Bradley

http://www.bradleybraves.com/SportSelec ... PSID=19332

Evansville (added 9/3/2013)

http://www.gopurpleaces.com/schedule.as ... asketball2

Illinois State (added 8/29/13)

http://www.goredbirds.com/sports/m-bask ... sched.html

Indiana State

http://www.gosycamores.com/SportSelect. ... PSID=65150

Northern Iowa (added 8/29/13)

http://www.unipanthers.com/SportSelect. ... SID=626930

Well, these two incomplete to be sure schedules do NOT look as formidable as I have been led to believe MVC schedules are. Too early to critique --but so far , not too much different than ours.

The key to scheduling in this league is to try and get a few games against top 100/50 schools that you feel you could beat and try not to schedule anyone in the RPI 250+ and really try to keep as many as possible under 200. Once the scheduling mandate is in full effect, which I think happens next season, I believe the noncon SOS for each team is supposed to be less than 150 or there's some financial penalty. That's how it was last time it was in effect anyway. You guys may get an extra year to adapt your schedule accordingly.

I believe WSU is still looking for one game, but as it is now, we have home games against
Charleston Southern (190)
Western Kentucky (150)
Oral Roberts (151)
Buffalo (part of the MTE) (217)
Davidson (61)
Tennessee (59)

AWAY
Tulsa (128)
Alabama (60)
St. Louis (16)

Neutral
DePaul (204)
Texas (116)/BYU (63)

Bradley HOME
Jacksonville State (142)
Alabama State (328)
Central Michigan (266)
Chicago State (320)
TX-Pan Am (306)
IUPUI (326)
IPFW (254)
South Florida (156)

AWAY
Illinois (40)
Arizona State (89)
Milwaukee (307)

Neutral
Pacific (97)
Portland (232)

Indiana State HOME
Ball State (233)
IUPUI (326)
Belmont (19)

AWAY
Belmont (19)
Notre Dame (35)
Eastern Illinois (276)
UMKC (284)
St. Louis (16)

Neutral
Tulsa (128)
TCU (238)/Alaska Anchorage (NA)
Pepperdine (212)/Green Bay (160)/Denver (66)/Harvard (92)

ISU looks OK. AVG RPI from last year for H/A games is 151. Not great, but not horrid. Say they beat Tulsa, play TCU and then Denver and it only moves to 149. ISUb needs to win most of these games to have a good shot at an at-large.

BU on the other hand could have scheduled better. RPI average for their games is 220.23... For a team that could very well be in the upper half of the MVC and as high as 2nd or 3rd, this is a horrid schedule. Very disappointed in Ford and the Toasters.

WSU, to date, a H/A RPI of 114.67. Add the neutral games against DePaul and say BYU and it becomes 118.

For reference, Loyola last year had
Toledo (194)
W. Michigan (129)
S, Florida (156)
MDES (345)
NIU (333)
Tenn Tech (243)
Furman (343)
Michigan St (9)
Miss St. (230)
St. Peters (290)
DePaul (204)
Kent St. (132)

Average is 217.33. While that is better than what Bradley's numbers show right now, it's not where either need to be long term as there's almost no way to get an at large bid with either schedule unless you pretty much win them all AND don't lose any games to the lesser teams in conference while picking up some big wins against the top team or two. Very little margin for error.

And since I like numbers so much, here are the SOS ranks from last year for the MVC and Loyola.

Creighton - 82
Wichita - 91
ISUb - 50
UNI - 46
Evansville - 102
ISU - 113
Drake - 85
Bradley - 177
SIU - 148
MSU - 181

Loyola - 264

There's a difference between RPI and SOS, but the better the noncon RPIs, the stronger your SOS is going to be as well. If the likes of ISUb and UNI would have won more of their noncon games, we send more than just CU and WSU to the tournament. And it's these SOS numbers that come into play with the scheduling mandate. I do believe the numbers I pulled are for the entire season, and not just noncon, but I think it still helps to some degree.

While Bradley seems to have failed this coming season in scheduling up, I can give them and MSU a bit of a pass last year as both were early in rebuilding mode. MSU should schedule up next year for sure as Lusk gets more of his pieces in place and I've already said that BU should have done so this year and better next. ISU from what I've seen should have scheduled a bit easier this year considering all the new faces, but it seems as if Muller wants to keep a strong schedule in place no matter what. Hopefully next year will be as good as this coming year.

I didn't mean to make the post this long. Forgive me.

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The Roundhouse

There is no need to seek forgiveness for your post, SubGod, it was quite informative. My only question - why is BU called the Toasters?

On a related note (from one of your Shockernet posts) - between DU and SIU, who are the Pups and who are the Uglies? I am slowly learning the unique dialect of the MVC. This upcoming year is going to be a blast.

Fair enough.

Bradley = Toasters - Their Braves mascot was done away with for PC reasons and at one point they were doing some sort of voting with students, or at least it was rumored they were, to come up with a new mascot/logo/whatever. I don't think anything ever came of it, but some of us on ShockerNet startered calling them the Toasters in honor of this classic!

Drake will sometimes be called Pups and other times Geese.

SIU is sometimes called the Uglies because a Saluki is in fact an ugly ass dog.

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The Roundhouse

Hell, and while I'm at it.

Evanville = Pimps - Their mascot does in fact dress like one.
ISUb = Trees - Due to more PC crap, the Sycamores no longer embrace the natives.
ISU = Nothing special. Just 'Birds or Redbirds. Some will label them ISUr or IlSU to distinguish from the other ISU.
MSU = Bares or sometimes SWOMO in honor of their former name, Southwest Missouri.

I think that covers most of the terms we use. I don't know if there are other terms for us anymore as I don't go over to MVC fans where most of that would take place.

Saint Louis is sometimes simply called The Lou/Loo.

And the 9 teams not based in Wichita are called the inferior few

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The Roundhouse

You don't expect Mississippi State to have an RPI worse than 200, let alone 230. In 2011-12 (when we scheduled them to play) their RPI was 73.

Although NIU has been in the 300s for a while, you kinda expect them to be around 260, not 333rd out of 347.

Furman was at 109 in 2010-11 (which I believe is when we scheduled them for a home and home). They fell to 232 in 2011-12, and to 4th from rock bottom last year.

Maryland-Eastern Shore was part of a MTE with South Florida and Western Michigan.

St. Peter's was a Bracket Buster return game from when they had a 106 RPI in 2010-11.

That's how we ended up with such a crappy schedule last year. The good news was we beat a Big East team (on the road) and an SEC team at home-- the bad news was it happened to be DePaul and Mississippi State.

Very fair points. That's one of the tough things about scheduling some of these teams is you have to guess which ones you think will be good enough not to kill your RPI/SOS. That's one reason it's not entirely easy to guess unless you know the make up of their rosters. Do they have a lot of SRs? If they do, don't schedule H/H unless there's young talent. It's one reason that when I have spare time I like to look back 5 or 6 years on some teams and try and see their trends.

And I didn't mean to slight you guys in any way as I don't know all that surrounds the scheduling with BB and MTEs and whatever. Just a quick look at things with some numbers I found.

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The Roundhouse

Slight away! Our schedule has sucked. No one likes it. As 63 said, there are some reasons for it, but it's time for a change.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Added Northern Iowa and Illinois State non-con schedules to the first post in this thread.