Cupcake City/Sagarin

[willie warrior]

Current sagarin rating shows us lagging behind many other BEast teams. I know it is early but our cupcakes really hurt us. Our SOS is 286, right now. Sagarin rankings of some of the others ahead of us in overall:
GTown 4
Pitt 7
UConn 9
NoDick 13
WVa. 18
Syracuse 19
Loserville 25
Villa. 40
We are 49
A win against Bucky should help.

[MARQKC]

No argument on SOS. Four strong opponents (Duke, Gonzaga, Bucky and Vandy) in first 13 games probably isn't enough to be REALLY ready for BEast. Should be at least one or two more more contenders in there, a strong mid-major perhaps. Who does anybody like? Creighton, or another MVC team? Or maybe a Memphis?

Other comment: We lost to the No. 1-ranked defending national champions by five points; and to another highly ranked team by three. That ought to count for something. No question: We need to very tough against Bucky and Vandy.

[Clam Crowder]

Wisconsin's SOS shouldn't be much better than ours. They also play 4 strong opponents NC State, MU, Notre Dame, and BC. BC lost to Yale, and is certainly not very good this year. We played Duke, and Gonzaga. Where is UW on this list?

[dsfire]

A lot of those teams are ranked higher because they've beaten one or more of the top 50-ranked teams that they've played (all but 2 of the teams listed in front of us are undefeated).  We'd be ranked much higher if we'd beaten Duke and [Kansas State], obviously.

Also, FWIW, Louisville is probably going to end up with a terrible non-conf SOS even though they play Butler, UNLV and UK, since they're holed up in the new KFC Yum Center for all but one of their non-conference games - an in-state game at Western Kentucky.  Going on the road for Big East play could be a rude awakening for them.  Well, maybe not their first road game @USF, who doesn't appear to have cleared 4k attendance yet this year 

[kmwtrucks]

We also Played Bucknell, UWM, UWGB this year and 4 high Major's.  What hurts us is we play 4-5 of the teams that are in the bottom 20 in rankings.  I think this years schedule is one of our best really. 1 great team, 3 really good teams and 3 solid teams. out of our 13 games.  When we start winning the Big East and going back to final fours it will get easier, mid Majors will give us better deals. I would love to hear how much more we would take in from Rev if we played a Mizz valley team over a some of our other buy games?  IE if it takes $65000 to pay centenary, would bradley/southern ILL/Creighton/Northern Iowa etc? do it for $100,000? But we generate another $20k in Rev the net cost is only 15K? or could we partner in with Ville, ND, and Cincy and do a 3-1 with 4 Mizz valley teams?

[Marquette_Fan]

Through the help of people on this site and an ncaa article I read I now understand how the science of scheduling works.

Here is the article for people that want to understand the science of scheduling.

It's way harder than I thought it would be:

http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/111010aaa.html

[Dawson Rental]

One of the positives of having a (non-revenue-losing) football program, is that you can play "anyone, anywhere" because you don't have to schedule opponents who are willing to come to your place without a return trip by your team to their place since football helps carry the financial load for the non-revenue sports.

Marquette will always have to schedule patsies it can entice with revenue guarantees, in order to continue to make the 10 million a year investment it does in men's basketball and still have enough bucks left over for the other sports.

Unfortunately, recruits probably don't appreciate the upside of playing patsies at home in November/December until they get onto campus - it means they don't lose time to travel toward the end of their first semester which has to help academically, especially freshman year.

[Canadian Dimes]

most arguments i have read on this string are completely wrong.  there are plenty of football schools that play no one.  More importantly we still have 2 good OOC teams to play that will greatly improve our OOC SOS.  you cant make a judgement half way thru the non-con when many teams u are comparing us to have played all the good teams on their non con already.  SOS will not be an issue for Mu this year.  period

[THRILLHO]

there are plenty of football schools that play no one.

If you are referring to LittleMurs's argument, that's not what it said.  It only says that schools with football programs can play anyone, not that they must.  The important part is the implied converse, that schools without football programs (like MU) can't just play anyone they want to.  I suppose you could make a case that that's also not true (see Gonzaga).

We may end up with a decent SOS every year just by virtue of playing in the Big East.  I think there are probably two main concerns despite that fact:
  1) We have too few opportunities to prove ourselves on the national level in the beginning part of the season (building a national buzz)
  2) We could improve our standing in the eyes of the RPI/pomeroy statistical ratings (and potentially our NCAA seeding) simply by turning some of our ~300 ranked opponents into ~200 ranked opponents with only a tiny increase in the chance of picking up a loss.

I think these are the actual issues that are being debated around scheduling.

[Dawson Rental]

I've got a question for anyone who knows how these rankings are calculated.

Obviously, a team's SOS will change as the year goes on based on the results from games involving the teams that are on the schedule, i.e. if an opponent who was ranked high drops some games to poor teams, then their ranking will go down and it's portion of our SOS will drop leading to a lower SOS for us.

What I'm wondering is - Does MU's current SOS include all of this season's opponents or only those whom we have already played?  If its the latter, then MU would always have a poor SOS until the Big East schedule kicked in.

[THRILLHO]

I can't say for sure but my understanding is it's based on schedule so far.

This makes sense empirically (ours being so low right now) and logically because the overall rankings take into account a version of strength of schedule which doesn't include future games.  I assume that value is the same version all those sites list as SOS.

[dsfire]

There's probably an SOS ranking out there somewhere that includes games not yet played, but in general it's just for games played to-date.