Cal88 said:
BearlyCareAnymore said:
Cal88 said:
BearlyCareAnymore said:
barsad said:
Harky4 said:
Our strength of schedule is a dismal 141 which makes Lunardi's prediction understandable. The ACC games will allow us to see that SOS number decrease dramatically, but we will need to win at least half of those games to get into the dance.
KenPom has our SOS at 341 out of 365 Div 1 teams, not sure where you're getting 141. You could say, what's the difference, but come March Madness time and the last spot is being handed to Cal or some other 19 or 20 win team, that extremely weak early schedule should be where we point if Cal misses the dance.
There is really no excuse in making a schedule that is this weak. If Cal had the #250 ranked schedule they'd almost assuredly have the same record and would be rated higher in Kenpom and would probably be rated as getting in the tournament instead of being left out. #341 is unnecessarily kneecapping your program.
Cal is absolutely going to need to show something in conference. The UCLA win is a good win and is the thing keeping us in the conversation even though, as I said, Cal has done everything that can be reasonably expected. A win tonight would be huge. A blowout loss and people are going to seriously question us.
There is no need to overload the OOC schedule when you're going to be playing a full round robin in the ACC, the same reason most SEC football teams have relatively easy nonconference scheds. At the end of the regular season, our SOS is going to be pretty decent.
As well, with the amount of turnover you have in the current era, a decent team that hasn't yet gelled is vulnerable early in the season against a bad team, and a loss there would really wreck computer rankings. Having an easy OOC schedule with only a couple of good opponents helps give the new personnel time to gel before the challenging conference slate.
I don't think you understand the magnitude of how bad the schedule is. There are only 24 teams out of 365 worse. I said play a schedule ranked 250 which should still put you in no danger of losing. I didn't say to load it up. Playing a schedule in the 340's is nonsensical
I do understand, and I have brought some perspective there which you didn't follow. The 18 ACC games we will play (plus a couple more in the ACC tourney) will have an associated SOS at the other end of the SOS spectrum, around the top 50-60 toughest, so our overall SOS at the end of the season will not be egregiously low.
If you have a high turnover program. which we do, it would be advantageous to start the season with a soft OOC schedule and give the new team some space to get. The soft schedule did pay off for us as we enter the ACC sched with a NET in the 40s, already putting us on the bubble. Had we scheduled more teams in the #75-150 range and had an off day against them, we would have picked up a bad loss and been well outside the bubble going into conference play.
I said #250 schedule. I never said playing more teams in the #75 range. You should never play a team worse than 300.
We played 291, 304, 308, 361, and a Div 2 team that doesn't count. Those 5 game should be against teams in the 200-250 range. For reference, the top of that range is #200 SJSU who is 5-8. I think we can manage that.
I 100% agree with you that we should play a soft schedule. That is why I said you aren't understanding the magnitude of how easy this schedule is because you keep responding to me saying we shouldn't play hard teams when I said play the #250 schedule. I'm proposing playing a joke of a schedule. There is just zero advantage to going further down.
Whoever scheduled Dominican should be fired. I seriously didn't think it was possible that we were playing THAT Dominican. I thought it must be someone else. I truly did not think Dominican had a team. It is like saying we are playing Mills College. We shouldn't be playing any team whose Mom's wash their jerseys after the game. Okay, that is unfair. They are adults. A few of them may do their own laundry.
Also, everyone is a high turnover team now, and every ACC team plays an ACC schedule. It doesn't save us. But that isn't the point. We should play the highest SOS that maximizes wins. Otherwise you are giving away rankings. We are now 12-2 and rated 73. There is no reason we aren't in at least the top 60.
