Big East Relative Schedule Strength

[CTWarrior]

Looking at our Big East schedule, I noticed that the records of the teams we don't play (Cincinnati and St. John's) were an aggregate 5-13 in Big East play.  On top of that, the teams we play and extra time (Pittsburgh, Louisville and Providence, excluding games played against us, were an aggregate 17-5).  I combined the two numbers to get a difficulty score of 20 for us (8 games under for teams we miss plus 12 games over for teams we double up on.)  I was wondering how out of whack that was with everybody else and only Pittsburgh is close to us for schedule difficulty.  See chart below:

               Missed   Twice   Score
Marquette   05-13   17-05   20
Pittsburgh   08-12   19-06   17
Villanova                07-12   15-08   12
Georgetown   07-10   11-12   2
Louisville                09-11   12-12   2
DePaul                07-10   12-15   0
Cincinnati   10-08   13-12   -1
South Florida   10-07   14-12   -1
Providence   10-08   12-12   -2
Seton Hall   09-10   10-13   -2
St John's                11-07   12-13   -5
Connecticut   07-11   12-14   -6
West Virginia   11-07   11-13   -6
Syracuse                10-09   10-16   -7
Notre Dame   11-07   09-15   -10
Rutgers                14-04   05-17   -22

Most of the teams sort've even out.  If they have tough teams they play twice, they miss someother tough teams altogether.  We're the only ones who miss two losing teams and for who all three teams we play twice are at least .500.  But we're basically even with Pitt because they count as 8-0 for us (since they are 8-0 excluding us in conference) and we count as 6-2 for them for the same reason.  Notre Dame has a big advantage in terms of where they'll get seeded for the conference tournament because their schedule is a bit easier.  They miss Pitt (8-1) and UConn (3-6) and double up with DePaul (4-6), South Florida (2-5 against BE other than ND) and Villanova. (3-4 against BE other than ND).

This illustrates the point that conference standings do not necessarilly do a good job accurately reflecting the quality of teams in the conference when the schedules are unbalanced.

[mu03eng]

Holy crap, I thought our schedule got easier in the second half, guess not.  Maybe it does CT if you factor in home and away for the games.

[YoungMUFan4]

http://bigeastbasketball.blogspot.com/

As of February 2nd

ONLY GAMES IN BIG EAST PLAY

....TEAM...........CONFERENCE RPI.........CONF SOS....SOS RANK
Marquette---------------.5836------------------.5206-----------6
Pittsburgh---------------.5617------------------.4652----------15
Notre Dame-------------.5522------------------.49997------------9
Villanova----------------.5460------------------.5864-----------1
Louisville----------------.5454------------------.4772---------11
Georgetown-------------.5375------------------.4667-----------15
Syracuse-----------------.5153------------------.5204-----------7
West Virginia-----------.5135------------------.4481----------16
DePaul------------------.4955------------------.5056-----------8
Providence--------------.4886------------------.4676----------13
Connecticut------------.4821------------------.5502------------2
St. John's----------------.4650------------------.5342----------4
Seton Hall---------------.4503------------------.4932---------10
South Florida-----------.4450------------------.5308----------5
Cincinnati---------------.4270------------------.5390-----------3
Rutgers------------------.4057------------------.4700----------12

[WashDCWarrior]

CTWarrior,
Thanks for working this out.  It will be interesting once conf play is completed to see how close the conf SOS ranks are to the ranking system you put together.

[CTWarrior]

Holy crap, I thought our schedule got easier in the second half, guess not.  Maybe it does CT if you factor in home and away for the games.

It doesn't get much easier.  According to Sagarin's numbers, we should be 3-4 or 4-3 our last 7 games.  His projected spreads using Sagarin Predictor:

Rutgers - Win by 19 1/2
at Georgetown - Lose by 6 1/2
at DePaul - Lose by 1
Louisville - Win by 6
Villanova - Win by 1
at Notre Dame - Lose by 7 1/2
Pittsburgh - Pick 'em (His system picks Pitt by 3/100th of a point)

While I don't agree with those spreads so much, I think it is clear that after Rutgers, every remaining game could go either way.  I'm inclined to think we'll go 4-3 and finish at 11-5, 24-7.

I am usually a fan of Sagarin but think his computer's a little messed up this year.  His Predictor method, which he insists is the best predictor there is of future games, would favor UConn over us on a neutral floor.  His final standings would be:

Georgetown (13-3)
Pittsburgh (13-3)
Notre Dame (12-4)   
West Virginia (11-5)
Marquette (10-6)
Louisville   (9-7)
Providence (9-7)
Villanova   (9-7)
Connecticut (8-8)
DePaul   (8-8)
Syracuse  (8-8)
St John's   (6-10)
Seton Hall (4-12)
Cincinnati (3-13)
South Florida (3-13)
Rutgers   (2-14)

THe order of tied teams is alphabetical and therefore meaningless.

[mu03eng]

I don't buy those spreads.  Depaul beating us by one?  I mean anything could happen but I don't understand how we couldn't be favored in that game.  Plus the Louisville-Villanova game on Saturday showed me that both of those games are very winnable at home for us.  ND and Georgetown are the big scares in my book, with Pitt being a who knows.  I think we are much more likely to go 6-1 then 3-4 down the stretch

[Harrison]

Guys get used to it.  Does it suck yes, but it is all for TV and money.  To use ND as the perfect example when they went to a couple of NCaa's ESPN and the BIG east had them playing Uconn, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh twice each year all in national TV matchups.  Then they suck donkey dong for a few years and lose their two best players and get a joke schedule and not much TV.  Based on last year and the team coming back MU along with Louisville, GT, and Pittsburgh get the tough schedules and on TV.  It makes it harder especially when a team like ND overachieves, is high in the standing alot of which is based on a joke schedule.  But considering the alternatives I will take the tough schedule and the TV everytime.  This will even out a little next year when you play everyone at least once, but the big boys will still have the tough 2x matchups on TV. 

[spiral97]

This will even out a little next year when you play everyone at least once, but the big boys will still have the tough 2x matchups on TV. 

And I, for one, am perfectly happy with this.  Gives us a chance to prove ourselves, gives us the exposure, gives us the experience and preparation for the post season conference and ncaa tourneys, and gives us (fans) an exciting season.

[Harrison]

One other thing it allows us to do, that many fans will not like is to keep the easy pre-conference schedule.  Because despite the fact that we play a large # of cupcakes the brutal BE schedule will still allow us to have a very very strong SOS.  The way it's looking we may end up with a top 10 SOS. This allows TC the opportunity to work with the lineup and allows the young players trmendous opportunity to play and grow without a tremendous fear of losing the games before New Year's.  Conversely a school like Notre Dame plays a easy preconference schedule and is not helped nearly as much with a soft BE schedule.  Their SOS is still in the 100's and an unexpected loss or two and ND will be firmly planted on the bubble again.  Also, ND's pre-con schedule is a total joke, one that makes UCONN and Syracuses look like murderers row. I wonder how many people that bitch about Mu's precon schedule would guess that MU has the 15th most difficult schedule in the country and getting harder.

[spiral97]

Unfortunately, NDSU's RPI has dropped to #118.  It would be nice if they could find a way to move up 18+ spots.  Gonna be tough to do on their own accord - every team the play going forward has a worse RPI - which will do nothing for their SOS.  Only thing in their favor is that the next 4 games for them are on the road (and thus valued more).  But then they return home to play their final 4 games at home which could negate many of their gains.

Oh well...

[ozmetal71]

DePaul, is well, barely average, and its not like playing at the Allstate is any worse than a neutral site game for Marquette.

Georgetown and Pitt are games that we should be worried about.

I've watched ND play a lot this year and they are beatable.  I think a lot of Marquette fans are stuck with the historical problems that we have had at ND and let that color how they view road games there, no matter what ND's record is.  ND will be a hard game, but I am confident that we will win that one.

I think we go 5-2 down the stretch and end up 12-4 in conference and 25-6 overall in the regular season.  If we can manage to actually win a conference tournament game for once, we should be good for a 2 or 3 seed.

[Pago Warrior]

Agree completely with your last paragraph; 5-2 the rest of the way is both reasonable and realistic and a 3 seed would be very nice for this team.