Tough Schedule vs Easy

[waterhead]

We have watched our football team come within about 3 seconds of making a national championship game. We did that by winning all our games in a much easier league than the SEC. Would we have belonged in the NC game? Probably not...but we would have had a 100% better chance to win the game than if we weren't there.

In the Huggins years we totally dominated lesser leagues. It paid all sorts of dividends. High seeds...good recruits etc. The only question being...were we ready to compete with the best teams from the best leagues during NCAA tourney.

The optimal situation is that we play a tough schedule and win them all...but is that reality at this point? I guess what I am asking is are we better served winning a ton of crap games vs losing a few tough games? One of these may put us in the NCAA dance and one may put us in the NIT.

Duke can always schedule a really tough schedule because they usually have the talent. ND and Alabame likewise in football. Until we get back up in the same sentence with great BB programs...what should we do? Start scheduling tough now (an rough it) or build up our schedule as we progress?

 

[JumpinJack5]

We have watched our football team come within about 3 seconds of making a national championship game. We did that by winning all our games in a much easier league than the SEC. Would we have belonged in the NC game? Probably not...but we would have had a 100% better chance to win the game than if we weren't there.

In the Huggins years we totally dominated lesser leagues. It paid all sorts of dividends. High seeds...good recruits etc. The only question being...were we ready to compete with the best teams from the best leagues during NCAA tourney.

The optimal situation is that we play a tough schedule and win them all...but is that reality at this point? I guess what I am asking is are we better served winning a ton of crap games vs losing a few tough games? One of these may put us in the NCAA dance and one may put us in the NIT.

Duke can always schedule a really tough schedule because they usually have the talent. ND and Alabame likewise in football. Until we get back up in the same sentence with great BB programs...what should we do? Start scheduling tough now (an rough it) or build up our schedule as we progress?

I am a big supporter of a mixed schedule. You have to remember that football and basketball are very different in terms of OOC. Football, you only get a few games. Basketball, you get 12-13 games. Football, I think that 1-2 cupcakes are nice, 2-3 mid-level teams, and maybe 1 headliner game as far as OOC goes. Basketball, 3-4 cupcakes, 6-7 mid level teams, and maybe 1-2 big games would be nice. Again, this is ideally, but we don't live in a perfect world and I realize that we won't be capable of a balanced schedule every year. Look at football this year-couldn't get the OSU game, Illinois was good when we scheduled them long ago but no longer any good, Purdue was probably at least mediocre when we scheduled them, and then we had the 1-2 cupcakes against Miami (didn't turn out that way) and Northwestern st. I think moving out of the Big East will help us schedule in basketball, don't ask me why, I just have a feeling. We got NC St. this year, Nebraska, and San Diego State next year, we are on our way to making improvement in the OOC basketball schedule.

 

[Bearcat_NTS]

1. It depends on the team you have. For a younger team, it is better to schedule easier opponents early in the year to gain confidence. For a veteran team, you want to schedule road games and more difficult opponents more frequently to prepare the team for March. You don't need to worry too much about rattling the team.

2. You don't necessarily need to schedule a difficult game every week, it is much more about scheduling smart. As the budget for the basketball team improves, you can get more "good" mid-majors that will not hurt the RPI. UC needs more MTSU's, NC Central's and less Chicago State's and Umass-Lowell's.

3. Pre-season tournament are important to get exposure on ESPN, and get good opponents that might not want to set up home-and-homes. Getting in one of these is very important. Made for TV neutral site games are also key.

Here is my ideal 13 game OOC:

1-3) Preseason tournament (like Old Spice/Maui/Atlantis/etc)
4) Xavier (at US Bank)
5) Louisville (home and home)
6) Neutral site game at MSG or Barclays (for NYC/NYJ recruiting)
7) P5/MWC school in need of home-and-home (like NC State, SDSU, New Mexico, etc)
8) Local team (NKU, MAC school) in a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 -- depending on the other home-and-homes
9-11) MTSU, NC Central, USC Upstate, etc (veteran mid-majors, between 100-150 in the RPI)
11-13) 2 buy games, hopefully between 200-300 RPI

With a schedule like this it provides ample opportunities to get marquee OOC wins, while also giving you 5-6 games that are essentially guarantees. On an average year I would hope to win at least 10 of these 13 games.

This years schedule was close to what I want. The only thing really missing was the preseason tournament. It caused UC to add 3 more buy games which hurt the OOC RPI.

 

[Robert]

1. It depends on the team you have. For a younger team, it is better to schedule easier opponents early in the year to gain confidence. For a veteran team, you want to schedule road games and more difficult opponents more frequently to prepare the team for March. You don't need to worry too much about rattling the team.

2. You don't necessarily need to schedule a difficult game every week, it is much more about scheduling smart. As the budget for the basketball team improves, you can get more "good" mid-majors that will not hurt the RPI. UC needs more MTSU's, NC Central's and less Chicago State's and Umass-Lowell's.

3. Pre-season tournament are important to get exposure on ESPN, and get good opponents that might not want to set up home-and-homes. Getting in one of these is very important. Made for TV neutral site games are also key.

Here is my ideal 13 game OOC:

1-3) Preseason tournament (like Old Spice/Maui/Atlantis/etc)
4) Xavier (at US Bank)
5) Louisville (home and home)
6) Neutral site game at MSG or Barclays (for NYC/NYJ recruiting)
7) P5/MWC school in need of home-and-home (like NC State, SDSU, New Mexico, etc)
8) Local team (NKU, MAC school) in a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 -- depending on the other home-and-homes
9-11) MTSU, NC Central, USC Upstate, etc (veteran mid-majors, between 100-150 in the RPI)
11-13) 2 buy games, hopefully between 200-300 RPI

With a schedule like this it provides ample opportunities to get marquee OOC wins, while also giving you 5-6 games that are essentially guarantees. On an average year I would hope to win at least 10 of these 13 games.

This years schedule was close to what I want. The only thing really missing was the preseason tournament. It caused UC to add 3 more buy games which hurt the OOC RPI.

In an ideal world, I like your philosophy. Whether or not that is possible, I'm not sure. I do think that we should be able to get into better tournaments now that we aren't in the Big East. We used to compete with Louisville, Syracuse, Pitt, Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette, Notre Dame, West Virginia, and UConn for those tournaments. That's 9 highly successful, nationally recognized programs. Now, we will compete with UConn, Memphis, Temple, and maybe SMU. Basically, our chances of making the Maui, Atlantis, etc. are doubled.

As some have informed me, our budget is limited with buy games. But 300+ RPI games do nothing for us. We can handily beat teams ranked in the 150-250 range without completely killing our computer numbers. The problem is finding the money to lure them in.

Also, I would love to play Louisville every year, but that situation seems a little fouled up right now. It would be great if we could play WVU as well, but I understand if there is hesitance because of the past.

I will say one thing -- Cincinnati has more relationships with solid programs than most. Think about this -- we have been affiliated with 4 different conferences in the past 20 years. Think about all the schools we were conference affiliated with in the recent past -- UAB, Charlotte, Southern Miss, St. Louis, Dayton (Great Midwest), Louisville, Rutgers, WVU, Pitt, Syracuse, Georgetown, Villanova, St. John's, Marquette, DePaul, Seton Hall, Providence, Notre Dame... I think if the desire to beef up our non-conference schedule exists, we should start with the schools we have relationships with.

In addition, as long as we are willing to go home-and-home, I think we can schedule all the games we want with teams from the Mountain West, West Coast Conference, Missouri Valley Conference, Conference USA, Atlantic 10, and even the Big East. They aren't all big names, but there are some good programs in those conferences. The problem that arises is that a loss to a lower-tier team among those conferences can really hurt our perception.

Anyway, just some food for thought...

 

[Bearcat04]

I wish we had the money to avoid the RPI 300+ dreck like App St, UMass-Lowell, and Kennesaw St, but we don't. No coach wants to play these games when you can get a double-digit win against an RPI 200 team. The only difference is the money to schedule the game. The schedule has gotten better in the last few years and Mick has acknowledged that it has to improve in the AAC. Scheduling a team like Michigan is a step in the right direction. Ideally, I agree with NTS' platform. That's a schedule that would yearly put us in a good position for an at-large bid. However, we'd have to accept the possibility of losing a tough return game to smaller conference team. The fan base freaked out years ago when we lost an OOC game at UAB.