Well put FredD.

Poog, for what it's worth, I'd say the level of expectations during MoJo's tenure as head coach were fairly mild.  Most of the fan base went from shock to the feeling that not much could be expected.  Most knew that he was not the correct choice and we essentially bided our time until we could begin to truly turn things around.  With JC came hope.  Not pie in the sky hope but the kind of hope that could be relied upon.  Nearly 2 1/2 years in and there just hasn't been a lot to convince most people that the turnaround is upon us.

JC absolutely deserves the chance.  He deserves this year AND next year at the least.  Yet to be fair, there would be something wrong with the passion level of this fan base if it wasn't getting a bit restless by now.

We all want the same results and if you are more patient than most, that's great.  However, it should not be too difficult to understand why criticisms on a message board  exist over a program that has had the recent history that it's had, including their overall play this season to date.
 

To add to Poog's points , nobody wants to lose, nobody doesn't want the program to be the best it can be. But in order to get the program where most want it, there would have be wholesale changes not necessarily in personnel but institutionally that haven't really ever been made. GW is not about that life to quote the current generation. It has shown no interest to date in being about that life. So we must hope that within the current confines we can be decent most years and pop a few of them. While it seems like we are even light years away from that right now, believe it or not there isn't as much distance as you might think. Sometimes patience is a virtue, Sometimes looking at an entire body of work is more important than individual slices. I think JC will get it right, it just may not be on the timeline everyone hoped for or expected. I am willing to be patient to see if that can happen. In one more year, the answer will become much clearer.

Last edited by GWRising (12/15/2021 1:29 pm)

Class of 13 wrote:

Gwmayhem wrote:

As much as GWRising or anyone would like to make this a fact based discussion, the answer to whether this is one of the worst OOC schedules in the country or not boils down to one's opinion.  Asking us to ignore the application of quadrants is foolish.  It's a strong enough metric for the NCAA selection committee to use but it's not good enough to analyze GW's schedule?  Hardly.

I'm guessing the 206 SOS ranking is based on the cumulative won-loss record of one's opponents which as we all know is badly misleading.  Everyone knows that a 7-3 Villanova should not be treated exactly the same as a 7-3 Marshall or a 7-3 Southern Utah.

We should all be able to agree that most of the "bad sounding teams" on our schedule are not terrible.  All but three presently have records of .500 or better.  The median KenPom ranking of our OOC opponents is 224, not good but not terrible.

The problem again boils down to quadrants or not enough quality opponents.  Am not suggesting that we would have won such games, only that playing them would have resulted in playing a tougher schedule.

Based on KenPom rankings, here is how our 13 games break out:

KenPom Ranking                # of Opponents

1-49                                              0
50-99                                            2
100-149                                        1
150-199                                        3
200-249                                        4
250-299                                        1
300+                                             2

Over half of the opponents are in the 155-243 range.  

So, if you're a really bad program and this is your schedule, you can claim it was challenging.

If you're GW and your KenPom ranking is 252, as the 252nd best team in the country, you can look at this schedule and claim that it's challenging.

If your aspirations are to be a far better program, say a top 100 or top 125 program, then this schedule is soft.  You've barely challenged yourself with better teams and you've loaded up on teams who aren't terrible but who you should handily beat.  A 10-3 or 11-2 record should be attainable for a top 125 team against this schedule.

Back to reality.  This exact same schedule may be perceived as fair and challenging because we are the 252nd best program in the country right now.  So really, one can make a case practically in any direction based on how one wishes to view our situation. 

This feels like the type of argument where both sides can be right at the same time. I have seen our SOS rated anywhere from around 180-250 based on the metric that you're looking, so on the high-end we had a completely average SOS and on the low end we still did not have a historically weak SOS. However, if my goals were to compete for a postseason tournament (and yes, I am including CBI as a good starting point for us on our comeback trail), I would much rather my SOS be 296 like UConn's, where they played 5 competitive basketball teams (top 15-100) and then a bunch of dumpster fires.

If we were trying to compete for the postseason this year, our OOC schedule would be rightfully considered strategically poor. Sure, playing teams in the 150-250 range will give you a better SOS than playing a bunch of 300+'s, but the reality of the situation is also that beating those 150's - 250's are doing absolutely nothing for an at large resume either.

To be clear, I had no major qualms with this year's OOC. Coming off of a few really, really bad years, I thought it was perfectly fine to schedule a bunch of ~200-ish type programs with the intention of stacking W's together and simply learning how to win again. It's very disappointing the results didn't follow. What did concern me about this schedule when it came out, though, was how bad the attendance would be because of it. The lack of American, Howard, Navy, Loyola, an Ivy etc... was a little tough for me to see. I'm not expecting to have a P5 program come to the Smith Center every year, but I at least would hope to see some sort of local/regional emphasis on OOC home games to help see an extra couple hundred tickets to these games. Maybe JC called all these schools and they were all fully booked already or demanding home and homes that we didn't want to give. Maybe this year was simply intended to give JC scheduling flexibility for the next two years when he maybe forecasts us to be better. I can only point out what struck me as odd.

To be clear, I had a narrow argument that related solely to the inaccurate use of the phrase "one of the weakest OOC schedules in the nation." That cannot be substantiated under any sort of metrics regardless of how we performed against that schedule.

If the argument is whether the schedule is weaker than it should be for post season play, or whether we should have performed better against that schedule, that is a far different argument than the one I was attempting to have here.

Again, Gwmayhem it's important to focus on what I said versus the discussion you want to have. By no metric is this schedule "one of the worst OOC schedules in the nation" whether or not we played any Q1 games. That relevant metric is not GW's intrinsic scheduling philosophy or whether or not it should have played Q1s but its schedule compared to others since the qualifier "in the nation" was applied. By that same metric, this is not the worst OOC SOS that GW has played either although that was something you later introduced to the conversation not the original discussion.

Again, none of this has anything to do with the absolute merit of GW's scheduling only to the relative one..

Last edited by GWRising (12/15/2021 2:50 pm)

Right now we are not a good team.Can we all agree to this?

GWRising wrote:

To add to Poog's points , nobody wants to lose, nobody doesn't want the program to be the best it can be. But in order to get the program where most want it, there would have be wholesale changes not necessarily in personnel but institutionally that haven't really ever been made. GW is not about that life to quote the current generation. It has shown no interest to date in being about that life. So we must hope that within the current confines we can be decent most years and pop a few of them. While it seems like we are even light years away from that right now, believe it or not there isn't as much distance as you might think. Sometimes patience is a virtue, Sometimes looking at an entire body of work is more important than individual slices. I think JC will get it right, it just may not be on the timeline everyone hoped for or expected. I am willing to be patient to see if that can happen. In one more year, the answer will become much clearer.

I mean this as a sincere question, GWrising. Why is there not as much distance as I may think between the current state of the team and a team that is "decent?" Currently, I see a team with very little offensive efficiency and a team that can't rebound with the personnel it has. What is on the horizon that will make that change? Is Daniel Nixon finally going to start getting minutes and be a game changer? Is some new recruit this year or next  going to break things wide open? Has JC finally figured out how to get the guys to play the way he wants?  What is the timeline you see, and what is it that changes that makes the results we see not as bad as you seem to think they are (as they relate to what the future holds).
 

GWRising wrote:

danjsport wrote:

GWRising wrote:

To add to Poog's points , nobody wants to lose, nobody doesn't want the program to be the best it can be. But in order to get the program where most want it, there would have be wholesale changes not necessarily in personnel but institutionally that haven't really ever been made. GW is not about that life to quote the current generation. It has shown no interest to date in being about that life. So we must hope that within the current confines we can be decent most years and pop a few of them. While it seems like we are even light years away from that right now, believe it or not there isn't as much distance as you might think. Sometimes patience is a virtue, Sometimes looking at an entire body of work is more important than individual slices. I think JC will get it right, it just may not be on the timeline everyone hoped for or expected. I am willing to be patient to see if that can happen. In one more year, the answer will become much clearer.

I mean this as a sincere question, GWrising. Why is there not as much distance as I may think between the current state of the team and a team that is "decent?" Currently, I see a team with very little offensive efficiency and a team that can't rebound with the personnel it has. What is on the horizon that will make that change? Is Daniel Nixon finally going to start getting minutes and be a game changer? Is some new recruit this year or next  going to break things wide open? Has JC finally figured out how to get the guys to play the way he wants?  What is the timeline you see, and what is it that changes that makes the results we see not as bad as you seem to think they are (as they relate to what the future holds).
 

I see a team that is quietly improving from earlier in the season. That doesn't mean we are there yet or we don't still have some significant deficiencies that may or may not get better. I think there is a chance that if we continue to make progress, we could overperform in the conference portion of the season. I do think we (and perhaps JC) underestimated the amount of time it would take to get all the pieces to jell and to find the right combinations. Obviously, losing Lee and having Nixon apparently not be ready to play for whatever reasons are huge issues. But I think there are some subtle signs - improved passing (still needs to be improved) and our defense is better. Again, don't misread this as a guarantee that things will get better but I think we are slowly getting things pointed in the right direction.
 

Thanks- appreciate the response. Do you have any updates on what the story is with Nixon?
 

GWRising wrote:

danjsport wrote:

GWRising wrote:

I see a team that is quietly improving from earlier in the season. That doesn't mean we are there yet or we don't still have some significant deficiencies that may or may not get better. I think there is a chance that if we continue to make progress, we could overperform in the conference portion of the season. I do think we (and perhaps JC) underestimated the amount of time it would take to get all the pieces to jell and to find the right combinations. Obviously, losing Lee and having Nixon apparently not be ready to play for whatever reasons are huge issues. But I think there are some subtle signs - improved passing (still needs to be improved) and our defense is better. Again, don't misread this as a guarantee that things will get better but I think we are slowly getting things pointed in the right direction.
 

Thanks- appreciate the response. Do you have any updates on what the story is with Nixon?
 

 I don't know for sure but I believe Nixon's DNP status is not related to ability but rather to other factors..

Should we be concerned about his availability for next year?

You have gotten far too hung up over my statement of our having one of the worst schedules in the nation.  In fact, here is one poll today that still has our strength of schedule of 305...one of the worst in the nation.   Whether it is in fact one of the worst, or just in the bottom 60-65%, I think we can agree that  the schedule is still quite bad, and we are still 4-8 against this bad schedule.   Hopefully, we are starting to turn things around, but who knows until we start playing better competition.   

https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/rpi-ranking/sos-rpi-rating-by-team

Poog, I'll answer you two ways.

First, yes, perhaps the crazy optimist in me thought that this team did have a chance at a meaningful postseason bid.  These thoughts were severely dampened by the Ira Lee injury but by then, the schedule had to have been done (or very close to it).  We have players who were successfully recruited by LSU, Maryland, Nebraska, Virginia Tech, UCONN and Arizona.  Of course, recruiting mistakes can and do get made but the notion that these schools all saw enough talent from these players at one time was extremely encouraging.  Add two heralded freshmen and it really looked like it was all going to boil down to whether this team could be coached to play cohesively.  So yes, I would say that on paper, this team was poised to win.  Let's remember that Lee has not played, Nixon has barely played, and Harris barely can play.  It would have been hard to project these things when the schedule was being put together.

My other answer is that this isn't as much an obsession with the OOC schedule as it is a typical GWHoops squabble.  I can guarantee that when LSF made the statement that we're playing one of the worst OOC schedules in the country, he did not look at any rankings or tables or statistics.  He didn't have to.  The real point he was making is that we're playing a very weak OOC schedule.  But, GWRising steps in and takes his remark literally.  It's not even close to being "one of the worst", he states.   From there, we're off and running.  It's much easier to argue that it's not one of the worst rather than it's simply pretty bad. 

Given the team's overall performance, it's easy to conclude that it very well did not matter who we played (though if this schedule was intended to build confidence or create a winning culture and we failed, then perhaps it does matter to some extent).  It certainly did not matter within the context of postseason play.  But as far as an obsession goes, the only obsession that ever exists here is about being right.  And if one person says it's not one of the worst schedules in the country while the other person really meant that it's a bad schedule period, it's entirely possible that both are correct.  

Last edited by Gwmayhem (12/17/2021 9:42 am)