Katz on Big East schedule changes

[guru]

Would be nice to play all the league opponents again...

From espn.com

Pittsburgh and Villanova won't play this season under the Big East's unbalanced schedule format for the newly created 16-team, 16-game conference schedule. But that apparently won't happen once the Big East's new television contract starts in 2007-08. Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese confirmed that the conference is looking into going up from 16 to 18 regular-season games, with each school playing every conference member at least once (and retained three home-and-homes, like the current schedule). If it remains at 16 games, then the schedule would likely include single games against every other conference team and one home-and-home against a comparable team (with top teams playing each other for TV). Tranghese said he is in discussion with other commissioners, including the Big Ten, to see if there could be uniformity among the conferences to go to a set number (18) of conference games. The thought about moving toward 18 games came about after the NCAA management council recently endorsed a package that calls for a universal season start date -- the second Friday in November -- in 2006-07.

[Jack]

Yes! Great news, especially the part about expanding to 18 conference games. Then my dream of 4 distinct 4 team divisions will work perfectly: you play your other 3 division partners home and home and everyone else alternates from year to year. You set up the divisions to preserve rivalries, you give a first round bye to the division winner in the BET, and the last place team in each division stays home. My ideal divisions:

GU, St. John's, Syracuse, Villanova
UCon, PC, Rutgers, Seton Hall
Pitt, WVU, L'Ville, Cincy
ND, Marquette, DePaul, USF

I am sure it would not work out that perfectly, because Cuse wants UCon twice, nobody wants USF and there are competitive balance issues currently, but this could be so much fun.

[YB]

Not bad. But I think it would likely work out more like:

GU, SU, SHU, RU
Yukon, PC, SJU, VU
Pitt, WVU, L'Ville, Cincy
NC, Marquette, DePaul, USF

That is, until the split....

[Grandpa]

jack said:

Yes! Great news, especially the part about expanding to 18 conference games. Then my dream of 4 distinct 4 team divisions will work perfectly: you play your other 3 division partners home and home and everyone else alternates from year to year. You set up the divisions to preserve rivalries, you give a first round bye to the division winner in the BET, and the last place team in each division stays home. My ideal divisions:

GU, St. John's, Syracuse, Villanova
UCon, PC, Rutgers, Seton Hall
Pitt, WVU, L'Ville, Cincy
ND, Marquette, DePaul, USF

I am sure it would not work out that perfectly, because Cuse wants UCon twice, nobody wants USF and there are competitive balance issues currently, but this could be so much fun.

I realize you're just putting out ideal divisions (assuming a 4-division format), but I'm not sure how much I'd like a scenario in which the last place team in one division (such as the one you put us in) which could very easily be an 8-10 record team, gets left out, while another division would permit a 5-13 team into the tourney just because there happened to be a team with an even worse conference record (i.e., 4-14) in the same division. In theory, though I'd love to be able to have home-and-homes every year with the 3 teams you bucketed us in with.

[SFHoya99]

Divisions are pointless.

Because of TV, it is unlikely they'd fix the groupings anyway.

[RBHoya]

jack said:

Yes! Great news, especially the part about expanding to 18 conference games. Then my dream of 4 distinct 4 team divisions will work perfectly: you play your other 3 division partners home and home and everyone else alternates from year to year. You set up the divisions to preserve rivalries, you give a first round bye to the division winner in the BET, and the last place team in each division stays home. My ideal divisions:

GU, St. John's, Syracuse, Villanova
UCon, PC, Rutgers, Seton Hall
Pitt, WVU, L'Ville, Cincy
ND, Marquette, DePaul, USF

I am sure it would not work out that perfectly, because Cuse wants UCon twice, nobody wants USF and there are competitive balance issues currently, but this could be so much fun.

Interesting concept, but I really doubt you can talk Calhoun and the folks at UConn into being in a division where they play Rutgers, Hall and PC three times and only play Marquee teams ('Cuse, 'Ville etc.) once/at home every other year.

[CO_Hoya]

How about 2 divisions, Div I football vs. non? DFW's worst nightmare!

GU, SJU, SHU, PC, Marq, ND, DePaul, 'Nova(?)
Cuse, UCon, Rutgers, Pitt, WVU, L'ville, Cinci, USF

I'm guessing Nova has Div I-AA - could be wrong.

Top from each conference, plus next 2 best records get a bye, last from each conference plus next 2 worse records stay home.

[Jack]

sfhoya99 said:

Divisions are pointless.

Because of TV, it is unlikely they'd fix the groupings anyway.

I know TV will dictate the home and home match-ups, but just thought I would try to do it based on rivalries, specifically GU's rivalries. Pipe dream, never gonna happen, but just playing everyone once would be a nice start.

[Deleted]

cohoya said:

How about 2 divisions, Div I football vs. non? DFW's worst nightmare!

GU, SJU, SHU, PC, Marq, ND, DePaul, 'Nova(?)
Cuse, UCon, Rutgers, Pitt, WVU, L'ville, Cinci, USF

I'm guessing Nova has Div I-AA - could be wrong.

Top from each conference, plus next 2 best records get a bye, last from each conference plus next 2 worse records stay home.

Nova is indeed I-AA in football...

[RockawayHoya]

Scrap the OOC and have a home-and-home with every team. 30 game BE schedule. That would stop the comments that our OOC is too strong/weak. It would make all the coaches happy that at least the system would be fair. It would make fans happy because we get a home game against all the big dogs. I'd be pretty confident we could win at least 18-19 games with a schedule like that.

Waiting for all the responses to yell at me from people who think I'm serious...

[TBird41]

Which reminds me:

This has been bugging me for a while: how do they figure out RPI at the beginning of the year? What do they use to decide who should be where when they first do it?

[lichoya68]

they take the number of home wins from last year.. divide that by the average margin of victory in only away confercnece games.. and then take the square root of all past ncaa victories back until 1950 .. then you take the average height of your first six players.. and multiply that by the assists to turnover ratio of a returning point guard.. and then you take that total if over 115 you add the square root of pi .. if under 115 you divide bythe number of duke fans on espn.. and then ...... you freaking quess..... and thats the storyof the evolution and calculation of the RPI.. which should RIP ... go hoyas .. the rpi be damned.. especially if you look at ours and compare ours to cuse and rutgers ... and their freaking schedule .. go hoyas.. rip be damned.... ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[lichoya68]

ps if that was not clear enough i can give you the extended full text calculation of the rpi ok just let me know go hoyas

[RockawayHoya]

I think I just had a seizure reading that. Shame on me for not knowing better.

[bmartin]

Boeheim will lead the charge to change the schedule for next season after Syracuse goes 8-8 or worse this year. Look at the remaining schedule after edging South Florida at home:

at ND
at Cincinnati
vs. UConn
at Villanova
at Pitt
vs. Seton Hall
vs. Rutgers
at UConn
at St. John's
vs. Cincinnati
vs. Louisville
vs. WVU
at Georgetown
at DePaul
vs. Villanova

[TrueHoyaBlue]

tbird41 said:

Which reminds me:

This has been bugging me for a while: how do they figure out RPI at the beginning of the year? What do they use to decide who should be where when they first do it?

They don't.

The tournament selection committee doesn't even meet/look at RPI until February (I'm pretty sure), and they don't really look at RPI until they're in the thick of it.

As to other sites (midmajority, collegerpi.com, etc.), everyone starts out with an RPI of .0000, and then as teams play games, the first few weeks give some funny RPI tallies.

As to Sagarin, Pomeroy, and others, they generally each use their own formula to determine starting rankings based on past performance, and those initial rankings are phased out through November and December.