Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Schedules and such
The PL went ahead and released their "prospectus" on the upcoming season, and there are a couple of interesting things in it:
1. They moved the league final. This is good.
2. They released every teams' schedule. This is good, because now I have something to write about. Here goes!
First, let's talk about the final. It was moved to noon on selection Sunday, on ESPN2. This is good, because, as I noted below, four of the teams in the league would be on spring break during the previous final-- usually it was the last friday of break. Now it's two days later. It's a lot easier to get kids back at noon the day before school begins again than it is to get them back at 4, missing two days of potential sun and suds.
Is someone out there in the league brass listening? I doubt it, but I'm happy about the change regardless.
Now to the schedules.
The short is this: Five teams are pretty close in scheduling. Army has a terrible, awful, amazingly bad schedule that will do a good job of hurting the rest of the league's chances at a bid in any post-season play. Everyone else is mostly in between.
The average RPI of the OOC teams for each school is as follows (this does not include tourney foes, so things will change, probably improving HC, Bucknell and AU):
HC - 157
Navy- 170
Lafayette - 176
Bucknell - 179
AU - 180
Colgate - 217
Lehigh - 220
Army - 256
As a comparison, here's the Strength of Schedule for all the teams last year:
206. American
227. Holy Cross
241. Navy
259. Bucknell
267. Lafayette
277. Army
285. Colgate
309. Lehigh
They're fairly similar, with AU taking a step down, and LC a step up. Note that the numbers on both are not compatible -- the way RPI figures out strength of schedule in the regular season is different than the way I did for the pre-season.
Pay for play/ guarantee games are:
American at Maryland and Notre Dame
Army at Connecticut
Bucknell at Mich State & Penn State (could end up backfiring on the terrible Nittany Lions)
Colgate at Syracuse
HC at Louisville
Lafayette at SoCal
Lehigh at UConn
Navy at South Carolina
Are any of these winnable? Probably not. HC will play Louisville well, but they've lost a lot of size, and that isn't good when playing major conferences. AU could get within 20 against UMD, or closer, since they have only one starter, a sophomore, returning. In all likelihood, however, none of these will be pretty. It would be amazing, however, for everyone if any of these teams got knocked off.
Those are the top games, here's the bottom of the barrel:
AU plays UNC-Greensboro - RPI of 289 and Mt Saint Marys - 281. Greensboro was actually in the tourney 2 years ago, apparently they didn't fare so well last year.
Army plays no one good. Outside of the beating they're going to recieve from UConn, the best team they play is St. Francis NY. They can't even play the better of the two St. Francises. They're playing THREE non-DI teams. The paper up there, in an unusually critically toned article, points their level of suck out. The Jim Crews crew is in trouble. I guess they just want to get some wins on the board?
Bucknell is playing Robert Morris (no relation to Philip Morris). They're ranked 287 in the RPI. They also have 2 DIII teams at home. That new arena sure is a big draw for opposing teams, isn't it?
Colgate plays Albany, Long Beach, and Buffalo, all of who suck nearly equally, around 300 RPI. They are also playing Hobart (D3) and a team that seems to have been organized by a friendly Mexican woman named Juniata.
HC is playing Fordham (good riddance), who finished with a 282 RPI, and Dartmouth, which finished around 291. Harvard was also not as good as their record made them out to be-- I don't expect them to be as good this year. But overall, HC clearly has the strongest schedule.
LC is playing the bottom of the Ivy bin, Cornell and Columbia, as well as two non D-I programs.
LU draws Albany, Cornell, and Columbia, as well as powerhouses Swathmore and Delaware Valley.
Navy plays Loyola (306) and Mt. St. Mary's (281).
****
So, the schedules have highlights and lowlights. Overall though, it's nice to see a good mid-majors in here, like Ohio, BU and BC, Delaware, Pepperdine, Niagara, Penn, Drexel, Rice and Iona. Good job, everyone but Army!
Next: Thoughts on league schedules... @ 9:08 AM 0 HC Alums are angry about this post | Bitch about it on the PL hoops messageboard
The PL went ahead and released their "prospectus" on the upcoming season, and there are a couple of interesting things in it:
1. They moved the league final. This is good.
2. They released every teams' schedule. This is good, because now I have something to write about. Here goes!
First, let's talk about the final. It was moved to noon on selection Sunday, on ESPN2. This is good, because, as I noted below, four of the teams in the league would be on spring break during the previous final-- usually it was the last friday of break. Now it's two days later. It's a lot easier to get kids back at noon the day before school begins again than it is to get them back at 4, missing two days of potential sun and suds.
Is someone out there in the league brass listening? I doubt it, but I'm happy about the change regardless.
Now to the schedules.
The short is this: Five teams are pretty close in scheduling. Army has a terrible, awful, amazingly bad schedule that will do a good job of hurting the rest of the league's chances at a bid in any post-season play. Everyone else is mostly in between.
The average RPI of the OOC teams for each school is as follows (this does not include tourney foes, so things will change, probably improving HC, Bucknell and AU):
HC - 157
Navy- 170
Lafayette - 176
Bucknell - 179
AU - 180
Colgate - 217
Lehigh - 220
Army - 256
As a comparison, here's the Strength of Schedule for all the teams last year:
206. American
227. Holy Cross
241. Navy
259. Bucknell
267. Lafayette
277. Army
285. Colgate
309. Lehigh
They're fairly similar, with AU taking a step down, and LC a step up. Note that the numbers on both are not compatible -- the way RPI figures out strength of schedule in the regular season is different than the way I did for the pre-season.
Pay for play/ guarantee games are:
American at Maryland and Notre Dame
Army at Connecticut
Bucknell at Mich State & Penn State (could end up backfiring on the terrible Nittany Lions)
Colgate at Syracuse
HC at Louisville
Lafayette at SoCal
Lehigh at UConn
Navy at South Carolina
Are any of these winnable? Probably not. HC will play Louisville well, but they've lost a lot of size, and that isn't good when playing major conferences. AU could get within 20 against UMD, or closer, since they have only one starter, a sophomore, returning. In all likelihood, however, none of these will be pretty. It would be amazing, however, for everyone if any of these teams got knocked off.
Those are the top games, here's the bottom of the barrel:
AU plays UNC-Greensboro - RPI of 289 and Mt Saint Marys - 281. Greensboro was actually in the tourney 2 years ago, apparently they didn't fare so well last year.
Army plays no one good. Outside of the beating they're going to recieve from UConn, the best team they play is St. Francis NY. They can't even play the better of the two St. Francises. They're playing THREE non-DI teams. The paper up there, in an unusually critically toned article, points their level of suck out. The Jim Crews crew is in trouble. I guess they just want to get some wins on the board?
Bucknell is playing Robert Morris (no relation to Philip Morris). They're ranked 287 in the RPI. They also have 2 DIII teams at home. That new arena sure is a big draw for opposing teams, isn't it?
Colgate plays Albany, Long Beach, and Buffalo, all of who suck nearly equally, around 300 RPI. They are also playing Hobart (D3) and a team that seems to have been organized by a friendly Mexican woman named Juniata.
HC is playing Fordham (good riddance), who finished with a 282 RPI, and Dartmouth, which finished around 291. Harvard was also not as good as their record made them out to be-- I don't expect them to be as good this year. But overall, HC clearly has the strongest schedule.
LC is playing the bottom of the Ivy bin, Cornell and Columbia, as well as two non D-I programs.
LU draws Albany, Cornell, and Columbia, as well as powerhouses Swathmore and Delaware Valley.
Navy plays Loyola (306) and Mt. St. Mary's (281).
****
So, the schedules have highlights and lowlights. Overall though, it's nice to see a good mid-majors in here, like Ohio, BU and BC, Delaware, Pepperdine, Niagara, Penn, Drexel, Rice and Iona. Good job, everyone but Army!
Next: Thoughts on league schedules... @ 9:08 AM 0 HC Alums are angry about this post | Bitch about it on the PL hoops messageboard
