OOC is just about set, per Carino

[HeavenUniv.]

I always thought it was strange that Penn State gets almost whoever they want from Pennsylvania for football,lacrosse,soccer, and now probably hockey, but rarely gets the top Pennsylvania basketball players. Don’t know what the other facilities are like, but the arena is good size and not that old.

 

[Groz]

If they were "close", what were their seeds in the NIT....Penn State was a 4 seed....Nebraska was a 5 seed......

I don't keep saying it because I'm making things up.....i keep saying it because once a media member says something for a few weeks prior to the NCAAs, doesn't mean it's correct.

That means regardless of who Penn State or Nebraska did or didn't schedule in OOC, it was getting blown out by 18 to 20 in the B1G at MSG, despite finishing 4th based on record in conference games....the league schedules are not balanced in conferences where you don't have a round robin schedule.

If the league has a down year, your OOC is not going to save you. That season had the B1G overall as a league lose a LOT of head to head games across the entire conference. Those performances hurt the league overall.

Here's the link....the only argument is that the NCAA selection committee doesn't actually seed by rank of making the NCAAS....but they kinda do....

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2018-03-31/nit-bracket-2018-scores-times-printable-pdf-years-tournament?amp

Here are the seeds for 2018 which shows how far off this argument is about OOC.

NIT 1 seeds- Notre Dame, Baylor, Southern California and St Marys. These are your 1st 4 outside of making the NCAAS

NIT 2 Seeds- Louisville, Utah, Marquette, Oklahoma State

NIT 3 seeds- LSU, Stanford, Middle Tennessee State, Oregon

NIT 4 seeds- Mississippi State, Penn State, W. Kentucky, Boise State

NIT 5 seeds- Nebraska, Boston College, Temple, Washington.

I didn't make this list up....maybe you could argue Penn State and Nebraska should have been seeded higher than 4th and 5th. But Penn State won the NIT, while Nebraska lost in the 1st game at Mississippi State.

I know it's not popular and it's not supporting the arguments for people wanting to see something else.

But there were 10 to 15 programs ahead of Penn State and Nebraska in 2018, for the NCAAS, if you base it on seedings. Maybe they seed the NIT differently but the 1 and 2 seeds are definitely ahead of them based on the selection process and committee.

The OOC schedule for Penn State or Nebraska was not going to leapfrog 12 to 16 teams ahead of them. Penn State and Nebraska needed to be more competitive in the games vs the 4 teams that made it from the B1G AND to show better results in the games they won in the B1G.

If you have a handful of games that are so close and can go either way, it gets sorted out by the committee.

Do I think Penn State and Nebraska should have been seeded higher based on the selection process?? I could say yes since Penn State won the NIT.....but the NIT is also a huge letdown for programs that felt they should have made it and teams do lose games in the NIT, when they're better than the opponents.

These are the seeds the NCAAS have....not my opinion or a writer's opinion or tweet....these are the actual numbers, not a guess.....

Nobody cares about the NIT.(including me) Only fans of teams that get in, Possibly care about it. It is either NCAA or bust as far as I am concerned.

You keep contradicting yourself about OOC meaning something and then not meaning anything. The only good point you make is that the schedule is unbalanced. Teams can only play who is put on their schedule and because Ohio State was bad in 1 particular year, you can't punish a team because they beat them 3 times.

But getting back to the topic, playing a crappy OOC, will ultimately hurt RU, unless we have many big wins against the top teams in our league and sentimentality by the committee says, "Let's let RU in because they have not been in the tourney in so..... long."

Best of Luck,
Groz

 

[Greene Rice FIG]

NJH,

We lost our best player and heart and sole of the team. In the 6 games he was hurt or out we looked like a 2 win B1G team.

I think my outlook is way more grounded and realistic. Doesn’t make me a bad fan....not that you specifically think that.

I’d love to be surprised to the upside. I really would.

 

[Greene Rice FIG]

Kcg....definite merit to what you say. I said it at the time......quite frankly I forgot about it.

It is a lot healthier to have lower, and more reasonable expectations.

When push comes to shove the way I look at the upcoming season will be closer matches to what Las Vegas will think. Doesn’t make me right.

 

[RUChoppin]

SOS depends on the site you look at, and how they calculate.

Last year, kenpom had us at 31, sagarin had us at 32, teamrankings.com had us at 44, cbssports had us at 73, realtimerpi had us at 75, and warrennolan.com had us at 86.

 

[Russ Wood]

It literally says "strength of schedule". It's 31.

That's according to KenPom. Other rankings might have had us 75 or whatever. Which honestly isn't terrible either for us. We need wins. We need a winning season which we haven't had for way too long.

It literally sas "Strength Of Schedule AdjEM."

AdjEM is the difference between a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency. It’s simple subtraction.

So what that figure represents is the difference between the offensive efficiency of Rutgers opponents minus the defensive efficiency of Rutgers opponents. That is according to Ken Pomeroy's definition.

It is not a measurement of how challenging a team's schedule is.

 

[RUChoppin]

OOC teams by average RPI of last 3 seasons (and last year's RPI):

39 - SHU (39)
81 - St. Bonaventure (125)
158 - Pittsburgh (183)
204 - Stephen F Austin (299)
233 - NJIT (133)
235 - UMass (270)
252 - Niagara (308)
264 - Drexel (238)
301 - Lafayette (272)
312 - Bryant (317)
DII - Caldwell (DII)

 

[RUChoppin]

It literally sas "Strength Of Schedule AdjEM."

AdjEM is the difference between a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency. It’s simple subtraction.

So what that figure represents is the difference between the offensive efficiency of Rutgers opponents minus the defensive efficiency of Rutgers opponents. That is according to Ken Pomeroy's definition.

It is not a measurement of how challenging a team's schedule is.

There are three different AdjEM values. One is our own adjusted efficiency, then there's another under Strength of Schedule (our opponents' adjusted efficiency), and another in non-conference SOS (our OOC opponents' adjusted efficiency).

 

[sct1111]

It literally sas "Strength Of Schedule AdjEM."

AdjEM is the difference between a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency. It’s simple subtraction.

So what that figure represents is the difference between the offensive efficiency of Rutgers opponents minus the defensive efficiency of Rutgers opponents. That is according to Ken Pomeroy's definition.

It is not a measurement of how challenging a team's schedule is.

Yes, that WOULD be a measurement of how challenging a team's schedule is.

It's literally statistically combining the offensive quality and defensive quality of a teams opponents. The lower the defensive rating the better the team is defensively, the higher the offensive rating, the better a team is offensively. The difference between the two numbers gets you the overall rating for the team or the "adjEM" according to KenPom. It's literally the "adjEM" of the opponents a team faces. So yes, literally the strength of the schedule.

 

[Russ Wood]

Yes, that WOULD be a measurement of how challenging a team's schedule is.

It's literally statistically combining the offensive quality and defensive quality of a teams opponents. The lower the defensive rating the better the team is defensively, the higher the offensive rating, the better a team is offensively. The difference between the two numbers gets you the overall rating for the team or the "adjEM" according to KenPom. It's literally the "adjEM" of the opponents a team faces. So yes, literally the strength of the schedule.

You're interpreting that No. 31 incorrectly but if it makes you feel better about last season go ahead and continue to believe that Rutgers had the 31st toughest schedule in the nation last season.

In reality it's more like something between 72 and 77 toughest but you go ahead and believe that Rutgers SOS last season was 31st toughest in the country.

 

[BigEastPhil]

This ooc schedule does nothing beneficial for ncaa bubble purposes. Zilch. Nada. I don’t even think the big 10 is going to be that strong this year which makes the weak pathetic ooc schedule even more of a head scratcher.

 

[G- RUnit]

We play 20 league games. We have SHU, a good St. Bonnie team and Pitt on the road. All this handwringing over the out of conference schedule seems over the top.

 

[sct1111]

You're interpreting that No. 31 incorrectly but if it makes you feel better about last season go ahead and continue to believe that Rutgers had the 31st toughest schedule in the nation last season.

In reality it's more like something between 72 and 77 toughest but you go ahead and believe that Rutgers SOS last season was 31st toughest in the country.

It doesn't make me feel better nor is it what I think. It's the result of KenPom's metrics. Just like we are rated the 78th best team according to KenPom, we had the 31st hardest schedule according to KenPom. It's objective data. Other sources use different metrics. But it is KenPom's way to measure strength of schedule.

I don't know how Sagarin does it but they have us ranked as the 32nd hardest schedule. CBS has us at 73. TeamRankings has us at 44. ESPN has us at 29.

Interpret that as you like. Whatever else you say is just your subjective opinion. The data says otherwise.

 

[RUChoppin]

You're interpreting that No. 31 incorrectly but if it makes you feel better about last season go ahead and continue to believe that Rutgers had the 31st toughest schedule in the nation last season.

In reality it's more like something between 72 and 77 toughest but you go ahead and believe that Rutgers SOS last season was 31st toughest in the country.

I posted above different rankings from different sites. Each has its own methodology. Pomeroy deals in efficiency and efficiency margins - and he specifically labels that number "Strength of Schedule" on his site (whether or not you agree with him). If you disagree with that as a SOS ranking, I'd imagine you'd disagree with kenpom as a rating methodology altogether.

Jeff Sagarin ranked Rutgers' SOS as 32nd. Curious to know why you disregard his methodology, too.

 

[TDIrish27]

We play 20 league games. We have SHU, a good St. Bonnie team and Pitt on the road. All this handwringing over the out of conference schedule seems over the top.

A good St Bonnie team ?

 

[sct1111]

I posted above different rankings from different sites. Each has its own methodology. Pomeroy deals in efficiency and efficiency margins - and he specifically labels that number "Strength of Schedule" on his site (whether or not you agree with him). If you disagree with that as a SOS ranking, I'd imagine you'd disagree with kenpom as a rating methodology altogether.

Jeff Sagarin ranked Rutgers' SOS as 32nd. Curious to know why you disregard his methodology, too.

I don't think Russ has a strong grasp on numbers and statistics.

 

[RUChoppin]

I don't think Russ has a strong grasp on numbers and statistics.

I don't think it's that - I think it's a matter of considering some sites/methodologies legitimate and others illegitimate.

 

[NewJerseyHawk]

I gave the list of teams that 6 to 7 other B1G teams played last year in this thread. Who else in the B1G plays a significantly tougher schedule??

The best way to show RU is bad at scheduling is to give a total breakdown of SOS by teams in the conference. If RU is last in SOS by a significant margin, the information would show that.

If the argument is that RU hasn't made the tournament since blah, blah. blah and RU can't schedule the same as Iowa, Northwestern, Penn State. Wisconsin, Minnesota, then you would be wrong. The committee is going to have 32 games to evaluate the program. 25 of the 32 games are going to be against legitimate competition. Just because it's not 26 or 27 games, is not a factor.

And you cannot rely on last year's data as a starting point for how a program is going to do next year.

 

[RUChoppin]

The best way to show RU is bad at scheduling is to give a total breakdown of SOS by teams in the conference.

The question is how "strength of schedule" is defined. Clearly different sites use different formulas, and it seems that there is disagreement on which would be considered valid.

 

[bac2therac]

It doesn't make me feel better nor is it what I think. It's the result of KenPom's metrics. Just like we are rated the 78th best team according to KenPom, we had the 31st hardest schedule according to KenPom. It's objective data. Other sources use different metrics. But it is KenPom's way to measure strength of schedule.

I don't know how Sagarin does it but they have us ranked as the 32nd hardest schedule. CBS has us at 73. TeamRankings has us at 44. ESPN has us at 29.

Interpret that as you like. Whatever else you say is just your subjective opinion. The data says otherwise.

except the NCAA is going by the sos that the NET ratings use

whatever the case, this years OOC is poor and there is no defense of it.Every school has to have a quality non conference win or two to go along with the conference stuff. RU has basically one opportunity and alot of dregs

shills need to stop spinning, its a bad schedule period.

 

[bac2therac]

We go 20-11 imo. 10-1 OOC and 10-10 in big ten play. Depending on which big ten games are won we get in the tourney in a dayton play-in game

you assume the big 10 will be strong...remember NC State net ranking in the low 30s got snubbed because of their awful ooc schedule

 

[anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy]

you assume the big 10 will be strong...remember NC State net ranking in the low 30s got snubbed because of their awful ooc schedule

Well nc state also only beat one tourney team in their conference in cuse who was a bubble team, so that doesnt help. They did beat auburn in ooc play which is nice but in total they only beat 2 tourney teams all year and had an absolute joke of a game scoring 24 total points vs i think va tech.

So as comparison if we only beat lets say SHU in ooc play and only beat one bubble team in conference then yes, even if we go 10-10 in conference play we dont deserve to be in the tourney

 

[RUChoppin]

except the NCAA is going by the sos that the NET ratings use

whatever the case, this years OOC is poor and there is no defense of it.Every school has to have a quality non conference win or two to go along with the conference stuff. RU has basically one opportunity and alot of dregs

shills need to stop spinning, its a bad schedule period.

Unfortunately, we only have the one year's worth of NET rankings to use, but once all the 2019-20 schedules are posted, I can do a comparison.

Yes, the OOC is weak.

With 20 conference games, though, 2 of the usual OOC spots have been taken up with B1G schools. Basing off an 18-game conference schedule, we'd have an OOC with 2 B1G teams, 1 ACC team, 1 BE team, 1 A10 team, 7 lower conference teams, and 1 D-II school (and that A10 team should have been an SEC team). That's not terrible - though the "lower conference schools" could definitely be in the 150-225 range rather than the 225-325 range.

 

[Russ Wood]

It doesn't make me feel better nor is it what I think. It's the result of KenPom's metrics. Just like we are rated the 78th best team according to KenPom, we had the 31st hardest schedule according to KenPom. It's objective data. Other sources use different metrics. But it is KenPom's way to measure strength of schedule.

I don't know how Sagarin does it but they have us ranked as the 32nd hardest schedule. CBS has us at 73. TeamRankings has us at 44. ESPN has us at 29.

Interpret that as you like. Whatever else you say is just your subjective opinion. The data says otherwise.

Kenpom doesn't rank the best teams. His rankings are based on efficiency of offense and defense. At the top of his rankings it usually correlates with the best teams but as you move down it doesn't always.

Just like his game predictions are based on which team is more efficient than its opponent. However, the most efficient team does not always win.

 

[sct1111]

Kenpom doesn't rank the best teams. His rankings are based on efficiency of offense and defense. At the top of his rankings it usually correlates with the best teams but as you move down it doesn't always.

Just like his game predictions are based on which team is more efficient than its opponent. However, the most efficient team does not always win.

How is that not a "ranking of the best teams"? Efficiency of offense and defense is literally ranking how good a team is based on those parameters.

 

[Scarlet83]

We go 20-11 imo. 10-1 OOC and 10-10 in big ten play. Depending on which big ten games are won we get in the tourney in a dayton play-in game

Plus the B1G tournament games.

 

[anon_0k9zlfz6lz9oy]

Plus the B1G tournament games.

We’ll have the type of season where we finish around 7th in the big ten and get a first round bye but MUST win the 2nd round big ten tourney game or maybe even 2nd and 3rd round games to get in

 

[NewJerseyHawk]

The question is how "strength of schedule" is defined. Clearly different sites use different formulas, and it seems that there is disagreement on which would be considered valid.

Different sites use different formulas
..OK then it can still show how bad the schedule is vs the rest of the conference. These are the teams RU will be compared to.

If the list of schools is Western Illinois or Western Carolina or Northern Florida vs Northern Kentucky or NC A& T vs Florida A & M, those things would show up in the comparisons, regardless of which metrics or what site is used.

Instead we see "it's a bad or weak schedule " and it's going to be bad for RU, when no writer or person here with the comments, has anything to support their reasons why.

I am all for good conversation and expanding the dialogue past the basics of blindly following someone's comments. If the comments are "I shouldn't have to pay to watch RU play Lincoln Tech", then that's fine and I can understand why someone would make that statement.

But once people start following college basketball beat writers, whose primary focus and purpose is college basketball and then they try to convince sports fans that college basketball schedules in mid November is as important as college football schedules, that's complete BS.

I enjoy college football just as much as college basketball. But the schedule stuff on basketball is manufactured or overhyped stuff.

 

[RUChoppin]

Different sites use different formulas
..OK then it can still show how bad the schedule is vs the rest of the conference. These are the teams RU will be compared to.

Can roughly show the difference in OOC strength between RU and other B1G schools, yes. But overall schedule strength vs. other teams vying for postseason berths becomes trickier. It's difficult to make easy apples-to-apples comparisons with teams from other conferences (due to 18 vs. 20 conference games, strength of those conference games top-to-bottom, etc).

Could conceivably just include the 2 early B1G games as part of the OOC, maybe, to try to make a comparison to teams from 18-game conferences - but there's no telling, really, whether those two games would have been the two extras or not.

To bac's point, though, the NET rankings are really what matters most - and they have a somewhat unique approach to SOS with the quadrant system. In that system, it really doesn't matter so much if the team you played was 325th or 225th... they're both Quad 4, and neither is going to help you make the tournament. As long as you have enough Quad 1 and Quad 2 opportunities, and can capitalize on them, that's what really matters. If the B1G slate isn't giving us enough Q1/Q2 opportunities, we need to add more in the OOC slate.

 

[bac2therac]

Well nc state also only beat one tourney team in their conference in cuse who was a bubble team, so that doesnt help. They did beat auburn in ooc play which is nice but in total they only beat 2 tourney teams all year and had an absolute joke of a game scoring 24 total points vs i think va tech.

So as comparison if we only beat lets say SHU in ooc play and only beat one bubble team in conference then yes, even if we go 10-10 in conference play we dont deserve to be in the tourney

exactly....thats why I am saying this. Last year the Big 10 was crazy good and did great OOC but the previous year they didnt do so well OOC and the league rankings were down across the board. There is no guarantee the league is as strong. When you dont play a strong OOC schedule you narrow your window for making the tourney. RU has had a weak OOC schedule for the past 25 years. As expectations have risen its time for the program to take that next leap and stop fearing it if the NCAA is the goal and personally I dont think its a NCAA year this year anyhow...its actually important to just get over 500

 

[Local Shill]

We play 20 league games. We have SHU, a good St. Bonnie team and Pitt on the road. All this handwringing over the out of conference schedule seems over the top.

You can't live in a bubble. Check what our peers' OOC looks like and then come back and tell me it's not weak.

 

[RUChoppin]

You can't live in a bubble. Check what our peers' OOC looks like and then come back and tell me it's not weak.

Which is difficult given the different # of OOC games. You'd need to take two "top 80" games off of any 18-conference-game team's OOC schedule before comparing to a B1G OOC schedule, since our conference took two OOC games away and replaced them with conference matchups.

Once all the 2019-20 schedules are published on a site like college-reference or somewhere, I'll try to pull the data and make some comparisons.

 

[Scarlet83]

NJH,

We lost our best player and heart and sole of the team. In the 6 games he was hurt or out we looked like a 2 win B1G team.

I think my outlook is way more grounded and realistic. Doesn’t make me a bad fan....not that you specifically think that.

I’d love to be surprised to the upside. I really would.

You will be surprised to the upside, Greene. You are looking at what we lost. You also need to account for what we gain, which is a lot, including the maturity of the 4 frosh and transfers.

 

[ScarletR30]

OOC Schedule if accurate per Carino is a disgrace. Wouldn’t shock me if Hobbs masterminded this to take attention away from the football disaster to be with Rutgers bb record at end of December being 11-3 or something like that. We don’t dance unless we win big 10 tourney or beat seton hall and hope they end in top 20 while having an abundant amount of quad 1 wins. Would have been terrific to have another p5 team and quality mid major in lieu of Caldwell and another of the patsies on the schedule.

So in your opinion the difference between having to win the Big 10 tourney to dance vs having a schedule that puts us in a better position to not have to do that is a single game in the end of december against a P5 team?

 

[ScarletR30]

No one wants to talk about how we finished the last games. The Nebraska game?

Take the 3 games Eugene was out and take the last 3 games he was really hobbled and we were a 3-4 win type team.

My thesis going in to the year is that Eugene was crushing loss. Doesn’t mean that given ample time and replacements we can’t replace him. To me the entire roster and upcoming season is a huge unknown.

The entire roster????? We are returning 75% of scoring with a roster that had 4 freshman last year. You really think those 4 are unknowns?

 

[ScarletR30]

If we had Princeton on the schedule this board would be lauding Pikiells OOC schedule

 

[Scarlet Shack]

I really don’t know what people expect

We play 20 big ten games plus two power confrence teams-22 out of 31

We play two mid majors in st boba and umass

Two of the four are not at the RAC

Then 7 “cupcakes”

What we are complaining about is taking 2 home cupcakes and playing one more mid Major and one more power Confeence team ...one each at home and road

Lot other things to complain about than this

 

[Mr Magoo]

I really don’t know what people expect

We play 20 big ten games plus two power confrence teams-22 out of 31

We play two mid majors in st boba and umass

Two of the four are not at the RAC

Then 7 “cupcakes”

What we are complaining about is taking 2 home cupcakes and playing one more mid Major and one more power Confeence team ...one each at home and road

Lot other things to complain about than this

I’m not finding all that much to complain about with this year’s team right now. Aside from losing Eugene, I’m really looking forward to the season. The absolute garbage OOC schedule when we’re trying to finally make a name for ourselves is a totally legit complaint, however. Pike has always played weak OOC teams and the argument has been to pad the schedule, get the wins, and change the perception. We have a solid team this year. We shouldn’t be ducking quality OOC teams.

 

[Greene Rice FIG]

You will be surprised to the upside, Greene. You are looking at what we lost. You also need to account for what we gain, which is a lot, including the maturity of the 4 frosh and transfers.

I get the maturity. Is the roster good enough? I frankly don’t know.

 

[kcg88]

Everyone should read this from an article in The Athletic about Wisconsin:

Gard, who handled the nonconference scheduling for 14 years as an assistant under predecessor Bo Ryan, said the program books much more difficult games now than a decade ago because of the metrics used by the NCAA Tournament selection committee to determine seedings for teams.

In years past, he said nonconference games were less important because teams could rely on the strength of their leagues to boost their postseason résumé. But now Wisconsin is more strategic about not scheduling opponents that would rank in the 300s.

“I used to hang on the phone, call people up and slot dates in when I could and find open dates on the facility and work the best guarantee game you could work and try to barter to get them for as cheap as possible,” Gard said.

“But now you have to be so much more strategic in terms of how do they impact you and what does it do to your seed line? What does it do if you’re 14-6 in the conference and you have this nonconference schedule? One or two opponents can make a world of difference in terms of not only in or out of the tournament but also can push you a seed line or two.”

I know we're at a different stage than Wisconsin, but the central point is important.