Effect of Venue on W-L

[CTWarrior]

I've thought about this a lot during the season and I know posting it now seems like sour grapes, but I think our schedule worked out very well for us this year, allowing us to go 14-4, when we probably weren't that good relative to the rest of the Big East.

Here's what I mean.

We got home and homes with USF and Seton Hall, two bottom feeders.  It is to our credit that we didn't stumble in these games, but other than DePaul these are the best teams to have mirror games with.

Our other two home and homes were Pittsburgh and Georgetown, two of the best teams in the league.  But, consider that we got Georgetown at home when they still had Whittington before they got on a roll.  Flop the location of the two Georgetown games so we're at Georgetown first and there is a much better chance we lose both.  Also, when we got Pittsburgh on the road Woodall was hurt very early (Cadougan missed most of that game too, though, and that was the key impressive win in our getting a share of the Big East regular season championship, so I don't want to take anything away from that game).

We got Syracuse (in the middle of their worst stretch of the season), UConn and Notre Dame at home (added benefit of no Cooley) in a trio of games that the home team was very likely to win no matter where it was played.

We got road games against depleted St. Johns and Rutgers teams, two teams we were likely to beat in their condition regardless of venue, though we struggled in both games.

We got Louisville on the road, which was actually good because they're the one team that was likely to beat us regardless of venue.

The only bad scheduling breaks we got were Villanova and Cincinnati on the road, as those were games that I am confident we'd have won at home.  But when we played Cincinnati Cashmere Wright was out (though we didn't close the deal on that one).

The ony way the schedule could have worked out better for us was if DePaul was a road game and Villanova or Cincinnati was a home game.  Swap DePaul for one of those games and we probably end up 15-3.  But if ND and Syracuse were road games and St John's and Rutgers were home games, we probably finish 12-6.  Heck, just move Saint John's game to early February and we probably don't come away with a win.

All in all, we still had to go out and win the games and the team is to be commended for taking advantage of it, but we got some very nice scheduling breaks this year.

[mu_hilltopper]

Hope the selection committee doesn't read this.

[brewcity77]

That's exactly why I felt we had a shot all along. I felt the first 8 games were a chance to establish ourselves as contenders if we went 6-2. We played UConn, GT, @ Pitt, and @ Cincy. Most expected us to be no better than 4-4 with a road-heavy close to the season.

But by going 7-1, we put ourselves in position to compete. And while we had a lot of road games, only Louisville and Georgetown looked to be uphill. USF, Rutgers, Villanova, St John's, those were all teams we should beat and the tough games against Pitt, 'Cuse, and ND were at home. Win at home, beat the teams you should on the road. The schedule worked out very well.

[jsglow]

No argument.  We benefitted from our schedule.  MU's talent put us in but our schedule and focus made us a good seed.