uniguy wrote:I do agree the league needs to schedule better. A decade ago there was a scheduling mandate and it showed in our RPIs and the # of bids the league received. That has gone away and it has hurt the league.
The quadrant system is a pretty slick way to keep mid-majors out it seems. Just looking at the number of wins from a particular conference (and ignoring the losses) can make a team like OU and Syracuse look pretty good.
It wasn't so much the "scheduling mandate" going away as the NCAA and the selection committee beginning to ignore RPI if it was inconvenient for getting 7-8-9 major conference teams with .500 or worse records into the tournament. You had Missouri State in 2006 being left out with a 21 RPI, win over Arkansas. Also in 2006, Hofstra had a 30. Air Force had a 30 in 2007 and was left out.
Meanwhile, there is no pressure on the P5 to "schedule well" in non-conference. They can play only cupcakes if they want. They can play 240 RPI teams at home every game through the non-con (maybe a showcase game or a MTE of their choosing mixed in). They will get their multiple chances at Q1 games in conference, and never have to play a mid-major on the road, or sometimes not
ANY team on the road. Syracuse's only road game this year was at Georgetown (RPI in the 150s). Oklahoma (RPI 49) got a better seed an an at large than Loyola (RPI 22) as an auto bid, and they were under .500 in conference, 5-11 away from home, and 2-8 in their last 10. You've got 14-loss at large teams in the tournament now, while 6-loss teams go to the NIT.
There is no penalty for P5 schools refusing collectively to schedule mid-majors. In fact, the downsides are so clear that they don't do it anymore. NC State paid $175k to not play Loyola in Chicago, after Loyola lived up to their part of the bargain. Florida was one of the few teams to agree to play Loyola, and they probably won't take any more similar deals.
So "scheduling mandates" are meaningless until the selection committee starts counting Q1/Q2 LOSSES as carefully as wins. Why are teams that lose 60-70% of their Q1/Q2 games held in higher regard than 4-3 or 3-3 teams? And the RPI was adjusted to take road games into account, and the Q1/Q2 system basically tosses the RPI in the garbage. Finally, they have to stop giving at-large bids to teams with under-.500 conference records.