Maryland opening up season in Baltimore with Coppin State, Towson State and Loyola.
Same old excuses every year with a weak schedule.
There are no teams in D-1 that are afraid to play us. Even when we were good (before the 2016 debacle) we always seemed to play P-5 teams. This is what our AD's (3) and coaches (3) have allowed for the last 9 years now.
Even in a weak A-10 era, it's just a matter of time before the conference demands more from us.
 

So, if I'm reading you right, Rising -- it doesn't matter how many Q1 or Q2 games we schedule, because the at-larges aren't coming our way anyway. It also, therefore, doesn't matter how many Q3/Q4 games we win by 20+.

Which therefore means that we might as well try to build the best roster possible, schedule for the entertainment value because it'll be more fun for all of us, and then root like hell for them to win the conference tournament this year. If that's the only path forward, then let's go get on the road and play against name brand programs on the road in metro areas (NY, LA, Chicago, Philly) and give it the old college try, and find ways at home to schedule hyper-locally against schools that have some name ID (American, Howard), and then try to make the case for bringing one or two BIG EAST/WCC/Mountain West schools to GW a couple of times per year.

Your point, that the OOC schedule doesn't really matter for getting an at-large bid, can also mean that we should schedule for fans, not for NET rankings. I don't think we're demanding home-and-homes with UCLA, Duke, or Illinois, but we should be thinking bigger than UVA-Wise.

I think the debate comes down to whether you buy into the efficiency metrics or not.

Yes, we played one of the weakest OOC SOS's in the country.  However, we finished with our best KenPom in 10 years (better than the interim Mojo led 2016-17 squad that played Georgia, Penn State, South Florida, Florida State, Temple, UCF, and Miami).  

That schedule looks great in retrospect, but playing all those power schools got us in no better position at the end of the year than playing cupcakes.  There is definitely a benefit to playing better schools such as national exposure and more fan attendance, but if the only thing that matters is how the team stacks up at the end of the year, it seems as though CC's strategy last year paid off.

At some point, shouldn't this be about not enabling your kids to sleepwalk through two months of a 4 1/2 month season?  Enough talk about the majors.  There are an abundance of quality mid-majors and we should be scheduling more home and homes with these schools.  Perhaps McNeese and Muray State will have down years but these are schools with good program reputations (though we'll see whether a Will Wade coached program can somehow avoid future probation).  The Racers have slipped a bit since Ja left but their program has perennially been decent to good.

It seems to me that Hobbs got slaughtered annually for crafting OOC schedules that served to inflate his personal W-L records.  If this keeps up, should CC receive a pass for doing the very same thing?

"look where it got us".
Seriously Rising?
Being in the NCAA or NIT discussion every year between 2013-2016 vs where we are now clamoring for consideration in the Crown tourney!
We are unlikely to see those days again in our lifetime unless things change drastically at GW.

Seems to me Rising that both Hobbs and Lonergan were below .500 in each of their first two seasons only to turn things around for the better.  Not really sure where you are going with that statement. 

The alternative, to answer your question with a topic I've mentioned here frequently, is balance.  Not a killer OOC but not the worst one in the country either.  We've gone 11-2 the past two years in the OOC with the understanding prior to the start of these seasons that GW would finish with these records or better if the team played to its capabilities.  (I understand that this is not always guaranteed, as in CC's first season as well as several of Jamion's.)

The fact of the matter Rising is that your position sounds disingenuous and I think you know that.  You're too smart a basketball guy not to know that.  Under your logic, why wouldn't every coach in America schedule the softest OOC possible?  Can't really buy the argument that CC is a genius for scheduling this way.

No, the answer is to schedule 5-6 bottom 100 teams but not 10-12 of them.  It's to try to get two top 50ish games which may have to be away games without returns for less money than the old days since we've established that the P4 really does not need a GW game.  Most notable, it's to zero in on the 75-175 range and schedule home and homes.  To be clear, that doesn't mean 170, 172 and 175.  It means more like 85, 130 and 175.  

If GW had the 150th-200th most difficult OOC schedule in the country, it would be a huge step down from what I formally aspired, yet it would also be realistic.  It would also satisfy many fans on this board.  Perennially landing among the bottom 50 OOC schedules each year?  Not so much.

Gwmayhem wrote:

Seems to me Rising that both Hobbs and Lonergan were below .500 in each of their first two seasons only to turn things around for the better.  Not really sure where you are going with that statement. 

The alternative, to answer your question with a topic I've mentioned here frequently, is balance.  Not a killer OOC but not the worst one in the country either.  We've gone 11-2 the past two years in the OOC with the understanding prior to the start of these seasons that GW would finish with these records or better if the team played to its capabilities.  (I understand that this is not always guaranteed, as in CC's first season as well as several of Jamion's.)

The fact of the matter Rising is that your position sounds disingenuous and I think you know that.  You're too smart a basketball guy not to know that.  Under your logic, why wouldn't every coach in America schedule the softest OOC possible?  Can't really buy the argument that CC is a genius for scheduling this way.

No, the answer is to schedule 5-6 bottom 100 teams but not 10-12 of them.  It's to try to get two top 50ish games which may have to be away games without returns for less money than the old days since we've established that the P4 really does not need a GW game.  Most notable, it's to zero in on the 75-175 range and schedule home and homes.  To be clear, that doesn't mean 170, 172 and 175.  It means more like 85, 130 and 175.  

If GW had the 150th-200th most difficult OOC schedule in the country, it would be a huge step down from what I formally aspired, yet it would also be realistic.  It would also satisfy many fans on this board.  Perennially landing among the bottom 50 OOC schedules each year?  Not so much.

I said going .500 or below AFTER the first two years gets you fired at GW = at least in recent history.

Nobody said CC is a genius for scheduling this way. I said it was an act of survival. If you can't schedule your way into an at-large then again why do so (other than for entertainment value or to help prepare your team)? CC has made an implicit judgment thus far that he can be successful to some degree scheduling the way he has. Even you said you did a 180 on this. Perhaps if his talent level rises he will become comfortable with becoming slightly more adventurous. But again that's hard when you don't really know what your roster will look like let along your opponents at the time the schedule is being made. I just think we have to be honest and understand that we aren't scheduling our way into the NCAAs anymore.

 

Last edited by GWRising (Yesterday 4:18 pm)

Rising, the majority of us 15 folks on this site aren't buying the same old excuses for mediocrity.
That same lame argument can be made by every team not ranked in the top 100 (which is 230+ teams), which isn't happening. We only have to look as far as GM and American to see your argument makes no sense. They are competitive and seem to schedule in a way that gets them ready for conference play and their coaches don't seem to be padding their schedule to keep their jobs. I don't want a coach who needs to do that for self preservation.

Joel Joseph wrote:

Rising, the majority of us 15 folks on this site aren't buying the same old excuses for mediocrity.
That same lame argument can be made by every team not ranked in the top 100 (which is 230+ teams), which isn't happening. We only have to look as far as GM and American to see your argument makes no sense. They are competitive and seem to schedule in a way that gets them ready for conference play and their coaches don't seem to be padding their schedule to keep their jobs. I don't want a coach who needs to do that for self preservation.

Joel, I get that you are stuck in 2016 but again that era is long gone. Absent winning the A-10 outright, we aren't going to the NCAA's based on any OOC schedule we could get in the best case scenario. Short of that, the NIT, Crown, etc. does it really matter which one now? How did A-10 do in NIT? Pretty much same as GW did in Crown. It's easy to say we should schedule this or that on your keyboard. Reality is much different now.

That said, nobody is saying that we should schedule only sub 300 teams. But expecting a schedule of more than one or two potential NCAA teams in the OOC (outside of any in an MTE) is just plain foolishness. Why would you cut your own throat for limited upside?

More importantly, neither of American or George Mason's schedules were at-large worthy. So again, if your point is that the NIT is some much better tournament now than the Crown then I guess the schedule made a difference. However, had we defeated George Mason in the A-10 tournament with our "terrible" schedule and all, we'd have been right in the NIT as well. So what are we really talking about other than re-arranging the deck chairs?

We basically have one path now ... win the A-10. I am not sure the OOC schedule will make us more or less able to do that.

Last edited by GWRising (Today 9:46 am)

GWRising wrote:

Joel Joseph wrote:

Rising, the majority of us 15 folks on this site aren't buying the same old excuses for mediocrity.
That same lame argument can be made by every team not ranked in the top 100 (which is 230+ teams), which isn't happening. We only have to look as far as GM and American to see your argument makes no sense. They are competitive and seem to schedule in a way that gets them ready for conference play and their coaches don't seem to be padding their schedule to keep their jobs. I don't want a coach who needs to do that for self preservation.

Joel, I get that you are stuck in 2016 but again that era is long gone. Absent winning the A-10 outright, we aren't going to the NCAA's based on any OOC schedule we could get in the best case scenario. Short of that, the NIT, Crown, etc. does it really matter which one now? How did A-10 do in NIT? Pretty much same as GW did in Crown. It's easy to say we should schedule this or that on your keyboard. Reality is much different now.

That said, nobody is saying that we should schedule only sub 300 teams. But expecting a schedule of more than one or two potential NCAA teams in the OOC (outside of any in an MTE) is just plain foolishness. Why would you cut your own throat for limited upside?

More importantly, neither of American or George Mason's schedules were at-large worthy. So again, if your point is that the NIT is some much better tournament now than the Crown then I guess the schedule made a difference. However, had we defeated George Mason in the A-10 tournament with our "terrible" schedule and all, we'd have been right in the NIT as well. So what are we really talking about other than re-arranging the deck chairs?

We basically have one path now ... win the A-10. I am not sure the OOC schedule will make us more or less able to do that.

Rising I agree, my hopes are less ambitious

1) Schedule 1 home-and-home with decent or top Mid-Major School.
2) For the 300 level schools, schedule a few more schools from the northest.
3) GW should play American every year.
4) Since an At Large is mirage, a top 4 finish and that double bye absolutely needs to be the no bull-shit goal! Why? Because I finishing 14-4 means real entertainment, must see TV and virtually no bad losses.
Because if GW is going to play the NIL game