It's debatable but they had RU, Maryland, Kentucky, St Louis and still only had a 10 seed....that was after beating Marquette and Villanova at home in the final week or the season and making the Big East Tournament final.
That tells me that if you get swept by DePaul and lose road conference games against the teams in the bottom half of your conference standings, those games are more defining.
It is nice to have South Carolina at a neutral site in the very early portion of the schedule. But it will still come down to how much more competitive is this team, when they go on the road in the B1G....
At Michigan State
At Ohio State
At Purdue
At Wisconsin
At Michigan
At Iowa
At Illinois
At Nebraska
At Penn State
At Maryland
RU doesn't need to even win more than 2 of these games to make the NCAAS. What has to happen is how much better is our roster in late January 2020 into February 2020 than what happens in mid November or early December vs a random OOC opponent.
Can RU continue to improve and cut down the margine of defeat on some of these road games, so it doesn't look like things aren't so drastic between home and road is the goal. There are going to nicks and dents in everyone's resume. There's just too much emphasis by College basketball media members and the fans eat it up. The evidence doesn't seem to support it as much as it's player up to be.
Agreed. But SHU's 10-seed was more a result of just how down the Big East was this year. Even beating Nova and Marquette did not have the usual bump. And losses to the bottom half when the conference rating was so low really hurt.
RU should never worry about OOC SOS when you have 20 league games. We already play SHU.
Schedule is fine and least of worries. Just get the W's. If Rutgers gets close we will be a story. First bid in 30 years. It will be fun watching for all the bracket people.
Schedule is fine and least of worries. Just get the W's. If Rutgers gets close we will be a story. First bid in 30 years. It will be fun watching for all the bracket people.
I agree.....but the SHU and NC State resumes are so much more relevant than OOC schedule. If NC likely beats Georgia Tech once instead of losing to them twice, I'm certain that their ACC resume would have pulled them through the bubble....at worse they would have been in Dayton.
I just think there's nothing worse than "cheating the exam" and scheduling some game that boosts your computer based rating system on SOS, when 90% of the games a team plays, is more than enough evidence on whether they're NCAA caliber or not.
If the Big East falters as a league and their 18+ games overall aren't as strong as the 20+ games of another league, the teams should not be able to schedule a random game in November and December and have that outweigh 70% of their overall schedule.
Sometimes you can find out a lot more about a team in OOC against an unfamiliar opponent than you can in league games. The teams know each other so well in conference that sometimes you need to account for all the games, even the Boston University, Columbia ones, just as much as the South Carolina or St John's Seton Hall types.
I just can forecast fans going overboard in either direction based on a mid November game at a neutral location. The goal remains the same....at least to me.
Do what this team did last year....be a better version of itself in late January and February than it was in November and early December. We have no way of controlling how good or not good South Carolina is or isn't.
The game at Miami last year was a huge statement IMO, but it got glossed over because Miami wasn't the Miami many expected them to be. It was a huge win for a very young team and it didn't get erased like many thought when we lost to Fordham or Seton Hall in December or Nebraska in the B1G tournament.
I am looking at this as Year 1 of 3 opportunities for RU to take the next step forward up a level where they can sustain being a winning program. If that means we jump all the way up to the NCAAS, that's great. But in the larger picture, this OOC game isn't the defining moment and should be treated as just one of 31 to 32 games we will play this year.
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