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BlueGoldAg
1.3kBoth the Men's and Women's basketball programs are on the rise. The men should be right in the mix of the annual Big West dogfight for the BW title and a chance to return to the NCAA Tournament. The women's team may be the best WBB team in Aggie history. Is it time for both programs to ramp up the competition level of their non-conference schedules?
Coaches take different approaches to non-conference competition. Dan Monson at LBSU believes in playing one of the toughest OOC schedules in the nation each year even though the 49ers rarely win any of their games against power programs. Nearly all of those games are played on the road also. He believes that the steady dose of playing against elite competition toughens up his team despite the losing record and occasional big blowout losses. He also believes that his rugged schedules are attractive to recruits who want an opportunity to play on the big stages.
This year the Aggie men played well at Washingtion and upset then unbeaten WSU on the road and the women held #17 OSU to their lowest point total of the season in their loss in Corvallis. On a rare occasion we have had a PAC12 team come to the Pavillion and #1 UConn came to Davis for a women's game a couple of year's ago but, typically, our OOC home schedule leaves a lot to be desired for the fans although the women's home schedule this year was pretty good. Aggie fans always show up in good numbers when an elite team comes to the Pavilion.
Personally, I'm not a fan Dan Monson's scheduling philosophy. I think, at some point, you grind your team's morale into the ground and have a road weary team when conference begins. He's certainly had success in the BW though. I'd like to see us playing stiffer competition but not so much so that we would be entering BW play with only a couple of wins.
Here's an interesting article about Texas Southern that takes the idea of playing up to the extreme. They are currently 0-13 and have not played a single home game. This year they have lost to Gonzaga, Ohio State, Syracuse, Washington State, Kansas, Clemson, Oakland, Toledo, Oregon, Baylor, Wyoming, TCU, and BYU yet they are favored to win their conference. They are coached by former Indiana coach, Mike Davis, who has taken them to the NCAA Tournament 3 out of the last 4 years.
https://deadspin.com/this-0-13-basketball-team-is-a-favorite-to-make-the-nca-1821600072
Thoughts? -
aggie6thman
158Yes. We don't have to play every team on Tobacco Road or make a trip up the Atlantic seaboard and play Georgetown, Maryland, Seton Hall, and Syracuse. But a schedule that doesn't include Holy Names AND William Jessup is a good start. We're going to have to play road games and we have this year (@ Washington, Wazzu, USF, Nevada, Utah Valley) but we went 1-4 against those teams. -
BlueGoldAg
1.3kI thought the men's schedule was much better this year as you noted. None of those games were blowout loses and a couple more of them were there for the taking but we didn't close them out. I think the holy school games are there mostly because no one else will come to the Pavilion although Les has said that he likes to give these local area teams a chance to play up against us in a facility like the Pavilion. The folks over on the Big West Boards generally think Les purposely makes a weak schedule to pad the win loss column. I don't buy that though.
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aggie6thman
158That's really nice that Les wants to give local schools a chance to play at the Pavilion but it takes away a home game against a quality opponent.
Are we scheduling OOC games in advance or on a yearly basis? There is no reason to have a home and home with anyone (Pacific this year, Seattle and Slac in year's past). Schedule two-for-one games with opponents and try to book in advance. This isn't like football where we are limited in who we can play on the West Coast. There are decent Mountain West, WAC, WCC, PAC 12, and Big Sky teams we can play.
The thing we have to stay away from is falling into the trap of scheduling a lower tier team on the road and think it will help. At some point we need to play the big boys (UCLA, USC, Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon, Gonzaga, Saint Mary's) and accept the fact that they will be on the road.
Women's hoops is a whole different story. The lack of parity in women's hoops is staggering and is why you never see a small school rise to the elite level. -
movielover
534Have USF, St. Mary's, and Santa Clara said they won't come here?
Santa Clara came here in our DII days. I think Bradley fans also believe Les preferred a weak OOC schedule.
Next year will be diffetent without the Big Man. -
DrMike
743I think the schedule for men’s this year has a good competitive balance. I’d just like to see more home games. We’d had five if you count Sac ( I like the golden one location) and two are gimmes. Most big west have one of those games, only a handful have two. I looked at UOP’s schedule. 7 home games including Reno and Vegas. We might need to be creative and work with USF or UOP so a visiting team can fly out and play two games ( like WSU women did with us and USF). Teams like Montana play two SoCal teams in three days. -
BlueGoldAg
1.3kHere's a breakdown of all the Big West OOC games through December 28th that I found over on the Big West Boards:
Big West overall: 54-65
vs. Division I: 40-65
vs. America East: 0-1
vs. American Athletic: 0-1
vs. Atlantic 10: 1-0
vs. Atlantic Coast: 0-2
vs. Big 12: 0-2
vs. Big Sky: 10-10
vs. Big South: 0-1
vs. Big Ten: 0-3
vs. Colonial: 1-1
vs. Ivy: 1-2
vs. Metro Atlantic Athletic: 0-1
vs. Mid-American: 0-2
vs. Mid-Eastern Athletic: 0-1
vs. Missouri Valley: 1-0
vs. Mountain West: 1-8
vs. Ohio Valley: 0-1
vs. Pacific-12: 4-12
vs. Southeastern: 0-3
vs. Southland: 1-0
vs. Southwestern Athletic: 3-0
vs. Summit: 3-1
vs. Sun Belt: 1-1
vs. West Coast: 11-7
vs. Western Athletic: 2-5
home: 33-14 (19-14 vs. D1)
neutral: 7-8
away: 14-43
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bigwest/thursday-december-28-2017-games-t21605-s20.html -
aggie6thman
158Saint Mary's I'm almost certain has said they will not come up here. USF and Santa Clara I'm not sure about. My point is that we have to establish a winning culture and then we become the team that answers the phone instead of the one making the call.
To do that we have to A.) Schedule road games against decent competition and progressively increasing the level of competition (this year was a step in the right direction) and B.) Win those games (didn't happen this year). -
aggie6thman
158Versus West Coast competition the Ags are:
3-0 vs Big Sky (UNC x 2, Slac)
2-1 vs WCC (Pacific x 2, USF - L)
1-1 vs PAC 12 (Washington - L, Wazzu)
0-1 vs MWC (Nevada - L)
0-1 vs WAC (Utah Valley) -
BlueGoldAg
1.3k6-4 is is pretty good. Two wins against Pacific is tough to do and the win at WSU was right up there with our best wins ever.
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aggie6thman
158@BlueGoldAg But of those 6 wins we only beat 3 teams.
Wazzu's RPI is 152. If that is one of our best wins ever we need to reevaluate things. It was a good win but since we beat them on the road they dropped two games. They play at UCLA tonight at 8 pm on ESPN2. If they are one of our best wins ever we need them to win A LOT of PAC 12 games.
RPI:
Northern Colorado - 125
Slac - 307
Pacific - 218
If next year's road schedule looks similar to what we have (hopefully better) and we pull out a few road W's we are headed in the riggt direction. -
BlueGoldAg
1.3kWSU certainly wasn't as good as everyone thought but at the time they had a lot of momentum and a large raucous fan base behind them. It was a tough environment for the Ags to play in. I thought the Aggies' execution on offense and defense was one of the best efforts I've seen from an Aggie team in a long time. Good shooting and tenacious defense. They really put it all together and caught Wazzu off guard but the Cougars did fade badly after the loss to the Aggies.
Right now, as far as the Big West goes, I think the Aggies could be considering one of the top 4 teams with Santa Barbara looking like the the early favorite. It'll be a dogfight as usual. The Ags have just been far too inconsistent, on offense especially, to be considered an odds on favorite. -
Goags20172
162I think gradual improvement of the schedule is the way to go. Sooner or later you have to win. Otherwise all the bodybag games are nearly pointless. Then there's the fans to consider as well. Are they going to want to come see a team that wins less, even if the tougher games are on the road ?
Realistically there's kind of an invisible ceiling for the men's program just based on the level of talent of their opponents. I think at best they become a program like St. Mary's and occasionally make a little surprise postseason noise. The real question is how long Les plans to stick around.
The women's team I could reasonably see challenging for a national title, not with the players they have now or even with the ones they'll have next year, but as a natural evolution of the program with the players they'll recruit maybe a couple years from now.. Year to year they have a deep enough roster you don't have to ever worry that they'll have problems winning. Also Coach Gross' coaching style will evolve with experience. The women's team is better equipped I think to handle a more difficult schedule. Both teams still need a couple patsies to play their reserves against. -
DrMike
743I imagine money comes into it (it is college basketball!) do we guarantee some payout for visiting teams?
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aggie6thman
158Money absolutely plays a role in it. Look at the situation surrounding LBSU and Monson. He gets paid a portion of what the team makes. That's why I'm saying we have to play and win games on the road against mid-tier or top-tier teams. We're not going to get a big name to waltz into the Pavilion unless we establish ourselves as a consistently good program.
We have to schedule up and start winning the majority of those games. They'll show us what kind of team we really have, give the guys experience in playing in a hostile setting, and prepare us for conference play.
But, it all starts with winning. If that doesn't happen, nothing else matters and we'll keep seeing home and home series with Northern Colorado, Pacific, Slac, etc. -
DrMike
7436th what I was referring to is when we host. Do we guarantee an amount or is a home/away series an even deal? Just wondering how UOP can get Reno and Vegas as home games? Looks like they played Wyoming home/away the past two years. They haven’t been good in awhile, but they seem to draw more than us
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aggie6thman
158Our attendance tonight...996. Granted it is the day before New Years against a D26 team while the students are gone.
Pacific is averaging about 2100 fans per home game this year against our almost 1600. Pacific also gets an attendance bounce because they play in the WCC, especially now that the conference isn't always a one-bid-wonder. Their RPI will drop because they play Gonzaga, Saint Mary's, and BYU a total of six times a year.
We don't have that...yet.
As for the home/home deals, I would hope we at least offer it. There are 8 teams within a 3 hour drive of UCD (San Francisco, Stanford, San Jose State, Santa Clara, Saint Mary's, Cal, Pacific, Slac, and Nevada). You could even add Fresno State. -
Goags20172
162If you'd like an example of a weird schedule it gets no weirder than Portland State. They've been squatting at different venues this year while the Stott Center is being replaced. Most of the home games are being played at Lewis and Clark College, but they've played 1 at the Moda Center (Butler) and a couple at the minor league hockey facility right next to it (Duke, Stanford). They probably would've played those games at Moda Center and Memorial Coliseum anyway.
On the one hand they've beaten Stanford and Cal, but they also have FOUR patsies scheduled ( Evergreen State, Willamette, Portland Bible College, and Linfield). My guess is these schools came to play Lewis + Clark + just figured why not get an extra game in ?
That Lewis + Clark gym must have been terribly busy this year. -
eastcoastag
10Thought the schedule was slightly better than in the past. Don't like the home and home games in the same season. I would like to see the game with Sac stay at the Golden One center for at least a few more years.I also believe the mens team needs to play a few games east of the rocky mountains every season.
One other item to consider. Right now we play 16 league games but in a few years we will be playing an additional 4 games once UCSD and CSUB join the league. Who we play in the non-league games is really gonna be important. -
aggie08
53Frankly, if we want to be a good team, we need to be able to beat good teams. A phenomenal record against creampuffs doesn’t give you anything outside of hype. A balanced schedule w a minimum of 5 major conference level teams each yr would be ideal. It would give us a chance at an at large as well. I’d much rather go 0-5 or 1-4 vs top tier competition than blow out cupcake teams. The women’s team today would have a good chance against most major teams outside of the elite. -
ucdavisaggie05
131Those games at Moda and the Coliseum next to it we’re part of the PK80 (Phil Knight/Nike) tourney that was held at both venues over the Thanksgiving weekend if I remember correctly. I believe both Portland State and Portland (Pilots, out of the WCC) were part of the field, which is the only way the Vikings would have any chance of Duke, Butler and Stanford in their backyard. -
ucdavisaggie05
131+1. We are in a one-bid conference. If we don’t win the conference tourney, we don’t even exist on Selection Sunday. Might as well cut our teeth and learn how to plow through adversity in the OOC portion of the schedule. A 3-day tourney to replicate the conference tourney would be beneficial as well.
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aggie6thman
158I really hope we don't go to a 20 game schedule. We'll probably jump to 18 but play a few teams once, similar to what the PAC 12 does.
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movielover
534Bakersfield? ... is this some backdoor method to try to boost their credibility?
Who set this up? -
DrMike
743they won their league tournament and finished the year with 22 wins. their conference is the Big South, also home to Longwood which is where Isaiah Walton ended up. He led the last-place Lancers with 16 ppg, 2.5 assists and 1.3 steals.
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DrMike
743as an aside, our current RPI is 95. last year, we finished the season at 153. SOS last year was 297, this year 190. we get no love vs. Big West, but those games vs. the Washington, Nevada, USF, Radford, Northern Colorado (2), Utah Valley help things out. Love to get a few more juicy games at home (like a WCC team besides UOP)
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movielover
534We had a few WCC home games in DII. Ham was tight with some of those opposing coaches.
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aggie08
53With the new 4 tier system that factors in road games into opponent difficulty, beating even mediocre to lower tier power schools will help make a case for an at large bid. We’re currently 95 in rpi. Beating a 75 rpi team on the road is considered a tier 1 win. Plus it gives us exposure to quality opponents.
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