Non-Conference SOS

[RandygoCuse]

I've never felt SOS should be taken into account. Whether you win or lose, absolutely. But I don't think teams should be rewarded simply for playing tough schedules. I'm confident I could play or coach the toughest schedule in the country and lose every game.

 

[bpo57]

I do think it has value, especially when judging teams on the bubble.

Although the schedules are very different for the teams that make the tournament it does give an indication of how you did when you faced the best teams in your conference and the country.

I hear ya as long as you carefully analyze the results and don't just look at the winning percentages.

 

[bpo57]

USC performed better than SU OOC, no question. In conference they went 1-5 vs the top 3 in the Pac12 during the regular season, SU went 1-3 vs the top 3 in the ACC (UNC, Duke, Lou). Considering the strength of the ACC I think 10-8 SU is better than 10-8 USC. I know USC had to play more bad teams in the Pac12 and couldn't prove themselves vs better competition but that's the way it is.

SU had a better record vs the field, I know there are reasons for this and that SU has a built-in advantage playing in the ACC but it's still a fact. SU beat the ACC conference champion and what should've been a #1 seed but the Committee botched that too giving it to UNC instead because it was all decided before the ACCT was held. Considering SU's top 50 record and beating 3 top 10 teams ( ) I'm going to put more weight on the positives than the negatives.

If it were just conference to conference comparison I could see giving the nod to SU over USC. But there were a lot of games played prior to the conference schedule and SU had some horrific losses that were difficult to overlook.

 

[Alsacs]

All we have to do is avoid playing RPI teams that 200+ plus.
Pitt has games the RPI without playing road games by just playing decent teams at home and not garbage teams.

Colgate and Cornell have been garbage.
SC State was garbage.
We need to schedule better tomato cans.

 

[Knicks411]

I've never felt SOS should be taken into account. Whether you win or lose, absolutely. But I don't think teams should be rewarded simply for playing tough schedules. I'm confident I could play or coach the toughest schedule in the country and lose every game.

Well then you wouldn't have to worry about making the tournament, would you?

Here's a problem I have, I don't like it whenever you see a bracketology guy say something like "team x won 20 games against a top y ranked schedule). You can theoretically play a few elite teams on the road, lose to them, and then beat a bunch of poor teams at home, and have a decent SOS and a decent record, when in reality, you didn't really accomplish much.

 

[Madbiker]

All we have to do is avoid playing RPI teams that 200+ plus.
Pitt has games the RPI without playing road games by just playing decent teams at home and not garbage teams.

Colgate and Cornell have been garbage.
SC State was garbage.
We need to schedule better tomato cans.

Exactly right. We played too many dregs.
S Carolina St 302
Colgate 294
Cornell 270
N Florida 217
Holy Cross 208

Replace most of these with moderate cupcakes in the 130-175 range and it would boost our RPI while still providing a W.

 

[Brooky03]

SOS is like the RPI, it's a decent starting point to narrow the field down to 80 or so teams, but it has little use after that. Like the RPI, it's too easy to 'game' the system. It also rewards schools for losing to the right teams, and rewarding losing is dumb. Vanderbilt allegedly played the toughest or second toughest nonconference schedule. They managed one win out of the 'tough' teams they played. Syracuse would do no worse against the same teams, probably better, but Vandy gets the credit for the losses and it somehow catapulted them ahead of us. It's annoying, to say the least.

 

[Brooky03]

Exactly right. We played too many dregs.
S Carolina St 302
Colgate 294
Cornell 270
N Florida 217
Holy Cross 208

Replace most of these with moderate cupcakes in the 130-175 range and it would boost our RPI while still providing a W.

Yup. This is the glaring weakness of SOS formulas. They don't take into consideration the fact that a team with an RPI in the high one hundreds is equally bad at basketball as a team with a mid-200 RPI. After 150, you're talking about bad teams. The probably of a win against a RPI 150 teams has to be somewhere around 98% for a team projected in the top half of a power conference. The probability against a RPI 250 team is 99%. There's practically no difference, but it makes a huge difference in SOS calculations.

 

[RandygoCuse]

Well then you wouldn't have to worry about making the tournament, would you?

Here's a problem I have, I don't like it whenever you see a bracketology guy say something like "team x won 20 games against a top y ranked schedule). You can theoretically play a few elite teams on the road, lose to them, and then beat a bunch of poor teams at home, and have a decent SOS and a decent record, when in reality, you didn't really accomplish much.

good point - I should have expanded and said that wins against weak teams shouldn't count for much either. At the end of the day, when I'm comparing teams to see who should get in, I want the teams that had the most success against the strongest teams

 

[bpo57]

All we have to do is avoid playing RPI teams that 200+ plus.
Pitt has games the RPI without playing road games by just playing decent teams at home and not garbage teams.

Colgate and Cornell have been garbage.
SC State was garbage.
We need to schedule better tomato cans.

That and avoid having losses to teams at 75+ like SJU, Gtown and UConn.

 

[HOFCeluck]

Exactly right. We played too many dregs.
S Carolina St 302
Colgate 294
Cornell 270
N Florida 217
Holy Cross 208

Replace most of these with moderate cupcakes in the 130-175 range and it would boost our RPI while still providing a W.

Everyone's missing the point. Our schedule was fine. Losing to multiple turds is not.

 

[Knicks411]

Everyone's missing the point. Our schedule was fine. Losing to multiple turds is not.

This too

 

[obliterata]

This post is too good not to be a new thread. I wish everyone could read it. Even those who don't think Syracuse was good enough to be in the Tourney (completely fair) it demonstrates how full of it the committee chair is. And how little the media follows up incorrect statements.

Thanks, I actually did start a thread with this info a couple of days ago. No matter what people think of this info and its importance - and I think it's pretty important - it boggles the mind how the Committee used it as one of the main reasons to exclude SU when it was in fact a good reason to give them a bid over other bubble teams when you're trying to choose the final 1/2/3 spots.

 

[orangenirvana]

Thanks, I actually did start a thread with this info a couple of days ago. No matter what people think of this info and its importance - and I think it's pretty important - it boggles the mind how the Committee used it as one of the main reasons to exclude SU when it was in fact a good reason to give them a bid over other bubble teams when you're trying to choose the final 1/2/3 spots.

Hopefully it was just a brain fart from the committee head in front of cameras and he meant something else like...um...I've been trying to think of some criteria USC had an advantage in over SU and I just can't come up with anything.* He couldn't say "We felt that the Pac 12 should get four bids and didn't want to be accused of having East Coast bias and unfortunately for Syracuse they were the victims." But I'm sure there was a more legitimate criteria he was prepared to use publicly and he meant to say that.

* DISCLAIMER: Superior road performance doesn't compute when Syracuse's best road win > USC's best road win