the end, you're right that it didn't, but you can't say the design wasn't right. If we play a soft schedule and still are 10-3 going into conference and then have those devastating losses to SBU and Duquesne, we're looking at a high-100s RPI at best because of a terrible SOS, and not even in the NIT conversation.

UMass and GWash were the opposites in that they scheduled easy in non-con, did all right, and then got hot in conference play.

I will always advocate the strongest non-conference schedule possible. That is what's going to fix the A10 in the long run, getting stronger schedules top to bottom. Then SBU won't be the equivalent of playing Savannah State in conference season.

[Pistol]

As much as I like URI, it doesn't make sense for either of us, you're right. Especially when we now lose XU as a home-and-home but keep URI. The A10 has it all wrong on this one. What they should do is force the lower teams to play better schedules, and then mixing up the home-and-homes is no longer an issue. SBU should have been kicked out of the A10 for their move a few years back; but since we have to deal with them still, they should not be allowed to screw the rest of us by playing all the worst teams in D1.

I feel bad for you guys having to play Duquesne twice, and then a nonsense geographical one like us. Once this conference gets itself in order, I will like it a lot, but a lot of this scheduling and TV stuff has to improve.

[SluSignGuy]

bump

[xfactor9600]

I'm upset Xavier isn't playing SLU twice this year. It has the makings of a great rivalry. I enjoyed my visit last season (despite the fact that my team shot 15%). Another questionable move by Linda B. I wish the A-10 would get rid of her. She's holding the conference back.

[billiken_roy]

dewey, it would have had we won the dequesne, st bonnie and temple games. those three games turned around would have put us in the ncaa zone.

our schedule was right. our team just let us down those three games.

[STLfan]

every year. They are by far the two closest A10 universities to us and it would help build some nice rivalries for the conference. Maybe each school should have two fixed home and homes and a third that is changed every other year.

That or divide the conference into two 7 team divisions east and west. Play each team in your division home and away and play the teams from the other division once either home or away. That would give us 19 conference games. I read somewhere the Big 10 is going to an 18 game conference schedule.

[jjray]

>I'm upset Xavier isn't playing SLU twice this year. It has

>the makings of a great rivalry. I enjoyed my visit last

>season (despite the fact that my team shot 15%). Another

>questionable move by Linda B. I wish the A-10 would get rid

>of her. She's holding the conference back.

I hope a planetary body the size of Rick Majerus is able to spin Bruno out her orbit. We need a league commish like Elgin who, instead of coddling the bottom feeders, orders them to improve their strength of schedule. And in a dispersed conference like the A10, it is absolutely critical to build geographic rivalries. Dayton, Xavier, SLU are obvious fits staring everyone with sense in the face.

[Box and Won]

I'm shocked that we're not playing X twice. For pete's sake, it's one of only two easy road trips for fans of either school to make, not to mention that it's killing a potential rivalry. Playing Xavier and Dayton twice a year is one of the few good selling points for being in the A-10.

The A-10 is so bush league, it's not even funny.

[xfactor9600]

>every year. They are by far the two closest A10

>universities to us and it would help build some nice

>rivalries for the conference. Maybe each school should have

>two fixed home and homes and a third that is changed every

>other year.

>

>That or divide the conference into two 7 team divisions east

>and west. Play each team in your division home and away and

>play the teams from the other division once either home or

>away. That would give us 19 conference games. I read

>somewhere the Big 10 is going to an 18 game conference

>schedule.

Your suggested set up is EXACTLY what the A-10 had before you guys joined up. There was NO reason to break up the East and West designation at all. I think the league was initially concerned with the number of league games, but obviously that's not been a concern since.

[Pistol]

I'm not always a fan of two divisions in collegiate conferences, but in the case of the A10 or the CUSA (as we knew it), the geographic spread is too wide and there are too many teams for a single division format. The old A10 setup was:

EAST

St. Joe's

URI

Temple

St. Bonaventure

Fordham

UMass

WEST

Xavier

Duquesne

Dayton

G Wash

Richmond

LaSalle

I wouldn't mind going back to that, maybe putting LaSalle in the East to get both SLU and Charlotte in the West. The conference will only get stronger, though, if there is an emphasis on better scheduling from top to bottom. Elgin gets it, Bruno doesn't (but that doesn't mean I think we should go to the Valley, either).

I can't believe SLU and XU haven't made more of an outcry about the change in scheduling that keeps us from playing twice this coming year (I'm not sure about how all future years will be affected). I think it's mutually beneficial for us to play twice.

[Clock_Tower]

X. Sticking with topic of L. Bruno, have you heard anything about the league TV contract? What is XU pushing for? Presumably, XU was negatively affected (as were all league schools) but you still had relatively good coverage. Am I correct? How many of your games were on TV and what channel? Fox Sports Ohio?? What does XU hope and expect for improved TV from Bruno?

[xfactor9600]

I believe the whole conference is switching to CSTV if not next year, the year after. When i did not make the two hour trek from Indy, I watched on Fox Sports Ohio (via Direct Tv). Xavier had a few games on ESPN (perhaps ESPN2). I can only think of two Xavier games that were not somehow televised (not including the Pre-Season Paradise Jam).

Linda Bruno is not well liked among the alumni, we believe that some of the bottom tier should be forced to improve or face expulsion. Most of the Xavier fans anxiously await the fallout of the Big East, and any conference that might be born out of that.

I will tell you that the space between Xavier and SLU is not that far apart in my opinion. The major difference i can see is that in the early 90's Xavier decided they wanted to build a solid program that could contend year in and year out. They built a state of the art facility (in terms of the A-10) to help with recruiting. They brought in Skip Prosser, Thad Matta, and now Miller. It seems to me that if SLU makes a real push to be a competitive program, with the building coming (I can't wait to visit it), SLU has a chance to right the ship, regardless of what conference they are in.

Xavier has also taken upon itself to ramp up its OOC, which is something i would recommend for SLU as well.

[jjray]

>>Xavier has also taken upon itself to ramp up its OOC, which is something i would recommend for SLU as well.<<

Sodie, in the end, was on top of that. Check out last year's strength of schedule rankings: http://www.sportsquant.com/cbbsos031107.htm

(Note: I have seen several of these rankings but SLU had a higher ranked SOS than Xavier in each list.)

SLU--78

Xavier--102

The problem is that SLU's SOS was highest in the A10. Every team in the conference has to work on its OOC schedule strength to improve the conference RPI as a whole.

[xfactor9600]

Definitely didn't mean to imply Xavier's was better last year, but it's a work in progress. I'd like for more A-10 schools to take on the anyone, anywhere, anytime schedule philosophy that John Chaney had at Temple.