1 of 1- Gwmayhem
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Schedule Philosophy
I wanted to differentiate this thread from the 2022-23 schedule thread which serves to announce opponents once these become known. I would think we can all agree that with very little postseason expectations placed on CC's initial GW team, the crafting of an OOC schedule is not at all critical at least with respect to enhancing postseason chances. To date, here is what's known about our OOC opponents (not presented in chronological order):
Home: South Carolina, Coppin State, New Hampshire, UC San Diego
Away: At Radford, At Hofstra
Neutral: Washington State, likely Pepperdine (or Hawaii), Iona/SMU/Utah State/Seattle
Obviously, a few more opponents will be announced. But instead of making this thread about who we are playing, let's comment on what's most important to you. Let's be realistic. You can say you'd like three more top 50 programs playing at Smith Center, but we all know that's not about to happen. Some thoughts might be:
More Top 100 programs (realizing these would likely be road games)
More home games regardless of the opponent
Very weak schedule to (HOPEFULLY) help this team build a winning culture and gain confidence
A few more tests against major programs..give this team a chance to pull off some big upsets realizing that it may also get pounded
A balanced schedule (1/3 should be easy wins, 1/3 should be losses, 1/3 can realistically go either way)
Given the circumstances of this program, what would you like to see? Is that the same or different than what the program ought to do, schedulingwise?
- GW0509
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Re: Schedule Philosophy
Good idea for a topic.
Geographic Preferences
I think most years we should try to play 2 of the following local teams at home: Howard, American, UMBC, Towson, Coppin State, UMES, Loyola MD, Morgan State, JMU, MSM, Navy. I think it's important to prioritize playing local teams. Maybe for the likes of Howard & American we could agree to play them at their place since it's little more than a metro ride. I don't really see the benefit of going on the road for anyone else.
Unless we are playing in a MTE like in HI, CA, or NV, I don't really see the benefit of ever travelling to the west coast. I guess there's always an exception where travelling to the WC is promised to a high level commit or we are getting paid big $$$ to do so, but last season's debacle really soured me on going anywhere past the central time zone. We really don't recruit there and also don't have much of a "brand" out there. The risk/reward calculus is too great.
Style of Play Preferences
In a perfect world, I'd try my hardest to find teams that approximate the playing styles of our conference opponents. Is there a team out there that tries to imitate VCU's havoc defense or Davidson's offense? At the very least I'd see if the opponent plays to our strengths so we can work on things to build up towards conference play.
Ranking Preferences
Given where we stand in the A10, and given where the A10 stands in the overall landscape of college basketball, I think our biggest task should be to strengthen the overall A10 Kenpom. This makes our league look better come tournament time and maybe sneaks an extra AL team into the field, which gets the A10 more $. Playing the absolute weakest possible schedule doesn't help us prepare for conference play nor does it help the A10 at large. Back in 2019 Fordham played a cupcake OOC and went 9-4 only to go 3-15 in conference play (one of those wins came against GW, yuck). They ended the season with a worse Kenpom (257) than they started (240).
Outside of maybe some low Kenpom local teams like UMES or Coppin State, I think the rest of the schedule should be against the best Kenpom we can schedule. I'd specifically target Kenpom 80-130 as those should be realistic tests of a mid-tier A10 team.
Playing the big boys is somewhat cool, but odds are we'd get our brains beat in like the Mohegan Sun tournament.
Last edited by GW0509 (8/22/2022 12:55 pm)
- GW Alum Abroad
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Re: Schedule Philosophy
New coach with a renovated roster? This season play whomever is willing to schedule GW. Beggars cannot be choosers.
In the future, keep the regional schools in heavy rotation (as far as The Mount to the west, Delaware to the north, UMES to the east and W&M to the south and all schools in between), the economics of college sports will make that happen in any case. At least one non-MTE road trip to a non-A10 market (Dallas, Miami, California. Seattle, etc...) because that serves the University´s wide footprint and is something all its teams should do (not just hoops). Depending on what coaches expect from the team, try to play a marquee game or two (KH did a disservice by scheduling such weak opponents), but this is not a deal breaker if the roster resembles 2021-22. If offered a big payday and in need of money, take it even if it means playing in College Park the night of a red-eye to the Best Coast.
And, schedule those chickenshits from That School Down the Street; treat it the way debate organizers treat a candidate who does not show up for their televised event. Open the grandstands, get the students in there, have the band play the fight song and when the fraidycats don´t show up proclaim GW the winner and hand them the trophy (hopefully sponsored by a company that manufatures chicken manure-based organic fertilizer-- call it the "Hoya Chalice" just to rub it in). The empty chair will speak volumes-- and, besides, fuck those guys!
Last edited by GW Alum Abroad (8/22/2022 1:45 pm)
- Gwmayhem
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Re: Schedule Philosophy
GW0509, loved your answer on Style of Play Preferences. Am wondering if this is done in "real life"? I can envision scheduling a single opponent to help emulate another conference opponent but to do this on a grander scale would be very difficult, I would think. I also think that we're a bit stuck in a scheduling conundrum. Majors have no problem scheduling one another for tv, plus footing the bill for "buy" games against schools with budgets far less than ours. Add in lengthier conference schedules for many progerams and the pickings for OOC games do become somewhat slim for an A10 school playing in a smallish venue.
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Thread Starter- GW0509
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Re: Schedule Philosophy
Gwmayhem wrote:
GW0509, loved your answer on Style of Play Preferences. Am wondering if this is done in "real life"? I can envision scheduling a single opponent to help emulate another conference opponent but to do this on a grander scale would be very difficult, I would think.
Yeah I have no idea. Like, if I were an ACC team I would try to always play a team in OOC that runs a zone defense to prepare for Syracuse. Maybe it's not feasible for us but I was just thinking what I'd want in a perfect world knowing VCU's havoc is going to be there every year no matter what.
- Class of 13
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Re: Schedule Philosophy
I mostly agree with GW 0509's list, but I would add a couple of extra layers to it.
Geographic Preferences
- Let's extend this beyond the Mid-Atlantic and include the Northeast into this as well. I enjoy when we play BU and Vermont, and I think between Buffalo, the MAAC, the Patriot league and the Ivy's there are enough KenPom 100-200 teams in a given year to build a respectable schedule where we won't be at major athletic disadvantages.
Brand Preferences
- The Ivy's very much fall into this, but I think it is important to sell the fanbase on playing brands that we'd like to consider like-minded institutions, or brands that have college basketball history and are recognizable. Sure it's fun to play Power 5 teams, especially when we get them into the Smith Center, but for college hoop fans Iona is a brand that they see in their brackets half the decade. Especially the next few years while Pitino is there, that could be a game that pulls in 2,200 to Smith Center, instead of 1,000 for Radford. College of Charleston I similarly think of as a basketball school that basketball fans will have more familiarity with than say James Madison. Similarly the academic brand of the IVy's makes them an interesting draw on the schedules and I've enjoyed our dates with Harvard and Princeton in recent years. Yale and Penn would also be fun to play home and away.
Assuming the typical non-conference schedule will be 13 games moving forward, here's an example of an ideal schedule template from my vantage point.
- American
- Howard
- @ ACC (buy game)
- @ MTE for 3
- Penn (part of home and home)
- Xavier (part of home and home)
- @ Buffalo (part of home and home)
- UMES
- @ Iona (part of home and home)
- @ Penn St (part of home and home)
- Harvard (part of home and home)
In this particular cycle you'd have Xavier, Penn and Harvard as your home sells to fans, presumably with Penn St., Pitino and Buffalo coming in the following year. Is it the sexiest? No. But to real college basketball fans it's a regional schedule that offers a few fun games.