non conference

[p diddy]

since when did we get the idea that we had a bad non-conference schedule this season. obviously, we can get better competition for our "buy" games at home, but otherwise i cannot complain about our nonconference slate

at georgia tech (Final 4)

at West virginia (nit), big east

at dayton (ncaa)

at kansas state (big 12)

arizona (perennial top 10) not their best year in 2004

at smsu (mvc finals and 19 wins), loaded team, but underacheived

butler (rebuilding), but avg. about 24 wins the previous six years.

add to that the c-usa conference slate which included six ncaa teams, including road games against the five teams that tied for the league title.

what on earth do we want.

in 2003

west virginia (home)

at butler (ncaa sweet 16)

siuc (mvc champs)

dayton (home)

at arizona (ncaa, final eight)

smsu (home)

at kansas state (big 12)

cusa schedule

the only difference i see from the past two years was the savannah states and nc a&t's and that can be easily rectified.

the schedule is plenty good enough with a mix of one or two superpowers, a game or two against teams from the top six (bcs football conferences), a couple of top mid-major programs, our annual game with dayton and a rugged conference schedule.

i imagine next year will give us more of the same.

yes, we have duke next year, but don't forget that we had a team on the schedule this year that won AT Duke.

bad boyz for life

[Sheltiedave]

P Diddy, you are on the right track analyzing our schedule. This year fell out well for us. We played:

Team(Final RPI)

Eastern Kentucky(215)

Savannah State(296)

NC A&T(323)

at West Virginia(97)

Arizona(41)

at Georgia Tech(16)

Grambling(250)

at SMS(96)

Butler(166)

at Dayton(40)

Kansas State(114)

This OOC schedule was developed to ease us into the season, knowing that we were short a starting guard and backup center for 60% of the games. This resulted in the OOC schedule ranked as the 99th toughest.

In the conference strength, the last four years show both conferences to be stable. CUSA was ranked 5, 7, 9, and 8 for 2004, 2003 2002, and 2001 respectively. A10 was 7, 9, 7, and 7 for the same years.

Following are the team RPI ranks for 2004...CUSA vs A10

Cinncinati(11) St. Joe(3)

Louisville(24) Dayton(40)

Memphis(32) GWU(74)

UAB(33) Xavier(35)

Charlotte(34) Richmond(47)

DePaul(37) Temple(100)

SLU(64) RI(82)

Marquette(83) Duquesne(162)

TCU(120) La Salle(188)

S Miss(123) UMass(174)

E Carolina(151) St. Bona(198)

Tulane(181) Fordham(211)

Houston(187)

S Florida(222)

SLU's conference schedule this year was one of the 25 toughest in the country, which bootstrapped our overall RPI to 64. Normally, St. Joe will be in the 40s for RPI, and Temple will project to bounce back into at least the 50s, but the A10 has more bad dogs that will not give us an in-conference RPI boost we are used to.

This means we have to substantially increase our OOC RPI over the next three years if we want to dance. Anyone with gray hair can remember what the third best team in the Great Midwest got us as far as the NCAA goes...

Subbing Duke for Savannah St this year would have put us at about a 54 RPI. If we beat them, we would have been dancing.

[kshoe]

3rd place in the Great Midwest guaranteed you an NCAA birth. 3rd place in the A-10 with a solid non-conference schedule will also be good enough for the dance. I expect that on average the A-10 wil get 4 (myabe 5 in some good years) bids to the dance when SLU and Charlotte are added to the mix. The A-10 is on par with the CUSA we were used to before this past season. This last year was clearly CUSA's best. Major changes are not needed to our non-conference schedule.

[billiken_roy]

if the rumors are true that the a-10 might cut ties with fordham and either duschene or lasalle before the 2005-06 season, the conference rpi with raise even more.

[Sheltiedave]

You're right, Kshoe, these conference setups do get dusty, don't they?

Looking at the RPI rankings, teams that fell in the 51 - 60 slots had 4 automatic and two invites, 61 - 70 had two automatics and 2 invites, 71 - 80, 81 - 90, and 91 - 100(DePaul) had only one invite each. Wahington was the lowest invite in the 120s slot.

If we can't get an invite due to our win/loss record, we have to make it due to our OOC SOS section of the RPI. The in-conference schedule is pretty much set in stone, and will not greatly help our chances(outside this year, when CUSA had a monster RPI year.)

The question arises - do we want to be guaranteed an NCAA berth, or do we want to perennially be a bubble team? I would rather be facing a tougher schedule and be dancing half the time, rather than splitting years between the NIT and NCAA. Unlike Spoon and Romar, Brad knows how to recruit the Midwest, and is pushing strongly to build a Big 10 team - rugged, with speedy guards. This will work well in the A10.

[billiken_roy]

i think brad soderberg is fast becoming the best recruiter slu has ever had. we have more size than we have had in my 25 years of following the billikens, we have more fast and talented guards than we have had since claggett waldman years.

if he can just credibly fill in this last piece of the puzzle for next year it will be the most optimism going into a season since hughes was coming in imo.