Pitt's Jamie Dixon is rarely lauded for his scheduling -- if anything, the knock on him has been that he doesn't schedule hard enough when he has an elite team -- but here, he looks shrewd. He's the best coach in the country at consistently turning a mildly efficient NCSOS into a respectable NCSOS in the eyes of the RPI, and thus, the selection committee. As he says, "I look at kenpom statistics -- I love all the stats he does -- but in scheduling, the NCAA is gonna look at RPI. So I care about RPI."
Dixon's year-to-year gaps break down like this:
Season Team Eff. NCSOS RPI NCSOS Gap
2008 Pittsburgh 129 90 39
2009 Pittsburgh 44 15 29
2010 Pittsburgh 158 49 109
2011 Pittsburgh 223 100 123
2012 Pittsburgh 209 119 90
Sometimes a gap won't matter -- like last season, when the Panthers nose-dived and went 5-13 in the Big East. They had no shot at the NCAAs. But in 2010, when Pitt earned a No. 3 seed despite having zero marquee wins outside the Big East, it was in part due to Dixon's manipulation of the 158th-best efficiency NCSOS into the 49th-best RPI NCSOS.
What Dixon likes to do for his home guarantee games, he says, "is play the teams that we think are the best picks to win the non-BCS conferences." These are the best "gap" teams, because they're beatable despite having high RPI returns. In 2010, Dixon beat five of them in Wofford (69 RPI), Wichita State (43), Kent State (47), Ohio (95) and Robert Morris (129). He only had one 250-plus RPI opponent (Youngstown State, at 271), either, and so it didn't matter that he played just one marquee game (against Texas) and lost it; the Panthers were in good standing due to their choices of non-BCS opponents. Despite their efficiency profile suggesting they were the quality of a 7-8 seed, they were a No. 3 on the strength of their RPI.
It's almost always better to play a mid-major that'll go on to have 20-plus wins than it is a cupcake mid- or low-major, or a basement-dweller from a major conference. Dixon still adheres to this philosophy; last season he hosted Long Beach (34 RPI), Robert Morris (99) and Wagner (92), and this season he has Detroit as well as either Robert Morris or Lehigh, depending on how the NIT Season Tip-Off Bracket plays out.
And he says there's an added benefit to playing guarantee games in which you might have a chance of losing: "Those are the teams that other [BCS-conference] schools don't want to play, so not only do you get a higher RPI by scheduling them, you can also possibly schedule them for less money. It comes down to supply and demand, and there's just less demand for those teams."
Not only is he gaming the RPI, he's saving his school money on its guarantee-game budget. High-value teams at low prices: That is next-next-level Scheduleball.
Read more:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...27/schedule-strength/index.html#ixzz2BMx3oPqP
