The Opener
- Thread starter RU72
- Start date
Our non sos was around 300...why are people continually defending it
Give me the 358 OOC SOS every year. RU is in the Big Ten. Just win in conference and you can even lose your crappy cupcake games. The committee sent a message loud and clear by seeding RU at all. Schedule cupcakes. It works
Rutgers was one of the last teams selected for the NCAA Tournament .because of their bad losses to mediocre out of conference teams.The reason they were in the tournament was two amazing 3 pointers Harper made against Purdue and Indiana to win those games.Scheduling cupcakes has risks with bad losses and SOS ranking.
RU was relegated to the first four despite a massive amount of quality wins, that is not exactly working out
To summarize the scheduling philosophy issue one final time (lol who am I kidding)
The NET is designed to judge your level of play regardless of opponent. So if you play terribly and lose to Lafayette by 2, you get dinged x rating points. There is an outcome if you're facing, say, the 250th best team that would also hurt you by x rating points. Maybe it's losing by 8 or 10 or 12, but it exists. For sake of argument let's say that losing to #323 Lafayette by 2 is equivalent, from a NET perspective, to losing to #243 New Hampshire by 8.
With the sort of game Rutgers played on November 22, they would either have lost to Lafayette by 2 or New Hampshire by 8. The NET judges these the same exact way. Each is a very bad loss.
The Lafayette game is worse even though the NET impact is the same because it also harms your non-conference SOS more, which is a component on the team sheets that the committee reviews. It's not a huge factor and once you're inside the top 300 it probably doesn't matter at all, but it IS a factor.
This is why you don't want to play a lot of games against the very worst teams.
Of course the solution is to play better but this goes for wins, too. If beating Lafayette by 20 is equivalent to beating New Hampshire by 12, you'd rather beat New Hampshire by 12. If you destroy every putrid team by 25+ points then your nonconference SOS doesn't matter... this is what Iowa does but Rutgers is not Iowa.
The NET is designed to judge your level of play regardless of opponent. So if you play terribly and lose to Lafayette by 2, you get dinged x rating points. There is an outcome if you're facing, say, the 250th best team that would also hurt you by x rating points. Maybe it's losing by 8 or 10 or 12, but it exists. For sake of argument let's say that losing to #323 Lafayette by 2 is equivalent, from a NET perspective, to losing to #243 New Hampshire by 8.
With the sort of game Rutgers played on November 22, they would either have lost to Lafayette by 2 or New Hampshire by 8. The NET judges these the same exact way. Each is a very bad loss.
The Lafayette game is worse even though the NET impact is the same because it also harms your non-conference SOS more, which is a component on the team sheets that the committee reviews. It's not a huge factor and once you're inside the top 300 it probably doesn't matter at all, but it IS a factor.
This is why you don't want to play a lot of games against the very worst teams.
Of course the solution is to play better but this goes for wins, too. If beating Lafayette by 20 is equivalent to beating New Hampshire by 12, you'd rather beat New Hampshire by 12. If you destroy every putrid team by 25+ points then your nonconference SOS doesn't matter... this is what Iowa does but Rutgers is not Iowa.
Huh? Of course that is how it works. We just can not continue to play the absolute worst teams in the nation. Everyone plays cupcakes, but not the level that we do. It has to change.
# of 300+ NET teams on the schedules of last year's field (excluding minor conference champions):
5 - Texas Tech, Texas
4 - Baylor, UConn, Loyola-Chicago, Murray St, Iowa St
3 - Gonzaga, Arizona, TCU, Rutgers
2 - Kentucky, Duke, Purdue, Iowa, Illinois, LSU, Arkansas, VTech, Providence, Wisconsin, Colorado St, Michigan St, Davidson, Notre Dame, Wyoming, Seton Hall, Miami
1 - Houston, Tennessee, Auburn, Ohio St, San Francisco, Boise St, Indiana, USC, Creighton
0 - Kansas, Villanova, UCLA, UNC, St. Mary's, Michigan, San Diego St, Memphis, Alabama, Marquette
imo, it's fine to have 2 or 3 teams in that 300+ range if the rest of your OOC schedule is better... but we also had 2 more at 290+ (and we lost to one of the 300+ teams). If we hadn't lost to Lafayette, I really doubt we'd have been in the first four.
If we have 3 teams in the 300+ range again, but the rest of the OOC schedule is above the 225 line and we have a few Top 50-75 teams in there, as well, that would be a good balance to the B1G slate.
5 - Texas Tech, Texas
4 - Baylor, UConn, Loyola-Chicago, Murray St, Iowa St
3 - Gonzaga, Arizona, TCU, Rutgers
2 - Kentucky, Duke, Purdue, Iowa, Illinois, LSU, Arkansas, VTech, Providence, Wisconsin, Colorado St, Michigan St, Davidson, Notre Dame, Wyoming, Seton Hall, Miami
1 - Houston, Tennessee, Auburn, Ohio St, San Francisco, Boise St, Indiana, USC, Creighton
0 - Kansas, Villanova, UCLA, UNC, St. Mary's, Michigan, San Diego St, Memphis, Alabama, Marquette
imo, it's fine to have 2 or 3 teams in that 300+ range if the rest of your OOC schedule is better... but we also had 2 more at 290+ (and we lost to one of the 300+ teams). If we hadn't lost to Lafayette, I really doubt we'd have been in the first four.
If we have 3 teams in the 300+ range again, but the rest of the OOC schedule is above the 225 line and we have a few Top 50-75 teams in there, as well, that would be a good balance to the B1G slate.
People want to play “good bad teams” yet in football people were complaining about playing Delaware because they were a “good bad team” and we should have played Howard or someone really bad and just win …. Lafayette was really bad, the problem wasn’t scheduling them it was inexplicably not doing anything in 40 minutes to put them away and giving them the chance for the buzzer beater
Some of these games are inevitable in the near future, but then we need to do our part and HAMMER the cupcakes. I'm not saying if we need to win the first half by 15+, but the final needs to be double digits at a minimum and should be 20+ for a tourney-dreaming B1G team at home against a team in the 330s and up.
I just want to play in a lower tier neutral tourney for a change. You can’t tell me the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands wouldn’t rather have Rutgers than literally every name in their field (BC, Belmont, Buffalo, Drake, George Mason, Howard, Weber State and Wyoming).
I would 100% go to any beach destination tournament. Rutgers basketball and a beach vacation in one is a dream scenario
Not really. Michigan went 17-14 and did worse in the big ten than Rutgers but still avoided the play in game.
I don't know why the schedule or OOC keeps coming up....someone just posted how many other NCAA tournament teams played 3, 4 or even 5 300 type teams.
The only difference between RU in 2019-20 and 2021-22, was RU did more damage in the OOC and won by larger margins....it had ZERO to do with the schedule.
All RU needed to do was play stronger in the OOC wins, where they were favorites by 12 to 19 points and bury those teams by 20 to 30. Iowa played a similar OOC schedule, but they have a significant amount of 20 to 40 point blowouts.
At the end of the day, eventually Iowa, despite a run to the B1G tournament title, faltered to Richmond.....was it because they didn't play a strong OOC schedule, was it because of 4 games in 4 days in Chicago??
At the end of the day, you need to be tested by playing quality teams, just not too many quality teams. Michigan among other schools, "over-scheduled" and barely made the dance. You have to balance what your roster has, to the schedule.
And for the 99th time, I don't care what your schedule is or isn't. The bottom line is THIRTEEN......as an at large team, you cannot enter the Selection Sunday show with more than 13 losses. If you are at 13 or fewer, you will have a significant shot to make the Dance.
RU cannot enter the B1G with 3 to 4 losses again on OOC and expect to rattle off a 12-8 B1G record with 5 to 7 Top wins, just to dance.
Keep your OOC losses to 3 or fewer and you will dance, 80 to 90% of the time, as long as you have a handful of quality wins.
Michigan is not the example to use, they were going to get the benefit of the doubt.
Because they worship pikes every move. It’s very weird. He’s a great coach but very coach has their flaws.
That’s incorrect. Their metrics were better than Rutgers in every category. You think computers have biases?
The problem wasn’t scheduling Lafayette. It was scheduling 10 other Lafayette’s and not giving your team a chance to build a resume to make up for the Lafayette loss. This isn’t hard to understand.
What we are defending was not piling up loses while Pike was figuring the rotation out.
Our starting lineup was a sophomore, junior, 2 seniors and a super senior. Spare me this rotation garbage. You’re acting like he was bringing in a whole new team.
I get that. I’m fine with scheduling mostly seemingly automatic cupcakes (as long as we don’t lose again to a Lafayette type). Would one neutral tourney in place of road games at UMass or Fordham (or some random neutral classic in Canada against St Bonnies) really result in a stock pile of losses? At this stage, we ought to be able to beat Howard and Buffalo types on a neutral floor. At least one of 3 games would be against that type of team if we don’t win the first one. Losers play the other losers.
Nobody is talking about completely scrapping those games (maybe play one less)? Just play in a neutral tourney where the kids have something exciting to play for and get road games against UMass types (or Fordham right after a holiday) off the damn schedule. You get to play an extra game against the limit I think when you play in those neutral tournies.
you haven’t learned it wasn’t the schedule that had us biting our nails…it was our terrible losses.
we did make up for the Lafayette loss..with the great stretch in February!
It’s not just the schedule. The team never travels for an early season bonding experience for a tourney at a fun location. Maybe Pike views it as a distraction but I see it as a missed opportunity for both players and potential recruits. Especially when your shopping the portal for a one year kid. A trip to a tropical place is a neat perk.
ok. But to say it was our easy schedule that had us biting our nails is inaccurate. I’m calling that out
Correct. Not last year but that’s because there were so many opportunities to make up for the bad losses with good wins. What if the rest of the BIG had had a year like the ACC had? Notre Dame was 15-5 in their conference and barely got in. WF was 13-7 and didn’t get in. With that Lafayette loss, we would have needed to challenge for the title if the BIG was like that.
And nobody is saying we can't schedule a little better.
The point is last year the weak schedule potentially saved the season bc we were really really bad early and could have lost to some slightly better teams
We lost Young Myles and Mathis who were 3 major contributors. It obviously took some time for the team to gel and figure out rotations.
Hard to argue that. Did you watch the whole season?
We can schedule like that cause the big ten wasn’t going to be bad. It won’t be bad next year. We have such a tough conference that we can afford this easy schedule
Our overall SOS was 38th. That's really good. Top 10%
I don’t think anyone is against trying to optimize the OOC schedule, but it only needs tweaks. We don't need to try to have a top 10 overall SOS.
We need some cupcakes. Pike wants to develop players and try different lineups. Need some easy games for these things without taking losses.
I don’t think anyone is against trying to optimize the OOC schedule, but it only needs tweaks. We don't need to try to have a top 10 overall SOS.
We need some cupcakes. Pike wants to develop players and try different lineups. Need some easy games for these things without taking losses.
We brought back more than your average team. Our starting lineup was 4 upperclassman who got significant minutes the year before and a highly recruited sophomore. There weren’t many teams in the country who brought back more than Rutgers. Blindly defending pike is so weird.
The Lafayette loss was bad, but was largely counnterbalanced by several strong wins. The issue was we further compounded the problem with other losses to teams we should have beaten, like UMass, Maryland, and DePaul.
We lost 40% of minutes played from the prior year. Do you know what the average was so that we can do a comparison?