How our non-conf opponents have done

Yeah, Stanford and Tulane were a couple of the big ones. Tulane was 11-0 or whatever, but they had the worst schedules in the country. Total paper tiger.

I feel like people were saying Stanford was going to win the league for no other reason than
A) They played us close
B) they played us, so of course they were underrated. It's kind of funny, I am pretty sure if Stanford had played Kentucky close, instead of the refrain being how Stanford was going to win the league, it would've been about how overrated UK was.

People really wanted to think that Stanford was good. After all, without a spectacular final five minutes by Syracuse, they'd have given us our first loss. If that'd happened, who knows where we'd be right now.

I get blasted for saying our schedule is an embarrassment more often than not.

and rightly so, if that was the term you used.

SU's schedule is weaker than it appears on paper, and the strong RPI is a function of knowing how to game the system; those points are correct . Could the schedule have been stronger? Certainly. . . . but it's not an embarrassment. Cincinnati's schedule, for example, is an embarrassment. Syracuse's scheduling was more like a shell game.

No doubt that Cincy and others play lousy schedules. But those are usually not the teams we aspire to compete against at the beginning of each year. Compared to the traditional powerhouses, we typically fall short (2008-09 being a notable exception) and the system gaming is nothing but lipstick on a pig. Fortunately for the last few years we have not needed any benefit of the doubt due to in-conference superiority.

I think we are largely in agreement here about the smoke-and-mirrors approach that JB has taken to scheduling - subsitute teams ranked in the 100s for those in the 200s and teams in the 200s for those in the 300s (playing all of them at home); sprinkle in a few neutral court games against mid-pack teams from the Big 6, one road game against another mid-pack Big 6 team and maybe one team you think will be good and you might have a chance of losing to and, voila, you have a top 30 SOS. It's worked for 6 years in a row now.

My only exception is that I wouldn't call the schedule "embarrassing." I would use "disappointing," but maybe that is just semantics.

Why not "almost perfect"?

Early season you play teams that can make you work to win. Few default blow-outs. You play some teams that will beat you if you don't play well. In both cases you can see your weaknesses. You ease your way into a hellish conference schedule (most years).

The only thing lacking in my mind are away games. They wouldn't have to be against very good teams even. A few more like NCState would be fine.

I don't think this is gaming the RPI. It's setting up your schedule to increase your chances of peaking at the right time.

as did i... as well as getting blasted for calling UCONN an obvious choice for overrated team of the year.

I think the # of road games is embarrassing, disappointing, whatever you want to call it.

Speaking of Eastern Michigan, has anyone caught a glimpse of DaShonte Riley? Only shooting 37% from the field and averaging 4.2 points, 4.4 reb, 1.5 blocks per game while averaging 24 minutes. Not great considering the level of competitive and playing in a system that should be somewhat similar to the one he played in last year. I was kind of hoping he would be granted a waiver and would have to redshirt this year because I thought he could become a decent player but had a long road in front of him. A 7 footer that maybe just isnt very passionate about basketball.

in those six years we've played Florida three times, Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina and Michigan State. And we beat all of them. (We also played Ohio State- you can't win 'em all.)

Good analysis, was wondering about this myself. I think the wins over Florida and NC State were impressive no matter how you slice it, and enough to hang our hats on. But just like the conference schedule, the non-conference schedule wasn't as strong as it looked on paper, which might be one of the reasons fans are concerned right now.

I will say this. The Bernie Fine situation was a major distraction at the beginning of the season, but these kids didn't let the pressure get to them. Maybe that's a reason to have faith as they continue to win ugly, because nothing seems to faze them.

I would rather play UK than Mizzou or Michigan State. I think the Spartans would miss the first shot on every possession, then get an offensive rebound (or two or three) and score. They would probably set a record for offensive boards. Mizzou has enough shooters to cause problems, plus a solid post scorer. Defensively, I think they would give our guards (and Joseph) fits, and I don't think our inside game is strong enough to exploit the size advantage. I doubt our press would be effective against them if we needed it.

As for Kentucky, I think they're too young and inexperienced to handle our zone. Calipari isn't a great tournament coach. His best job was probably last year, when expectations were low.

I'm not sure this is fair. He's been to the elite 8 5 times in the last 6 years.

Aside from last year and the vacated season, weren't all the losses to higher seeds?

2006: #1 seed, lost to a 2 seed
2007: #2 seed, lost to 1 seed
2008: #1 seed, lost in the finals
2009: #2 seed, lost to a 3 seed
2010: #1 seed, lost to a 1 seed
2011: #4 seed, lost to a 3 seed

Twice they lost to a lower seed, and both times it was to a team 1 seed line worse than them. (in 2006, for example, they lost to second seeded UCLA in Oakland. I bet UCLA was a favorite in that game). They don't have anything in there like losing as a 3 to an 11, or as a 5 to a 12, or as a 4 to a 13, or as a 5 to an 8.

I dunno, the guy looks like a pretty good coach, tournament and regular season, to me. (Just to avoid a debate about vacated wins, etc, I'll amend to say he has a lot of success in both the tournament and the regular season).

Also; just using the losing to a lower seed method of evaluation seems a bit unfair to the coaches who are great during the regular season.

Using the Performance against Seed expectation numbers, over the last 6 years, Calipari was "expected" to win 16.46 games. He has won 20.

I didn't say anything about the regular season. He's an outstanding regular season coach. He's also an outstanding coach with new personnel, whether it be a job change or freshman class.

2006: They played Oral Roberts, Bucknell and Bradley before UCLA. Easy road.
2007: Blown out by Ohio St.
2008: Vacated.
2009: Sweet 16 loss to Mizzou was considered an upset. They had 27 straight wins heading into that game and Mizzou was overseeded a bit after winning the Big 12 Tourney.
2010: West Virginia was a #2 seed.
2011: Like I said, that season might have been his best tourney-wise.

You might want to check out his tournament record with UMass. It's not pretty. And don't forget that 1996 doesn't count.

I read an interview with Juli B. (can't remember where) and she mentioned that she was excited to go back to Maui for the Classic in 2013.

If you don't want to count the vacated years, then whatever, his record looks a lot worse. Where are all the coaches who consistently outperform their seed more than Calipari?

Why would I count the vacated years? He was cheating.

Have we established that Calipari consistently outperforms his seed? I would say we've established the opposite. And we're not talking about other coaches.