The importance of non-conference scheduling
posted by LW, Monday, March 15, 2010
A few weeks ago on the blog, I expressed hope that the NCAA selection committee would take a deep look at the ACC schedule disparities of teams that were on the so-called bubble.
At the time, there appeared a reasonable chance that Clemson and Virginia Tech could end up fighting for an at-large bid. And given that the Hokies won the only head-to-head matchup between the two teams, you could see how Virginia Tech might have somewhat of an edge.
But a closer look revealed there shouldn't really be much of an argument at all. And even though Clemson was well off the bubble heading into yesterday's selections, the selection committee showed that it did its homework in its exclusion of the Hokies.
Did Virginia Tech look like an NCAA Tournament team late in the season? I would argue yes. I would argue an emphatic yes in comparison with Wake Forest, which looked utterly uninterested in many of its games down the stretch -- barring its inspired effort against Clemson, of course.
The Hokies won 10 games in the ACC, and no 10-win team from the conference has been excluded from the NCAA field since 1985.
But you could also argue that no 10-win team has faced such advantageous ACC scheduling during the same time frame. The Hokies' five home-and-home opponents were the bottom five in the final conference standings (Boston College, Virginia, North Carolina, N.C. State and Miami).
Seth Greenberg has no control over conference scheduling, and he also does not know what his conference schedule will look like when he puts together this non-conference schedule.
But when you play a non-conference schedule that is laughably weak, year after year after year, you're asking for it. In fact, you're risking the selection committee feeling insulted when you repeatedly ignore its urgings to beef up your non-conference opposition.
Virginia Tech's non-conference schedule was a major issue in 2008 and 2009, when the Hokies didn't make the field. The same is true now; out of 347 teams, their non-conference slate ranked 339th.
If I'm a Virginia Tech fan, I'm not ticked at the selection committee. I'm royally ticked at Greenberg for not learning his lesson. I'm thinking back to those games against Campbell, VMI, Maryland-Baltimore County, Longwood and North Carolina Central, and wondering what my coach was thinking.
Greenberg apparently went into a hole last night after learning his team was headed to the NIT, because it took a long time to find anyone who actually spoke with him.
ESPN's Mark Schlabach managed to reach him, and you feel for him after reading this quote:
"I feel for my kids. We had a great year. We were picked anywhere between eighth and 11th in the ACC in the preseason and finished third. We're not alone. I'm sure the Illinois kids are hurting, the Mississippi State kids are hurting and the Rhode Island kids are hurting. But they're not my kids. Looking in their eyes while they were watching the selection show, and to see the disappointment and knowing how much they invested in the season, it was just very difficult to watch."
But then you read this quote, and you don't feel for him anymore.
"The biggest thing that has to happen is there has to be a set criteria so you can schedule your games to that criteria," Greenberg said. "Every committee has its own personality and that's just the way it is. The problem is you can't schedule your games because you don't know what the committee's personality is."
Trying to come up with a proper description for that quote. "Certifiably insane" comes to mind...
Greenberg could probably take a lesson from Clemson's staff when it comes to non-conference schedule composition.
The Tigers don't exactly put together a murderer's row slate in November and December. They do schedule their share of tomato cans. But they also balance it out with enough formidable opposition that their non-conference schedule isn't such a blight on their resume come tournament time.
When you take Clemson's difficult ACC slate this year -- the Tigers' home-and-home opponents were Duke, Maryland, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Boston College -- and add to it non-conference games against Butler, Texas A&M, Illinois, South Carolina and College of Charleston and Long Beach State -- it tends to make things much less stressful come Selection Sunday.
The Tigers' staff has figured it out, and kudos to them for that. The Hokies' staff hasn't, and shame on them for that.
In the Daily Press of Newport News (Va.), David Teel agrees that the schedule was Virginia Tech's undoing.
But 339th is too glaring to ignore. The only teams with worse non-conference schedules were High Point, Lafayette, Florida Gulf Coast, James Madison, Maryland-Baltimore County, Northern Colorado, Miami and Central Connecticut.
That's what happens when you play perennial lightweights and fledglings such as Charleston Southern, Longwood and North Carolina Central.
This is the third consecutive year Virginia Tech has been oh-so-close to making the field, and if Greenberg and juniors such as Malcolm Delaney, Jeff Allen, Dorenzo Hudson and Terrell Bell feel cursed, well, can't say as I blame them.
But when the 10-member selection panel debates the final choices, they're often searching for excuses to exclude more than incentive to include. The Hokies' non-conference schedule was just that excuse.
Here's an interesting piece from February, when Andy Katz concluded that the soft schedule seemed to be helping the Hokies.
Greenberg has done a phenomenal job with this team. He has talent with Malcolm Delaney, Dorenzo Hudson, Jeff Allen and J.T. Thompson. All are the core. All play hard. All defend. The Hokies are flawed. They are beatable. But they beat the system by playing the schedule to near perfection.
Eh, not so much.
Really looking forward to Friday's game between the Tigers and Tigers. Oliver Purnell told the crowd yesterday at the WestZone facility that this will likely be the best game of the day, and I agree.
Missouri coach Mike Anderson said his team made a statement by reaching the tournament a year after losing some major scoring power.
“It’s a program. I’m sure a lot of people that saw our team last year, saw what we were losing last year, didn’t expect to see us here. They did not. I know that. I heard it from a lot of guys.”
Gone were DeMarre Carroll, Leo Lyons and Matt Lawrence, each 1,000-point career scorers. Only two other teams that made this year’s NCAA Tournament — Syracuse and Marquette — lost as much scoring power.
Missouri’s roster heading into this season contained 11 freshmen or sophomores and no player who had averaged double figures in scoring the previous year. And that loss of experience showed when Missouri lost three of its last four games leading up to Selection Sunday.
Here's a look at Missouri's biggest weakness recently:
Too many minutes apportioned to too few players on the front line because of the ACL tear to Justin Safford’s left knee. Too few rebounds from that depleted front line. And shooting woes — Missouri, over its last four games, has hit a collective 91 of 250 shots overall (36.4 percent) and 18 of 80 threes (22.5 percent).
In this story, Anderson also anticipates a compelling matchup.
“When the NCAA is sitting in the room, the selection committee, they’re looking for intriguing matchups,” Anderson said. “That would be an intriguing first-round matchup. Clemson, Oliver Purnell does a tremendous job with them. … It’s going to be a challenge.”
More in this story.
Anderson last coached against a Purnell-led Clemson team on Dec. 21, 2004, when Anderson’s Alabama-Birmingham team beat the Tigers 78-66 in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“(Purnell’s) team is going to play up-tempo,” Anderson said. “It won’t be one of those, walk it up and pass it about 20 times or five times. It’s going to be end-to-end. (It’s going to be) some athletic kids hopefully making some athletic plays.”
English said Clemson’s style of play is more to Missouri’s liking than a slower-paced team.
“It’s going to be a fun, fast-paced game,” he said. “It’s not going to be a game where we have to do a lot of thinking. It’s going to be an instinctive game. It’s going to be like a game against Kansas State or something.”
And here's a closer look at Anderson's "Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball."
Anderson learned from Nolan Richardson, originator of the famed "40 Minutes of Hell." But there are differences.
Listen to former Missouri basketball star, Jon Sundvold, and you get a glimpse of the defensive difference between Anderson and Richardson.
“The second half of games, they play a lot of zone,” Sundvold said of Missouri. “Match up, different zones. Teams aren’t ready for that. They practice against the press.”
Missouri does that as well. But under Anderson, the Tigers’ pick their spots, which leads to a lot of flustered opponents who look up and see Tigers all over the landscape on a simple inbounds pass.
In the Greenville News, the story on Clemson's excitement over getting a 7 seed.
Here's the story from The Post and Courier's Travis Sawchik.
At the Tigers' selection show party Sunday, tension built in the West Zone after the first two brackets were revealed without Clemson's name. At that point, someone questioned Oliver Purnell about his sweaty palms.
"I have a condition after 6 p.m.," Clemson's coach said of selection Sunday, "my hands get wet."
This thought occurred to me as we awaited the Tigers' inclusion while watching the big-screen televisions in the WEZ: The Tigers haven't only made the NCAA field three straight years, but they've been a lock each of those years.
Pretty impressive.
Now OP and the Tigers have to get a win, and Gene Sapakoff predicts they will.
Tell me you didn't think the selection committee, which has a way of creating matchups with thick subplots, was going to match Clemson up with Texas and former coach Rick Barnes. That woulda been fun.
Here's the story from the Independent-Mail's Greg Wallace.
And man does the baseball team look good right now.
The most intriguing image from yesterday's game at Doug Kingsmore: Kyle Parker facing Russell Wilson.
When Kyle Parker saw Russell Wilson warming up in the bullpen, he started mentally preparing for a rare matchup of two-sport stars.
Wilson, N.C. State’s left fielder who moonlights as the Wolfpack’s starting quarterback, was preparing to enter Sunday’s ACC baseball series finale as a reliever with the ‘Pack trying to avoid a sweep.
And Parker – Clemson’s right fielder who moonlights as the Tigers’ starting quarterback, knew he’d face Wilson if he got to the plate in the bottom of the eighth.
“I realized if I got up there, they’d want a righty-on-righty matchup,” Parker said.
Fans got the ACC quarterback matchup they wanted, and Parker prevailed almost by default.
Wilson walked him on five pitches, forcing in the winning run in Clemson’s 7-6 victory.
North Carolina gets a 4 seed ... in the NIT.
Heels play host to William & Mary on Tuesday in Chapel Hill.
Plenty of seats available.
LW
Click here for the "Eye On The Tigers" blog archive.
Link to this entry - Discuss this entry - Return to Blog Home
A few weeks ago on the blog, I expressed hope that the NCAA selection committee would take a deep look at the ACC schedule disparities of teams that were on the so-called bubble.
At the time, there appeared a reasonable chance that Clemson and Virginia Tech could end up fighting for an at-large bid. And given that the Hokies won the only head-to-head matchup between the two teams, you could see how Virginia Tech might have somewhat of an edge.
But a closer look revealed there shouldn't really be much of an argument at all. And even though Clemson was well off the bubble heading into yesterday's selections, the selection committee showed that it did its homework in its exclusion of the Hokies.
Did Virginia Tech look like an NCAA Tournament team late in the season? I would argue yes. I would argue an emphatic yes in comparison with Wake Forest, which looked utterly uninterested in many of its games down the stretch -- barring its inspired effort against Clemson, of course.
The Hokies won 10 games in the ACC, and no 10-win team from the conference has been excluded from the NCAA field since 1985.
But you could also argue that no 10-win team has faced such advantageous ACC scheduling during the same time frame. The Hokies' five home-and-home opponents were the bottom five in the final conference standings (Boston College, Virginia, North Carolina, N.C. State and Miami).
Seth Greenberg has no control over conference scheduling, and he also does not know what his conference schedule will look like when he puts together this non-conference schedule.
But when you play a non-conference schedule that is laughably weak, year after year after year, you're asking for it. In fact, you're risking the selection committee feeling insulted when you repeatedly ignore its urgings to beef up your non-conference opposition.
Virginia Tech's non-conference schedule was a major issue in 2008 and 2009, when the Hokies didn't make the field. The same is true now; out of 347 teams, their non-conference slate ranked 339th.
If I'm a Virginia Tech fan, I'm not ticked at the selection committee. I'm royally ticked at Greenberg for not learning his lesson. I'm thinking back to those games against Campbell, VMI, Maryland-Baltimore County, Longwood and North Carolina Central, and wondering what my coach was thinking.
Greenberg apparently went into a hole last night after learning his team was headed to the NIT, because it took a long time to find anyone who actually spoke with him.
ESPN's Mark Schlabach managed to reach him, and you feel for him after reading this quote:
"I feel for my kids. We had a great year. We were picked anywhere between eighth and 11th in the ACC in the preseason and finished third. We're not alone. I'm sure the Illinois kids are hurting, the Mississippi State kids are hurting and the Rhode Island kids are hurting. But they're not my kids. Looking in their eyes while they were watching the selection show, and to see the disappointment and knowing how much they invested in the season, it was just very difficult to watch."
But then you read this quote, and you don't feel for him anymore.
"The biggest thing that has to happen is there has to be a set criteria so you can schedule your games to that criteria," Greenberg said. "Every committee has its own personality and that's just the way it is. The problem is you can't schedule your games because you don't know what the committee's personality is."
Trying to come up with a proper description for that quote. "Certifiably insane" comes to mind...
Greenberg could probably take a lesson from Clemson's staff when it comes to non-conference schedule composition.
The Tigers don't exactly put together a murderer's row slate in November and December. They do schedule their share of tomato cans. But they also balance it out with enough formidable opposition that their non-conference schedule isn't such a blight on their resume come tournament time.
When you take Clemson's difficult ACC slate this year -- the Tigers' home-and-home opponents were Duke, Maryland, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Boston College -- and add to it non-conference games against Butler, Texas A&M, Illinois, South Carolina and College of Charleston and Long Beach State -- it tends to make things much less stressful come Selection Sunday.
The Tigers' staff has figured it out, and kudos to them for that. The Hokies' staff hasn't, and shame on them for that.
In the Daily Press of Newport News (Va.), David Teel agrees that the schedule was Virginia Tech's undoing.
But 339th is too glaring to ignore. The only teams with worse non-conference schedules were High Point, Lafayette, Florida Gulf Coast, James Madison, Maryland-Baltimore County, Northern Colorado, Miami and Central Connecticut.
That's what happens when you play perennial lightweights and fledglings such as Charleston Southern, Longwood and North Carolina Central.
This is the third consecutive year Virginia Tech has been oh-so-close to making the field, and if Greenberg and juniors such as Malcolm Delaney, Jeff Allen, Dorenzo Hudson and Terrell Bell feel cursed, well, can't say as I blame them.
But when the 10-member selection panel debates the final choices, they're often searching for excuses to exclude more than incentive to include. The Hokies' non-conference schedule was just that excuse.
Here's an interesting piece from February, when Andy Katz concluded that the soft schedule seemed to be helping the Hokies.
Greenberg has done a phenomenal job with this team. He has talent with Malcolm Delaney, Dorenzo Hudson, Jeff Allen and J.T. Thompson. All are the core. All play hard. All defend. The Hokies are flawed. They are beatable. But they beat the system by playing the schedule to near perfection.
Eh, not so much.
Really looking forward to Friday's game between the Tigers and Tigers. Oliver Purnell told the crowd yesterday at the WestZone facility that this will likely be the best game of the day, and I agree.
Missouri coach Mike Anderson said his team made a statement by reaching the tournament a year after losing some major scoring power.
“It’s a program. I’m sure a lot of people that saw our team last year, saw what we were losing last year, didn’t expect to see us here. They did not. I know that. I heard it from a lot of guys.”
Gone were DeMarre Carroll, Leo Lyons and Matt Lawrence, each 1,000-point career scorers. Only two other teams that made this year’s NCAA Tournament — Syracuse and Marquette — lost as much scoring power.
Missouri’s roster heading into this season contained 11 freshmen or sophomores and no player who had averaged double figures in scoring the previous year. And that loss of experience showed when Missouri lost three of its last four games leading up to Selection Sunday.
Here's a look at Missouri's biggest weakness recently:
Too many minutes apportioned to too few players on the front line because of the ACL tear to Justin Safford’s left knee. Too few rebounds from that depleted front line. And shooting woes — Missouri, over its last four games, has hit a collective 91 of 250 shots overall (36.4 percent) and 18 of 80 threes (22.5 percent).
In this story, Anderson also anticipates a compelling matchup.
“When the NCAA is sitting in the room, the selection committee, they’re looking for intriguing matchups,” Anderson said. “That would be an intriguing first-round matchup. Clemson, Oliver Purnell does a tremendous job with them. … It’s going to be a challenge.”
More in this story.
Anderson last coached against a Purnell-led Clemson team on Dec. 21, 2004, when Anderson’s Alabama-Birmingham team beat the Tigers 78-66 in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“(Purnell’s) team is going to play up-tempo,” Anderson said. “It won’t be one of those, walk it up and pass it about 20 times or five times. It’s going to be end-to-end. (It’s going to be) some athletic kids hopefully making some athletic plays.”
English said Clemson’s style of play is more to Missouri’s liking than a slower-paced team.
“It’s going to be a fun, fast-paced game,” he said. “It’s not going to be a game where we have to do a lot of thinking. It’s going to be an instinctive game. It’s going to be like a game against Kansas State or something.”
And here's a closer look at Anderson's "Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball."
Anderson learned from Nolan Richardson, originator of the famed "40 Minutes of Hell." But there are differences.
Listen to former Missouri basketball star, Jon Sundvold, and you get a glimpse of the defensive difference between Anderson and Richardson.
“The second half of games, they play a lot of zone,” Sundvold said of Missouri. “Match up, different zones. Teams aren’t ready for that. They practice against the press.”
Missouri does that as well. But under Anderson, the Tigers’ pick their spots, which leads to a lot of flustered opponents who look up and see Tigers all over the landscape on a simple inbounds pass.
In the Greenville News, the story on Clemson's excitement over getting a 7 seed.
Here's the story from The Post and Courier's Travis Sawchik.
At the Tigers' selection show party Sunday, tension built in the West Zone after the first two brackets were revealed without Clemson's name. At that point, someone questioned Oliver Purnell about his sweaty palms.
"I have a condition after 6 p.m.," Clemson's coach said of selection Sunday, "my hands get wet."
This thought occurred to me as we awaited the Tigers' inclusion while watching the big-screen televisions in the WEZ: The Tigers haven't only made the NCAA field three straight years, but they've been a lock each of those years.
Pretty impressive.
Now OP and the Tigers have to get a win, and Gene Sapakoff predicts they will.
Tell me you didn't think the selection committee, which has a way of creating matchups with thick subplots, was going to match Clemson up with Texas and former coach Rick Barnes. That woulda been fun.
Here's the story from the Independent-Mail's Greg Wallace.
And man does the baseball team look good right now.
The most intriguing image from yesterday's game at Doug Kingsmore: Kyle Parker facing Russell Wilson.
When Kyle Parker saw Russell Wilson warming up in the bullpen, he started mentally preparing for a rare matchup of two-sport stars.
Wilson, N.C. State’s left fielder who moonlights as the Wolfpack’s starting quarterback, was preparing to enter Sunday’s ACC baseball series finale as a reliever with the ‘Pack trying to avoid a sweep.
And Parker – Clemson’s right fielder who moonlights as the Tigers’ starting quarterback, knew he’d face Wilson if he got to the plate in the bottom of the eighth.
“I realized if I got up there, they’d want a righty-on-righty matchup,” Parker said.
Fans got the ACC quarterback matchup they wanted, and Parker prevailed almost by default.
Wilson walked him on five pitches, forcing in the winning run in Clemson’s 7-6 victory.
North Carolina gets a 4 seed ... in the NIT.
Heels play host to William & Mary on Tuesday in Chapel Hill.
Plenty of seats available.
LW
Click here for the "Eye On The Tigers" blog archive.
Link to this entry - Discuss this entry - Return to Blog Home
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