Big East Scheduling Debate

ADORAZ

ADORAZ

Well-known member
2023 $upporter
SJU61982 said:
www.cbssports.com

ACC considering reducing conference basketball schedule to help boost the league's NCAA Tournament profile

The ACC may move from 20 to 18 conference games next season to play more marquee nonconference matchups
www.cbssports.com www.cbssports.com
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Wow that's crazy since the original reason for going to 20 was the opposite. Good news for the Johnnies and Big East if they go to 18, as that should mean more games vs. regional Big East rivals. We lost Duke on our schedule in part due to them going to 20 games, so with an 18 game schedule Pitino may be able to schedule whichever ACC team(s) he wants going forward.
 
ADORAZ said:
Wow that's crazy since the original reason for going to 20 was the opposite. Good news for the Johnnies and Big East if they go to 18, as that should mean more games vs. regional Big East rivals. We lost Duke on our schedule in part due to them going to 20 games, so with an 18 game schedule Pitino may be able to schedule whichever ACC team(s) he wants going forward.
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The Big East still plays 20 games and I don’t see them reducing to 18 as with playing 20 games, everyone gets a home and away game against the other teams in the conference. The ACC has too many teams (18) to do home and home against everyone so it just means one home and home game instead of three.
 
espken said:
I would propose the Big East to cut down to 16 league games. Play 6 teams twice and 4 once. Leaves 4 more OOC games to strengthen resumes.
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The double round robin at 20 games is great and would hate to lose that, plus I think most teams BE teams would struggle to fill 2, let alone 4 additional OOC games with high majors. The BE can't even get a Power conference challenge these days, we'd be replacing BE vs. BE games with a lot of mid-major opponents. Not good for our TV contract or SOS.

The Big East hasn't had the same problem as the ACC because we don't have nearly as many terrible teams dragging the conference down. This year we had 3 projected Tournament teams at the end of OOC play but 5 got in by the end of BE play, so 20 games was beneficial.
 
For middle of pack teams, like we were two years ago, wins against quarter bottom of league were not really beneficial. Same for Nova last year. Conference challenges diminished by expansion, but still rather schedule P4’s than sweeping the DePauls of the world.
 
espken said:
For middle of pack teams, like we were two years ago, wins against quarter bottom of league were not really beneficial. Same for Nova last year. Conference challenges diminished by expansion, but still rather schedule P4’s than sweeping the DePauls of the world.
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Villanova's issue this past year was they went 7-4 OOC with losses to Columbia, Virginia, and St. Joe's. The 20 game BE schedule helped to offset their awful OOC resume. This is the opposite problem that a lot of ACC schools had where they lost to terrible ACC teams. 9 ACC teams had a NET outside of the top 100, compared to just 2 for the Big East.

I think 16 could potentially help St. John's and maybe one or two other BE teams like UConn, but even with Pitino we've seen him struggle to schedule the teams he really wants. This is now the third schedule he's putting together, and while it's great, he hasn't been able to get Duke, Alabama, or Kentucky games finalized despite hyping them up.

If other conferences like the Big Ten start to reduce their number of games too, opening up more potential OOC inventory, then the BE may consider it. As of now though this is just the ACC addressing an ACC problem.
 
ADORAZ said:
Villanova's issue this past year was they went 7-4 OOC with losses to Columbia, Virginia, and St. Joe's. The 20 game BE schedule helped to offset their awful OOC resume. This is the opposite problem that a lot of ACC schools had where they lost to terrible ACC teams. 9 ACC teams had a NET outside of the top 100, compared to just 2 for the Big East.

I think 16 could potentially help St. John's and maybe one or two other BE teams like UConn, but even with Pitino we've seen him struggle to schedule the teams he really wants. This is now the third schedule he's putting together, and while it's great, he hasn't been able to get Duke, Alabama, or Kentucky games finalized despite hyping them up.

If other conferences like the Big Ten start to reduce their number of games too, opening up more potential OOC inventory, then the BE may consider it. As of now though this is just the ACC addressing an ACC problem.
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Fair points, I’m just not crazy about playing 65% of our regular season against conference foes. Not including a conference tournament after that. Would rather play more teams from power conferences to help prepare for the rigors of March.
 
espken said:
Fair points, I’m just not crazy about playing 65% of our regular season against conference foes. Not including a conference tournament after that. Would rather play more teams from power conferences to help prepare for the rigors of March.
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Yeah I agree more varied opponents would help the Johnnies in down years (like this past one), but BE teams have won NCAAT titles 4 of the past 9 seasons so that hasn't been an issue overall. I think this past year was more of an outlier and I expect the BE to rebound next year.

With the ACC potentially increasing their OOC games I'm hoping the ACC and Big East can schedule a challenge. Both could really benefit from it, especially with a lot of teams being regional rivals.
 
Power teams are very choosy about who they schedule. Duke and North Carolina run the ACC and this move helps placate them on the basketball side as the latest additions were totally made for football. This will help them as OOC they can practically schedule whoever they want. I don’t think this will help a school like SMU who have zero basketball brand and generate no national interest. I also don’t think the ACC cares about them.

Overall the idea of “let’s just schedule bigger and better programs” tends to leave out an important fact. It takes two to tango. The Big East has programs like Butler and Seton Hall who are irrelevant outside their zip code even when their teams are not bad. They will always find OOC scheduling challenging.

What’s best for some conference members can hurt others. Not easy to navigate for conferences not named the SEC or B10.
 
ADORAZ said:
Yeah I agree more varied opponents would help the Johnnies in down years (like this past one), but BE teams have won NCAAT titles 4 of the past 9 seasons so that hasn't been an issue overall. I think this past year was more of an outlier and I expect the BE to rebound next year.

With the ACC potentially increasing their OOC games I'm hoping the ACC and Big East can schedule a challenge. Both could really benefit from it, especially with a lot of teams being regional rivals.
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I would wait - with the way things are going and the astronomical rise in the amounts of money involved, I can see an increase in the number of games permitted and more mega in-season tournaments. I would also predict "midnight madness" starting on Halloween.
 
Since we are on the topic of scheduling, I wanted to throw out this idea I have had for scheduling that I wish college basketball would adopt.

This would probably be hard to pull off logistically, but I have had a couple conversations with a friend of mine who questioned why the SEC got so much love from the committee this year. My answer was simple, they had 4-5 of the best teams in the country, and as a conference they dominated everyone else in non conference. The committee can only really make judgements off of non conference play when weighing which conferences are better, because then all teams go to play within their own conference.

My friend's reply was that he finds this to be somewhat unfair because of the portal era, teams early in the year are just beginning to gel, chemistry is building, so using the non conference portion of the schedule to determine conference strength may be flawed.

While I don't think the system is perfect, it works well enough (I don't think anyone can disagree the SEC had a hell of a year and deserved a good amount of those bids) - but I would love to see some kind of system where during conference play - there are flexed marquee "Non conference" games that occur periodically throughout January/Feb/Early March.

My thought would be, you let teams play in conference, but have a designated Saturday about 1/3rd into conference play, where maybe the top half of Big East teams in the standings take on... say the top batch of teams in the Big Ten. And the top half teams in the SEC take on the top Big 12. And every few weeks, there are another one of these designated saturdays where the conferences rotate and play each other.

To me it would give the committee a more well rounded view of how to weigh these conferences against each other when selecting the teams for the dance. Probably would never happen, but thought I'd throw it out there
 
Jack Williams said:
My thought would be, you let teams play in conference, but have a designated Saturday about 1/3rd into conference play, where maybe the top half of Big East teams in the standings take on... say the top batch of teams in the Big Ten. And the top half teams in the SEC take on the top Big 12. And every few weeks, there are another one of these designated saturdays where the conferences rotate and play each other.
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ESPN used to do "Bracket Buster" Saturday between mid-low majors... highlight those type of teams with a key timeslot on ESPN...

But i like this idea... the current timing of schedule is really a crapshoot. Look at our potential this year... seemingly studly/talented lineup.... that just might* not be clickin come Vegas....

This would need to be an "NIL" event to get the HM teams to Buy-in... Would be a Hell of a draw on a Saturday at MSG... quadruple header - top 4 in the BE vs top 4 in SEC.... get COhen and DOlan on the line! have one of those Giant Glass balls with cash (ala Squid Games) hanging above center court lol
 
Jack Williams said:
Since we are on the topic of scheduling, I wanted to throw out this idea I have had for scheduling that I wish college basketball would adopt.

This would probably be hard to pull off logistically, but I have had a couple conversations with a friend of mine who questioned why the SEC got so much love from the committee this year. My answer was simple, they had 4-5 of the best teams in the country, and as a conference they dominated everyone else in non conference. The committee can only really make judgements off of non conference play when weighing which conferences are better, because then all teams go to play within their own conference.

My friend's reply was that he finds this to be somewhat unfair because of the portal era, teams early in the year are just beginning to gel, chemistry is building, so using the non conference portion of the schedule to determine conference strength may be flawed.

While I don't think the system is perfect, it works well enough (I don't think anyone can disagree the SEC had a hell of a year and deserved a good amount of those bids) - but I would love to see some kind of system where during conference play - there are flexed marquee "Non conference" games that occur periodically throughout January/Feb/Early March.

My thought would be, you let teams play in conference, but have a designated Saturday about 1/3rd into conference play, where maybe the top half of Big East teams in the standings take on... say the top batch of teams in the Big Ten. And the top half teams in the SEC take on the top Big 12. And every few weeks, there are another one of these designated saturdays where the conferences rotate and play each other.

To me it would give the committee a more well rounded view of how to weigh these conferences against each other when selecting the teams for the dance. Probably would never happen, but thought I'd throw it out there
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There needs to be OOC games in February. That is crystal clear now more than ever.
 
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