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Posted

Five Big Ten teams were in the top 20 in non-conference strength of schedule this past season and eight Big Ten teams had tougher non-conference schedules than IU in the 2019-2020 season. If IU is going to return to "elite status" or even if IU just wants to be able to compete for a top 5 spot in the conference, we need a tougher non-conference schedule than we have had the past couple of years. (We should be top five non-conference SOS within the conference). Michigan State, which had the 3rd toughest non-conference SOS in the country this past year, almost always has a tough non-conference schedule and sometimes they struggle. But come conference time they are better prepared to compete for a conference championship and they usually do.

Posted
I'd argue that our schedule last year was set up perfectly to maximize our change of getting to the tournament. We were a young, growing team and our schedule gave us many opportunities to beat very solid teams.

Our out of conference schedule included 1 for sure tourney team. Arky and Notre Dame were bubbles and Louisiana Tech could have possibly won their conference tourney. The golden win was Florida State obviously and no other game came close.

Western Illinois 5-21
Portland State 18-14
North Alabama 13-17
Troy 9-22
Princeton 14-13
Louisiana Tech 22-8
South Dakota State 22-10
Florida State 26-5
UConn 19-12
Notre Dame 20-12
Arkansas 20-12

Those last 4 games are what really helped. UConn, ND and Arky weren’t great teams, really weren’t even good teams, but they were decent. Unfortunately lost the Arky which we shouldn’t have. We don’t have an Arkansas type of game as far as I know next season but will be replacing it with a Big East team(could even be UConn again) and we have the Maui tournament and instead of ND we play Butler(though not sure how good they’ll even be). Maui will be the key to our OOC strength.


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Posted
Interesting tidbit I just found perusing KenPom:
 
Not a single national champion since 2002 (as far as KenPom goes back) has had a top-50 non-con SOS. And only 4 or 5 (I wasn’t taking notes) since then have had a top-100 non-con SOS. 

I stand corrected. **** any difficult games, play cupcakes!


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Posted
1 hour ago, Hovadipo said:

Why leave anything to chance in your bottom few non-con games? Schedule Kennesaw State 3 times for all I care. People get too hung up on the cupcake portion. Pile wins. Pile wins. Pile wins. 

Yep committee showed the quantity of wins is still king. 

Posted
I'd argue that our schedule last year was set up perfectly to maximize our change of getting to the tournament. We were a young, growing team and our schedule gave us many opportunities to beat very solid teams.

But we weren’t young. We often started 3 juniors


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Posted
"Yet people will complain"
The non-conference schedules the past two seasons warranted criticism. Maui potentially improves the quality of the non-conference schedule with possible games with North Carolina and other quality teams.
 

We play 20 flipping B1G games now plus the conference tourney


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Posted
The Maui tournament should be competitive. Nearly all the teams in the field will be decent and some pretty good next season. IU will be bringing in a very experienced team with at least a couple of very good players. 
 
 

 

UNC and Texas should be pretty good next year. Not sure about Alabama yet. Depends on who returns for them. UNLV and Davidson will probably be the two worst teams.


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