ForecastingAWin
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I'd bump up FAU to at least #2. Rumor has it Lane Kiffin will be coaching the hoops team too.
Gophers Official Non Conference Schedule
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I'd bump up FAU to at least #2. Rumor has it Lane Kiffin will be coaching the hoops team too.
Gophers7633
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Ranking at the time of the game is extremely overrated. Indiana was a top 15 team in the early portion of the season, and they ended up in the NIT. Florida State finished the regular season as a top 10 team, and both Arkansas and Vandy were top 35 teams(according to the committee's "S" curve). Out of those 3 games, one was a true road game, one was a neutral site game and one was a home game. Those are three pretty good tests. My guess is Miami has the potential to be what FSU was last year, so that would cancel out. And I think Alabama and Providence could essentially be what Vandy are Arkansas were last, maybe slightly better, but I wouldn't expect those teams to be a top 5 seed. Our 4th best OOC game was UT-Arlington, Arkansas will probably be better than them, but by how much? UT-Arlington was a top 50 win last year(according to RPI) I would expect Arkansas to be in a similar position. Really the biggest difference is the perceived 4th toughest game is on the road this season, as opposed to being at home. But that might be a bad thing because Arkansas has an incredible home court advantage, so if we lose that type of game, it's going to really hurt come Selection Sunday.
All I'm saying is that while this schedule does offer more challenges(mostly because of where the games are being played), if we end the OOC portion of the season with 2/3 losses, we're gonna need to at least go 13-5 in B1G play to be a top 5 seed again. And I'll be honest, I could see us going 4-0 or 0-4 in these 4 games. I actually think our easiest games are against the perceived best 2 teams in Miami and Bama. Winning a game like at Arkansas would be quite the feat IMO.
Gophers7633
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By all the advanced metrics(BPI, KenPom, and Sagarin) Wisconsin played like a 5/6 seed last year. Why were they an 8 seed? They had an awful OOC SoS, and because of that, didn't have the amount of quality wins necessary. We could be in a very similar situation come Selection Sunday.
gopherguy15
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You and me are definitely on the same page with this. No one is going to argue that Providence, Miami, Alabama, and Arkansas are not a better quartet of teams than the top four from last year. Mix in the fact that two of them are on the road makes this a no brainer in and of itself. Those four will be challenging, and I'm excited that we are playing them. But last year's nonconference schedule mostly avoided the really bad apples. So while we didn't play that many really good teams, we also didn't play any really bad teams (I think NJIT was the worst on our schedule, and they were in the 200s). Some people on this board are assuming that our top quartet of nonconference opponents this year are simply going to erase most of the bad we'll get from all of those bottom feeders. That is absolutely false. We have to hope that some of those really bad teams have improved this year. And I saw some comments about playing two Big Ten opponents in early December. Sure, that will be a tough and fun stretch of games, but those Big Ten opponents do nothing for our OOC at the end of the day, and this year's team should be just fine (we hope). We should be minimizing the potential really bad teams because we finally have a team that should be able to handle a top nonconference schedule. I'm not saying every other game has to be Power 6, but at least try to get better mid-majors on the schedule. Wisconsin was given a very harsh reminder by the NCAA committee last year to not play so many cupcakes in the nonconference, regardless of your other top opponents on the schedule.
I think this team can go 3-1 against those top four opponents. As tough as Providence should be, I saw them many times last year, and I think we matchup well with them. That game at Arkansas could be the most difficult. They are tough at home, and you know they'll be gunning for us after getting run off the court at the Barn last year. Miami has the highest ceiling of that bunch. Wouldn't surprise me to see them enter the top 10 at some point next year. Unfortunately this being a disappointing schedule for some and not for others doesn't make any difference any more. They need to go out there and win.
WriterGoph
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"And I saw some comments about playing two Big Ten opponents in early December. Sure, that will be a tough and fun stretch of games, but those Big Ten opponents do nothing for our OOC at the end of the day, and this year's team should be just fine (we hope)."
Obviously B10 games in December don't do anything for our OOC SOS. That was not mine - or others - point. What is DOES do is make for an extremely challenging stretch in November and early December - tougher than any Gopher team in recent memory has faced in the opening months of the year. The staff would be silly not to give the team a bit of a breather before we head into the bulk of the conference schedule.
2016 Wisconsin is NOT a valid comparison because they didn't have to play two B10 games in the middle of Creighton, North Carolina and Syracuse. That anomaly changes everything and the Gophers' staff clearly adjusted accordingly.
Obviously B10 games in December don't do anything for our OOC SOS. That was not mine - or others - point. What is DOES do is make for an extremely challenging stretch in November and early December - tougher than any Gopher team in recent memory has faced in the opening months of the year. The staff would be silly not to give the team a bit of a breather before we head into the bulk of the conference schedule.
2016 Wisconsin is NOT a valid comparison because they didn't have to play two B10 games in the middle of Creighton, North Carolina and Syracuse. That anomaly changes everything and the Gophers' staff clearly adjusted accordingly.
I think part of it might have been their losing streak at the end of the season.
Some of that was avoidable though. It's not like the B1G all of a sudden sprung the early conference games on everyone. We've know about this for a while, well before this schedule was put together. We knew going in that we would have a pretty good B1G/ACC challenge opponent in late November and we knew about the two conference games Dec 1-4. We knew when the Barclay's Classic was scheduled to be played, could have pulled out of that to give us more schedule flexibility. Why agree to Dec 9 for the Arkansas game? Could have pushed that to later in December.
There were many ways to absorb those two early games and still build a good schedule. It's nonsense that two conference games that were made aware of well ahead of time had such a gigantic effect on our ability to schedule quality opponents.
WriterGoph
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How does the advance notice have anything to do with this? That's not the argument. I'm saying they made a cognizant choice to give the team an easier schedule after a stretch where they will play 6 Top 50-75 teams by December 9. Again, show me the last time the Gophers played that many tough games by early December. It hasn't happened.
It's not like they couldn't get better games on the schedule, but why make the first two months of the season suicidal?
GopherHoopsFan
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You're spot on. If this point isn't understood, it never will be. If the Gophers go undefeated in the non-conference this is all a moot point. If they go 2-2 then the negative Nancy's will be proved correct. Like others are saying, winning takes care of it all.
WriterGoph
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EXACTLY. Aren't we talking about this year's team competing for a B10 title? Who freaking cares where our automatic wins come from?!
You keep jumping around making different points and I can't keep track. I was more responding to your comments about B1G coaches complaints about the 2 games in December. My point is that coaches can still spread out their tougher games if they want to. I'm sure we could have found a date with Arkansas that worked between say, December 15-30, which would have spread out the tougher ones a little more. I agree that we made a choice to basically have all of our tough games in a row. That's fine, but my point is that it was a choice, it was not forced on us.
If Pitino wants to set up the schedule that way it's fine. And let's be fair here, it's not like the stretch in the early season is a murderer's row...there are some good teams in there, but they had all of 1 NCAA tournament win between them last year. It's really not that tough.
The reason I see most people complaining (and I agree with these people) is because the bottom is so bad. We play 8 teams that finished with losing records last year. Way too many. And almost all of those were in non-Power 6 conferences so it's not like they were getting beat by Duke/UNC/Virginia on a nightly basis. UMass is the only exception among the 8, and based on what they return they will probably be much worse this year than they were last year. I don't care about the lack of more than 1 quality OOC game at home and what I get in my season ticket package and all that, but this schedule is really weak. There is no other way to put it. Last year we played the RPI numbers game really well (and were rewarded for it) because we had very few RPI killers on our schedule. This year there are probably 3-6 RPI torpedoes on our schedule. That is disappointing to me, more so than a lack of quality home games or anything else.
Gophers7633
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I don't think it's fair to compare their early portion of the schedule this year to past years because there are two B1G games sandwiched in the middle. Even last year with the stretch of St. John's, Arkansas, Southern Illinois, @Florida State and vs. Vandy on a neutral is a pretty tough stretch. They really should have tried to do better than the 4th place team in the A-Sun, the 9th place team in the MAAC, the 9th place team in the So. Con, the 12th place team in the A-10, the worst team in the SWAC(and probably all of college basketball), the worst team in the Missouri Valley, the worst team in the Summit, and the 11th place team in CUSA. The 4 P6 teams that we play doesn't make up for the rest of this bad schedule IMO. It's not like we're playing a blue bloods, we're playing teams that are inconsistent in nature. I think 3/4 make the tournament, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if 1/4 made it.
Gophers7633
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We can absolutely compete for a B1G title this year, or we could just as easily finish 4th/5th(I think MSU, Purdue and Michigan could realistically be better than us). If the 2nd option happens and we don't take care of business in OOC(namely 1 loss) our seed is going to take a huge hit. I love the Gophers, but I don't think we're at a point as a program where going 14-4 or 15-3 in the B1G is going to happen. I'm just trying to be as realistic as possible with this OOC schedule and it's going to hurt us, is all.
Gophers7633
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Does anybody here think we can go 29-4 entering the NCAA tournament next year? That's what UCLA's record was and they were a 3 seed. And their OOC SoS last year will probably end up being better than what ours will be next year when it's all said and done.
WriterGoph
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I digress, fellas. It's been a good debate. I'm just more excited about our guys getting tested with some legit challenges away from home than I am concerned with the lower-end home games. I guess we will see how it plays out in a few months!