I think Maryland would be a potential roadblock as well....
Last year we upset Maryland, but doing so this year would be a lot more challenging since the game is at Maryland.
Don’t play them til the end of February. If it gets to that point, Maryland could be a roadblock to 27-0, not 19-0.
According to the Gamer algorithm, the Gophers will lose all their Big Ten road games except for the ones in Wisconsin and Northwestern. Even though it has been a small sample size, I think the Gophers have responded well in their road games so far.
The RealTimeRPI Gamer algorithm might be fairly well architected generally, but I believe it's a bit wack in terms of putting about twice as much emphasis as is deserved on the impact of being a home game on the win/loss result. I suspect they might just follow the home/away emphasis that the RPI metric itself places on home vs away, which I also deem to be an over-emphasis. Actually, let me revise that statement. I believe the RPI/Gamer emphasis on home advantage might be spot on for teams like Minnesota where there is a lot of fan loyalty and support and game attendance, such that playing at home is a non-trivial factor. But for the average NCAA WBB team, the impact of playing at home is less significant than the RPI/Gamer math makes it out to be. So that asymmetry is actually advantageous to the Gophers (and Gopher WBB thanks you for that, fellow Gopher fans).
Employing that asymetry as a core assumption, Let's make a (very ball-park-ish but a starting point) guestimate of what the pre-tournament record "could be" (barring losing games that we should win, or further injury). We'll do what I'll call an optimistic/pessimisstic estimate - namely optimistic about games we think we ought to win, and pessimistic about games that we're somewhat worried about. The specific assumptions for this guestimate will be:
(1) Assume we do due diligence this weekend and complete our win-out of the non-B1G pre-season by defeating Rhode Island.
(2) Optimistically assume (as Gamer does as well) that we'll win all games against bottom-dwelling and middle-dwelling B1G teams (the ones we think we should be able to beat handily, unless we choke or don't close out).
(3) Pessimistically assume that we will lose most of the games against teams that we're worried about. In that set I'll include {Maryland (away), Iowa (home), Michigan (away), Michigan State (home and away)}. By "most" and "pessimistically" I mean to assume that we'll split the home-and-away series with Michigan State, but lose the other 3 challenging games.
These optimistic/pessimistic assumptions imply a 25-4 record in the full regular season. Of course, there's always the possibility that we might upset one of the teams that we're worried about. And on the flip side we might mess up and lose some game(s) that we're optimistically hoping to win. Or perhaps both.
Bottom line, a 25-4 season is a good target that the Lady Gophers should aim to beat, via great playing and great coaching. It would certainly get us into the NCAA playoffs, unless the NCAA committee is insane (something that I wouldn't count out, given our insanely poor strength of schedule at end of season, as estimated by RealTimeRPI).
By the way, if we get even close to the above target record, the only way that the NCAA committee would cross us off the Big Dance list would be if there were too many other B1G teams with higher RPIs, and they had a target number of B1G teams in mind for inclusion, and they gave way too much emphasis on RPI versus win/loss record within the B1G league. If that should happen, it would be a rotten shame, since RPI is a corrupt measure of teams' basketball capability and achievements during a given season.
Look at the RPIs as of Monday (yesterday, 12/17) as just noted in this thread, focusing initially just on B1G teams. Within the B1G, Indiana comes in at the top spot with a #16 ranked RPI and an SoS of 172. It's undefeated at that point just like Minnesota, and it does have an SoS that's 104 ranks better than Minnesota - yet it didn't get a single vote in the AP top-25 poll. It's highly improbable that Indiana will finish better than Minnesota, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan State and Michigan in the B1G. This is exemplary of how meaningless the RPI metric is, especially during the pre-season.
On the other hand, Iowa is one rank lower than Indiana at #17 with SoS = 39 and record of 8-2. And Iowa is decently ranked in the API poll, and we think legitimately so. Iowa ends up with a decent RPI via having a poorer record, but against a much stronger set of opponents. In other words there's two basic ways a team can get a good-looking RPI: (a) either have a perfect or nearly perfect won/loss record (even against fairly weak teams); or (b) have a decent (but not perfect) won/loss record against a tough set of opponent teams; or (c) some combination of the two.
Method (c) is currently exemplified by Northwestern, who has an OK but not-so-good record of 5-3, but against a set of opponents who collectively give it a current SoS of 85, which is good but not as impressive as Iowa's opponents. Both Minnesota and Maryland are good examples of (a) with both teams undefeated at 10-0 but with horrible SoS of 276, giving them RPI ranks of #32 and #41 respectively at the moment. And of course, being early in the season, the relatively meaningless RPIs are even more meaningless since they don't reflect either the game results or impact on SoS of playing their league opponents.
Interestingly, if you look at the entire RPI list as of Monday, Minnesota and Wisconsin Green Bay are neck-and-neck in RPI rating and ranking. But Minnesota gets there entirely by method (a) whereas Green Bay gets there entirely by method (b). The Gophers are undefeated against mostly weak opponents; whereas Green Bay has a nearly 50/50 win/loss record against very strong opponents. So who's to say which team is better, Minnesota or Green Bay. Last year that was determined in round one of the playoffs.
Bottom line is that a highly ranked RPI means: either you're a good team, or else maybe you just played a bunch of good teams, or maybe a bit of each. But contains no information about which of the three holds true.
So as we see the Gopher RPI rise in spite of continued winning, we should not worry too much about that; but just hope that the NCAA committee doesn't put too much stock in RPI either (as they shouldn't since it's a largely meaningless joke of a metric). Fortunately they have a resume sheet for each team being evaluated for the playoff, so in principle that resume should count more than RPI.