Schedule sets the expectation level for Tulsa

November

15 Florida International (12-19, 217 RPI)
From a PR perspective this game appears to be a home run for a home opener, but it’s hard to tell whether or not FIU will help or hurt the SOS this year. Thomas sold out on the jucos for this season to win right away grabbing the 2 Redlands kids plus another from Connors State that all put up ridiculous numbers last year (According to the NJCAA website, Watson made 54 of 75 three-point attempts last year to go along with 99 steals. That’s pretty ridiculous if it’s true). It will hurt that they lose Sun Belt freshman of the year Freddy Asprilla, who transferred to Miami Dade. The good news is that if all 3 of the juco recruits are cleared to play then they’ll team up with 3 returning double-digit scorers from last year to make a half-decent team, but FIU does play in the more difficult East division of the Sun Belt and who knows if Isiah will actually be able to win games.
Grade: B. FIU could be improved if things shake out and there should be some hype around Isiah if nothing else.


17 UALR (23-8, 91 RPI)
We should probably pay a little more attention to what’s going on in Little Rock if we plan on scheduling these guys more often. After finishing 79 in the RPI in 04-05, we played a home-and-home with UALR in 06-07 and 07-08 when they finished both seasons below 150 before bouncing back to 91 last year. Unfortunately, this year looks to be more similar to the lean years’ teams than to last year’s team. They lose their top 3 scorers from ’08-‘09 after Steven Moore was kicked off the team and 4 of their 5 starters. In fact, their highest returning scorer was a walk-on until last month. I think Steve Shields is a solid coach and if their juco-heavy recruiting pans out then it could lead to a 3rd place finish in the SB West, but I think we once again screwed up the timing on this series.
Grade: C. It’s a nice regional series, but we picked the wrong year.


21 South Alabama (19-13, 145 RPI)
I could just about copy the write-up on UALR for this one. USA loses 4 starters from last year’s team and attempts to replace them with jucos. The good news is that they’ve won 20 games for 4 straight seasons (if you fudge like we do and count non-D1 wins) so history is on their side, but it’s an inexperienced squad this year trying to keep that streak alive this year and I’d be surprised if it happened. Oh, and don’t tell head coach Ronnie Arrow about the A/V problems we’ve been having lately because he doesn’t handle those problems very well (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyLRLADclUI).
Grade: C. Historically a good program, but this could be a tough year.


24 Loyola-Marymount (3-27, 320 RPI)
Well, the good news is that Loyola can’t be much worse than last year. I get that we signed up for this series so that Reese could play in front of his friends and family and I get that this year’s game is a return game for free, but we would’ve had to try pretty hard to find a basketball program that was a bigger mess last year than this one. They do return 3 freshman starters along with transfer Larry Davis (7.5ppg as a freshman at Seton Hall), but this is still largely the same cast that nearly shot the same percentage from the field (35.1%) as we shot on just 3-pointers (33.9%).
Grade: F. Unless we scheduled this series 20 years in advance when Paul Westhead was still there, then it was a bad idea that got even worse when Bayno quit.


28 @Missouri State (11-20, 211 RPI)
This appeared to be a decent win last year when it happened, but Missouri St really collapsed down the stretch losing 16 of their last 20 games including a season sweep by MVC bottom-dweller Indiana State. They lose 3 of their top 4 scorers and had to have been disappointed when their top 2009 recruit in Lane Adams chose baseball over college basketball. Weems is a good player and I think Edison grad Will Creekmore could develop into a nice college center, but unless something changes I think their fans will be longing for the Barry Hinson days starting this year.
Grade: B. It’s a winnable road game against an old MVC rival.


December

2 Oklahoma State (22-11, 19 RPI)
There’s no such thing as a must-win game in December, but it’s hard to imagine many scenarios where we get an at-large bid if we lose at home in our best shot at a top 50 win. For obvious reasons, it’s also a huge game for Wojcik. I think they’ll miss Eaton more than they want to admit, but this should be a tournament team for next year on the backs of Anderson and Muonelo despite virtually no depth in the frontcourt (I’m not sold on Moses/Pilgrim and that’s most likely their starting 4/5).
Grade: A. In-state rival and a top 50 shot at home.


6 Ohio (15-17, 184 RPI)
I really think the problem with this game last year was that we sandwiched the game between the South Padre final and the OU game. It didn’t help that they had one of the longest non-conference home win streaks in the country at the time. Tillman was their workhorse last year and I can’t imagine this team is better without him. They had an odd run where they beat some of the best MAC teams (Kent, Miami, Akron) around losing to some of the worst (CMU, Ball St, WMU). Hopefully they can revert back to the team that was consistently winning 20 games a year before we scheduled them last year.
Grade: C. Not really regional and not a marquee win.


Las Vegas Classic
The upside of these tournaments is that you get a chance to play good teams on a neutral floor that you might not have otherwise had a chance to schedule. The downside has been that you’re forced to play a couple dogs on the way to those games. Last year it was NC Central who rallied to win 2 of their last 3 games to finish 3-26 and A&M-Corpus Christi who performed well enough in the Southland to finish 15-15. Those games were worth it in the end for the chance to play A&M and Illinois, games which provided us with our best win of the season and a narrow miss at another big win. I’d say this year’s tournament is better on the bad side of things, but slightly worse at the top.


17 Jackson State (18-15, 183 RPI)
I’ve said many times before that I’m a fan of scheduling a couple games against the best teams from the worst conferences and Jackson St. is consistently one of the best examples of this type of team. They’re the best program in the SWAC and even when they don’t win the conference they always finish with at least 12 D1 wins avoiding that RPI anchor effect. This year’s team returns 3 starters from a 2nd place finish including their leading scorer Grant Maxey (16.4 ppg, 6.7 rpg) and should be the preseason favorites in the SWAC. This should be an easy win against a team that may win 20 games this year.
Grade: A. Should be an easy game against an 18-20 win team.


19 Chicago State (17-13, 234 RPI)
This game is a little trickier because Chicago St is coming off their first winning season in 23 years. They’ll also be playing their first season in what has to be the weirdest conference in all of college basketball (Great West) stretching all the way from North Dakota down to South Padre and from Utah to New Jersey. Losing two 19+ ppg scorers could be serious trouble, but home games against some of the worst teams in D1 should help them gather a few wins. These guys will lose a ton of games early in the season so we’ll just have to cross our fingers that they’re the best of the worst in January and February.
Grade: Probably a D. They may win some games against a bad schedule, but they could be bad enough to lose in bunches.


22 Nebraska (18-12, 76 RPI)
I wasn’t looking forward to playing against Cookie Miller with all the turnover problems we have, but his loss probably takes this team from a bubble year to the NIT bubble because they also lose 2 good players in Harley and Dagundoro. They had a decent recruiting class, but noone who can replace what they lost.
Grade: B. It’s a neutral court game against a team that has a bit of a name.


23 BYU (24-7, 29 RPI)
They lose Cummard, but that’s about it and I think it makes them the favorite in the Mountain West. This isn’t a guaranteed game, but it would be nice to have a shot at revenge for one of the more painful losses from last year.
Grade: A if we play it. Could be our 2nd best shot at a top 50 win.

or

23 Nevada (20-12, 83 RPI)
I’m sure Wolfpack fans are disappointed in back-to-back 1st round CBI losses at home to CUSA teams, but this really should be the year where they’re back fighting for an NCAA berth with 4 starters returning. If this game materializes, then it will be fun to see Babbitt match up against Jordan.
Grade: B+ if we play it. Would likely be a shot at a top 100 win.


January

2 Colorado (8-22, 235 RPI)
I wish it was our football team scheduling this game instead of our basketball team. Regardless, it’s a name team that does return 4 starters and could pull some upsets this year. The win in Boulder alone was worth signing up for the series.
Grade: C. Maybe the name draws a few fans out for the game.


20 @ORU (15-15, 142 RPI)
I think most of us can agree that we should play this game every year. It’s always tough to play in the Mabee Center and they’ll compete for the Summit title now that ND State graduated like all 13 of their scholarship players, but this version of ORU still doesn’t look like the Tutt/Green era to me and they’ll miss Jarvis bailing them out in games this year. It should be a slightly better SOS game because they didn’t repeat last year’s horrible death march scheduling mistake, but @Wake, @Stanford, @UVa, @Louisville is still quite a non-conference workout.
Grade: B. It should always be played, but it’s once again a very losable game against a team that isn’t likely to be near the top 50.


February

25 @Duke (28-6, 1 RPI)
Contrary to Canester’s prediction, I actually think this is a good game for us to play. If there’s ever a time to schedule a game at Cameron Indoor it’s (a) when your best players are seniors, (b) when you consider yourself a tournament team and (c) late in the season when Duke is in the middle of ACC play and when Wojcik’s teams play their best ball. This is a game where a bubble team could show their worth on national television even without winning the game if they play well.
Grade: A-. If only because there’s always a chance that any team could get run out of the gym playing @Duke.


Overall thoughts
First off, I’m a big fan of starting the season with a string of home games (8 of the first 9 games at home). Wojcik’s teams have been terrible on the road in November and December (4-15 away from the RenCen) and so it’s no surprise that the only season where we’ve had fewer than 4 losses by January was actually 2006-07 when we only played 2 games away from the Reynolds Center before New Year’s. There are also few trap games like @MSU right before the OkState game and @ECU right after Duke. I like that we went with mostly regional opponents, although it’s hard to believe we scheduled half the Sun Belt without getting North Texas (who I think will easily win the SB West this year along with 20+ games) or Western Kentucky. I also think we should’ve stuck with at least one Southland team (Nicholls St or Sam Houston St, in particular) because they don’t seem to have a problem playing buy games. As it is, we have a number of teams who won lots of games last year, but appear to be on the downswing for this year.
Overall Grade: B-. Only a couple shots at a big win in the non-conference and some missed opportunities with regional teams.

Just a quick look at some RPI numbers as well...

Last year’s average opponent win%: 0.5020
This year’s average opponent win% (from ’08-’09): 0.5278

That’s a pretty significant jump in opponent win% from last year to this year and appears to be evidence for an improved schedule, but you still have to win games against that schedule. We also have a similar breakdown in Home/Road/Neutral games as last year except that 1 road game is a home game this year.

From my perspective, there appear to be more teams clearly trending down (Chicago St, South Alabama, UALR, Nebraska, Ohio) than trending up this season (ORU, Jackson St, FIU) so I’ll also crunch the numbers based on my best guess of what the OOC Win% will look like at the end of the season and call it “Adjusted RPI”.

My guess at average opponent win%: 0.515

There are too many permutations to be worth including, so I’ll just look at a couple that I think are interesting. The rank is based on last year’s distribution of RPIs to give an idea of the range we’d be looking at.

Scenarios

Dream Season (14-0 in the non-conference)
RPI: 0.6389; Rank = 9th
Adjusted RPI: 0.6325; Rank = 9th

Home Cooked (9-5 with wins at home and losses away)
RPI: 0.5357; Rank = 101st
Adjusted RPI: 0.5292; Rank = 110th

Par for the course (11-3 with losses to the 3 top 50 teams on the schedule)
RPI: 0.5844; Rank = 45th
Adjusted RPI: 0.5780; Rank = 51st

My expectations (12-2 with losses in 2 of the 3 road games)
RPI: 0.6089; Rank = 24th
Adjusted RPI: 0.6025; Rank = 30th

The last scenario would probably be the best of what I consider to be realistic scenarios because it assumes at least 2 top 50 wins (OSU and BYU), puts us in the RPI top 30, and sets us up where even a repeat of last year’s conference record (12-4) adds up to a 24-6 record headed into the conference tourney. That’s the right side of the bubble if you ask me, especially if one of those wins is against another top 50 team in the conference.