Groo at expressed this better than I will, but Georgia needs to improve its basketball scheduling. Many fans clamor for improvements at the top of their non-conference schedule. However, I think Georgia needs improvement at the bottom end of its out of conference lineup. As Groo pointed out:
This year Georgia played Southern (RPI 289), Jacksonville (RPI 198), South Carolina State (RPI 288), Alabama A&M (RPI 334), Gardner-Webb (RPI 268), and Kennesaw (277). Those games are boat anchors to a team’s perceived strength. The Dawgs couldn’t even count a win over Valdosta State (in terms of the RPI) because the Blazers are a Division 2 school.It's important to note that Georgia isn't a HBCU institution; therefore, we probably don't need to play 3 HBCU schools per year.
As Groo pointed out, playing schools with an RPI sub-250 is a major drain on RPI. When Georgia beat Kennesaw State in February, our RPI dropped 8 spots. Groo also correctly points out:
"Hold on a second," you say. "Georgia had the #14 schedule according to Palm’s collegerpi.com. Why are you talking about schedule?" Sure they did. They play in the SEC East. The only SEC East team without a top 30 schedule was Florida. The strong conference schedule masks the fact that the nonconference schedule had problems.If you play the #1 RPI team and you play the #300 RPI team, they only average at 150. So you beat one and you lose to the other. If you played two RPI teams in the 50-100 range, you might get two wins AND the two teams would have an average RPI at around 60-75. Now, I'm no bracketologist, but I think the latter offers a greater opportunity for post-season success / participation.
I'm all for playing 1 or 2 "Ben Hur" type non-conference games. I loved the epic overtime game with #1 UNC in '97 (loss), the thrilling victory over #2 Pitt in '02 and this year's Wisconsin game was good for the program.
Not scheduling hard.
Jim Harrick had lots of flaws, and many of them I've beaten into the ground here. But the guy was the absolute master scheduler. He correctly saw the value in scheduling teams with an RPI around 30-125 and avoiding the real dregs of college basketball.25
What we can learn from Harrick's scheduling:
-- Load up on mid-tier power conference and mid-major teams. Harrick signed and extended multi-year deals with Colorado and Minnesota. He also played Pepperdine and Villanova (when they were medicore) on the road.
-- Utilize neutral site games as much as possible. He scheduled Georgetown in Springfield, Ma (W), Cal in Oakland (W), Texas in Madison Square Garden (L), NCSU in Atlanta (W). He even played Georgia Southern in Savannah, which was brilliant in that the RPI gives you greater credit for winning in a neutral setting than winning at home.(Image: Ezra Williams vs. Georgetown)
-- Utilize REAL pre-season tourneys. The sham Paradise Jam tourney that Felton signed us up for in 2006 was a mockery. We played Old Dominion (RPI: 73 loss), Fordham (RPI: 126 Win) and EKU (RPI 267 W). Harrick sent us to Maui (a variety of mid-tier guys + Hawaii), Alaska (KU, Louisville and Grambling) and San Juan (Indiana St., Utah and Stanford). The Alaska thing was overly aggressive, but otherwise a good model to consider.
-- Avoid the worst of the worst. Harrick did a great job of steering clear of the bottom feeders of college hoops. Sure, we played Mercer, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Appy State, UW-M, South Alabama and Belmont. But he didn't play them all in 1 year! In fact, in glancing at Ken Pomeroy's RPI archives, it looks like Harrick only scheduled 1 or 2 sub-RPI 250 teams per year, and he only played an RPI sub-300 team once (Grambling in Alaska).
Whereas, Felton has been scheduling 4-6 of those teams per year.
Who fits the profile of ideal teams for us to play?
I thought Felton had struck gold with the Oregon State match-up. A bottom tier Power Conference team is always a great scheduling move to fill up the lower half of the non-conference slate.
Others that might fit the profile of traditional mid to lower tier power conference teams include Baylor, Colorado, Nebraska, Northwestern, Minnesota (pre-Tubby), Penn State, Iowa State, Rutgers, DePaul, Seton Hall, Miami, Clemson, Arizona State, or Oregon State. See also: Tulane, Houston, UAB, Southern Miss, UMass, St. Louis, St. Joe's, Colorado State, etc. Yes, some of these are currently ranked below 200 in the RPI, but they are consistently going to pull a respectable RPI.
Next year's Schedule
- Road: WKU and Wisconsin
Home: GT, Wake and Clemson (if we renew)
Neutral: Gonzaga (Seattle), Duke (NYC / Rumored) and TBD (Gwinnett/ATL)
PWD
10 comments:
Felton has done well against Tubby, and Minnesota will take a year or two to get back on their feet, that would be a good matchup Paul. And if he's so adament about having multiple HBCU's every year, maybe he could make them neutral site games, like in Savannah, Albany, and other parts of the state where it'd be nice to get a little more love. Scheduling and style of play, been the beef since game 1. It's still the same problem now as it was then, why would they finally start improving now when they haven't for so long? I hope some of these changes are instituted Paul, but there is absolutely no reason I can find to think that they will be.
Why do you think we won 19 games and made the NIT this year or, for that matter, went 15-15 last year with likes of Dave Bliss, Steve Newman and Rashad Singleton anchoring our front line? Felton knew exactly what he was doing when he made those schedules out. 7 or 8 of our 19 came against those 200-300+ teams. Some of the teams that would have been more reputable(within the 100-200 range) would have obviously been tougher to beat and might have placed scheduling demands on us for a return game at their place. Even without the scheduling aspect, our overall record might have been 2 games worse, which might have put us in peril of even making the NIT. Bottom line is if we took care of UT at home, nobody would be complaining about the schedule now. People like to talk about WKU and Bama, but we were lucky as hell to beat LSU, UK and Arky(turn those 3 games around and where do we stand?). The only NCAA tourney team we beat solidly was Vandy at home. We were an NIT-quality team this year, period, and Felton put together a schedule to make sure we'd have a good shot at getting there. Next year will be a different story and I'm sure the schedule upgrades will come along with that.
We were 5-2 vs. NIT in 2006. Even with all our flaws and warts.
Those are the types of teams we are more than competitive with.
The easiest way to schedule smart is to schedule hard. Bruce Pearl was right when he said you have to schedule like a top-20 team even before you are a top-20 team. He had Tennessee playing teams like Texas, Memphis, Oklahoma State, etc. the day after he inherited a 14-win team. That bravado rubs off.
Uga should be trying to schedule every high-end major conference power they can find. A loss @ UNC is worth a whole lot more than a win at home v. Savannah. Right now Uga's schedule (and maybe this is planned) looks like they are scared to play anyone OOC who might beat them. Even the "marquee" OOC games are generally v. perennial NITers like Clemson. The great thing about CBB as opposed to CFB is that you can go out, schedule big, take your lumps and still make the tournament.
I disagree with the poster who said if UGa had beaten TN at home no one would be complaining. I don't think a 9-7 UGa would have made the NCAAs (borderline at best), and that is a direct refelction on the subpar scheduling.
Great post PWD.
I don't think the scheduling is as bad as it's made out to be. Sure, we probably should schedule some BETTER PATSIES (100-200 RPI??) instead of the bottom-feeder patsies. But our SOS was 16 WITH the 5 bottom-feeders in Paul's article. Look at the SOS of the Final-4 teams (Ohio State - 12; Georgetown - 14; Florida - 38; UCLA - 8).
In summary, beat the non-conference teams you should beat (WKU), sprinkle in a few Top non-conference teams (Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Clemson, Georgia Tech) and don't schedule a team that doesn't count as a win in the RPI (Valdosta).
I agree Harrick was great at gaming the RPI system, and now that we at least have players other power conference teams recruited, I too would like to see us adopt the Harrick Scheduling Model (HSM) in full. As JH used to say about the Wooden offense, "It's not the only way, just the best way."
It's a question of degree, I guess. We are starting to play some top teams (WI, Gonzaga (can't blame DF that they tanked)) and what are Wake Forest and Clemson but classic HSM power conference bottom feeders? Clemson, with the uptick they've had, even turned out to be a bit better than that.
Clemson also was an example of the Westerdawg gloss on the HSM, which is to play teams from schools with good football teams, so that casual fans will see the name and think "Mmmmmmm ... pigskin."
So, OK, let's add a couple more like that. Hardly a crisis, I would think.
As for why to expect things to head in that direction, I would just say that they have been already -- the schedule is getting harder, and has every year. As with so much else these four strange years, is it getting better as fast as everyone would like. Obviously not, that's why we're having this discussion.
I would also just say that it takes two to tango on schedule, and we might ask ourselves why the NIT-type teams that the HSM tells us EVERYONE should want to play would want to play us. They have to think pretty hard about how many OOC loses they want to have (and to whom), and we, as an improving team with zero profile, might be pretty far down anyone's list.
The schedule is getting harder stick, I agree, but the same problem that was then is still there now. We load up with 5-6 absolute dregs that we coupld probably pull a bunch of guys out of Ramsey and play a good game with. Those games do nothing to show a team their faults, what they need to work on, what they do well and do poorly. We'd get just as much benefit going over to Ramsey and playing a pick up game every other day.
"The easiest way to schedule smart is to schedule hard". Whoever posted that isn't familiar with the composition of our team. We just aren't there yet from a talent standpoint and still needed some cupcakes to inflate the win total.
We might have needed another win or two in the conference tourney to make the Dance. Arkansas made it after winning 3 in the conference tourney and they only went 7-9 in conference. The UT loss definitely removed us from consideration.
In 2007, we were 1-3 vs NIT teams...losing to Ole Miss, Alabama and Clemson on the road and beating MSU at home. So, if we could get all of these hypothetical NIT-quality opponents to come to Athens, I guess we'd be in great shape. Otherwise, we'd be sitting at home for the postseason again and you would be bitching about that instead of our scheduling.
I don't think it would be a bad idea to play one game in a different Georgia city besides Athens or Atlanta each year. It might actually help us if we could convince an FSU to play us in Albany (they are already getting recruits from that part of our state anyway) or a UAB in Columbus. Since we're not playing them in Athens, I would prefer they be one game only setups or as part of a 3 game set that includes a game in Athens.
I do agree with scheduling more like Harrick did. That was one thing that he was very good at. In addition to the Tech, Wake, Clemson, Gonzaga, Wisconsin types, it wouldn't hurt to throw in a couple of Houston and DePaul types rather than Kennesaw St. But if we're doing home and homes, I want them in Athens, not in a neutral city.
I wouldn't play FSU in Columbus. That's a big time game (fan wise) we should play in Athens.
I'd have no issue with playing GSU in Savannah and Ga. State in Gwinnett (again).
Gwinnett County is more key to our program's future from a recruiting and fan support standpoint than Albany or Columbus.
pwd
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