X finalizes OOC Schedule

[xfactor9600]

HOME: Tennessee, Cincinnati, Creighton, Belmont, Deleware State

ROAD: Miami (OH), Arizona State, Virginia, Auburn

NEUTRAL: K-State (U.S. Bank), Kent State (Chicago tourney), and then with a win Indiana (Chicago tourney)

I realize most won't care, but I know I've had a discussion with a few people about A-10 OOC scheduling. What do you guys think?

I think it will definitely help the conference RPI and SOS.

[STLfan]

Looks like a good schedule. I hope more teams in the A10 can get schedules like this.

[Bay Area Billiken]

That looks like a very strong schedule for X. It should help X's RPI, as well as the A-10 opponents' RPI's.

[slu72]

Can't argue with it...we'd take it am sure.

[kshoe]

Very tough. It will certainly help Xavier's RPI, assuming you win a fair share of them.

Unless you win an ungodly number of those game though it won't be a huge help for the RPI of the other teams in the A-10. In fact, if you scheduled too tough and lose a bunch of those it will actually hurt us as we'll be playing a roughly .500 Xavier team rather than a Xavier team with a much higher winning %.

I'm not saying you shouldn't schedule hard, because you absolutely should, but it is a mathematical truth that if this difficult schedule significiantly impacts X's W/L % then it will hurt the rest of the conference. That being said, just win baby.

[Big Al 1]

I had said earlier I hope we have a stronger home schedule...Billiken Roy responded he was happy with our past schedule naming some of the top teams we played...What I meantwas I do not want to go down and see teams like Quincy, Truman State,UMSL, Western Illinois, etc...We should schedule stronger team than that even in the beginning of the season.

[Pistol]

I love it, and would be thrilled if SLU could put together a schedule like that every year. This past year was solid, and I want to see a tough one season after season with no RPI killers. There's no question that XU is doing their part to strengthen the conference in terms of scheduling and RPI. Now of course we get screwed and will only play them once in a move that makes no sense whatsoever.

[billiken_roy]

big al, last year we had fewer "buy games" than i past years and one of last year's buy games, quincy, had zero impact on the rpi.

i agree i would gladly not have any buy games.

[slufanskip]

that should give you one of the top non conf rpi's in the country. Do well in the A10 and win a large percentage of those and you should be looking for a good seed in the tourney.

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[xfactor9600]

The key, as some have pointed out, is to win these OOC games, now that they're scheduled. X has a pretty good team coming back, and they don't have to play SLU more than once during the conference season (which by the way is a travesty). It's too early to project how many wins, but I'm hopeful of a good OOC record.

[Pistol]

True, you have to win a few of those, but I'd rather play a monster non-con schedule and take some losses while gaining the good experience for my players before heading into conference play. It makes for a much tougher and more tournament-ready team. So many times we've seen teams like UC under Huggins go 12-1 in non-conference play, wear out over the course of the conference season, and flop early in the tournament. Players and teams don't get any better by playing cupcakes, so I'd rather have a few losses to good teams than pointless wins over bad teams.