Podcast: We're Talkin Ragin' Cajuns Basketball with Jay Walker 03-07-2023

[CajunStros]

MAT - One thing I do admire about you is your ability to be wrong as ____ but stand by your words. It is a rare things these days. I appreciate that.[/QUOTE]

I spit my drink out.

[MelRock]

Craig, the podcast before this one, audio quality was the best I’d heard. It was the one with you and Mike talking post South Al, I’m pretty sure.

Whatever y’all did there, it was really good.

That is done through Zoom, and Zoom does a great job with its filters. I need to spend a day with my mixing board and how it comes into the computer. I may end up having to drop the mixer and go directly into the computer with a couple of USB microphones, but that is a little more complicated. Thanks for the input, I appreciate all the comments.

[MelRock]

Well, I will say all of us are passionate, and we want the Cajuns to win. Jay is big and ugly enough to speak for himself, but he is put in a difficult position as the play-by-play guy. I am not sure his opinion would change if he were not that guy. Regarding baseball, I am in a similar place as well, helping run the Diamond Club. I am not going to discuss too many coaching decisions or individual players unless it is in a positive way. I have learned much from Coach Robe, Coach Deggs, and Coach Bab. Coach Deggs is not Coach Deggs, and there are many ways to win a baseball game.

We are also lucky to have so many diverse opinions, which is great. I am not the best at keeping it civil, but I try because I value everyone's input, even when they are wrong. We have some of the best facilities, and our teams should finish in the top 4 year in and year out.

[Turbine]

I get Jay's point, and MaT's point, and CajunRage's point, and RedTails' point, and CajunNation's point.

Lots of good points.

[Big Poppa]

No. That's because the criteria has changed. If the NIT still owned the NIT, the Cajuns would be a lock had they lost on Monday. Marshall would be in as well. With today's criteria it is my opinion Jessie's teams would not have gotten an NIT bid. I'm all aboard with our need to schedule better. But the solution is easier said than done. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me the caliber of team we would get at the Cajundome for the money we got from Drake. Geography hurts here. For instance, Marshall can schedule half of the MAC every year and travel by bus. Here it gets us the third worst conference in America. I know fans here rale about the non D-1's. UNO and McNeese (traditional rivals) both lost 20 games this year. THAT'S hurting us more than the NAIA's.

And, this year, our schedule looked a lot better before we started playing. We thought the likes of ETSU and Harvard would help our SOS. Then they both had bad years. Everyone (including me) wants to see our schedule improve. But none of us have ever tried to schedule and probably don't know nearly as much about it as we think we do.

Look, we disagree on a lot of things. But I'll stand by my comments on the podcast, including (especially?) my statement about coaches preparing student-athletes for life beyond athletics being the top priority. And, I"m proud that all of our coaches, from Des to (name your sport here) feel the same way.

My other answers wound up in the shaded block. I didn't ignore any of them.

Get with the moderator of this board. I think he has the answers to scheduling.

[cjr3888]

Well, I will say all of us are passionate, and we want the Cajuns to win. Jay is big and ugly enough to speak for himself, but he is put in a difficult position as the play-by-play guy. I am not sure his opinion would change if he were not that guy. Regarding baseball, I am in a similar place as well, helping run the Diamond Club. I am not going to discuss too many coaching decisions or individual players unless it is in a positive way. I have learned much from Coach Robe, Coach Deggs, and Coach Bab. Coach Deggs is not Coach Deggs, and there are many ways to win a baseball game.

We are also lucky to have so many diverse opinions, which is great. I am not the best at keeping it civil, but I try because I value everyone's input, even when they are wrong. We have some of the best facilities, and our teams should finish in the top 4 year in and year out.

So you're sayin Jay has a face for radio?

[Cajunsmike]

The push will be to schedule D1 home games that we are likely to win by comfortable margins. That is because the NET does consider margin of victory in their analysis. That is not our philosophy. That is coming from league office as part of the requirement to have a minimum number of D1 home games. I am not certain of the number but I think it is 13 for next season. Keep in mind that the major schools are now trying to play ZERO true road non conference games as LSU did this past season. That is why buying better home games will be good mid majors at best. Even 2 for 1 or even 3 for 1 deals are becoming rare.

[cajun4life]

Heaven forbid we expect to win SBC titles!

The 5 major sports we compete in only 3 are expected to win the SBC.

Football
Softball
Baseball

The other 2 basketball programs….winning is just to difficult to expect SBC titles every year. We have finished in the Top 3 of the SBC only three times in the last 10 years. But apparently Louisiana basketball and the Baseball HOF have something in common. Go .333 and you’ll get into the HOF.

We PAY for championships! We have a top 4 budget for basketball within the SBC. We were number 1 prior to the new arrivals.

Compete for championships and people show up.

[ManAboutTown]

The push will be to schedule D1 home games that we are likely to win by comfortable margins. That is because the NET does consider margin of victory in their analysis. That is not our philosophy. That is coming from league office as part of the requirement to have a minimum number of D1 home games. I am not certain of the number but I think it is 13 for next season. Keep in mind that the major schools are now trying to play ZERO true road non conference games as LSU did this past season. That is why buying better home games will be good mid majors at best. Even 2 for 1 or even 3 for 1 deals are becoming rare.

That’s a great formula to have teams that can’t compete in the post season.

Keep hearing how rare it is, but seems everytime I log on to twitter, one of our peers is hosting a P5 school.

[Turbine]

That’s a great formula to have teams that can’t compete in the post season.

Keep hearing how rare it is, but seems everytime I log on to twitter, one of our peers is hosting a P5 school.

Well, if you start with "can't" you stay there.

[ManAboutTown]

Well, if you start with "can't" you stay there.

Why did Tony start scheduling a gauntlet of a OOC schedule? To weather the team. To show them what great teams actually look like and to show them what it took to compete with those teams.

Scheduling teams you can destroy is a recipe for disaster.

[ULvictory]

Why did Tony start scheduling a gauntlet of a OOC schedule? To weather the team. To show them what great teams actually look like and to show them what it took to compete with those teams.

Scheduling teams you can destroy is a recipe for disaster.

Softball is doing it right now.

[fanof71]

That’s a great formula to have teams that can’t compete in the post season.

Keep hearing how rare it is, but seems everytime I log on to twitter, one of our peers is hosting a P5 school.

You mean like they all seem to do with Football????

[JayWalker]

Why did Tony start scheduling a gauntlet of a OOC schedule? To weather the team. To show them what great teams actually look like and to show them what it took to compete with those teams.

Scheduling teams you can destroy is a recipe for disaster.

I don't know if I agree with the scheduling suggestion from the league or not. I simply don't know enough about the NET formula to know if it's a valid suggestion

Here's what I do know. I think the idea behind all this is to be able to (pardon the term) manipulate the NET to our advantage. So...my question would be what boost you get from Strength of Victory that would enable you to benefit from wide margins of victory.

Knowing what we know from the RPI, I think we still think that way as it applies to basketball. So my second question is How important is strength of schedule.

Here's what I do know. If Mike is correct and the league wants us to play 13 D-1 home games, we're probably talking 1 non d-1 at most. That's an upside.

But it means we might have to get four home games, D-1.

I'm going to give the league the benefit of the doubt that they brought in people who were experts on the NET and how to make it work in your favor. That would be a lot more info than any of us have right now.

Now, from the league's point of view, the goal is to be able to get an at-large bid.

Like I said, I'm not the most knowledgeable guy.....but I'm not going to go into the discussion with a bias.

[RaginDave]

Here is what a perfect out of conference schedule should look like for the Cajuns:

Some sort of MTE/Non Exempt tournament that includes at least 2 games, similar to what we did in Asheville this year and a few years ago in the Caymans as well as in Florida recently. Those are good because it will get what you would expect to be a peer couple of games. I know Harvard and ETSU were down this year, but normally those are good OOC games.

2 games home and home vs The MAC, similar to above.

Every year game vs La Tech, alternating home and home.

A Southland team (McNeese, UNO, NW State, SLU, etc). Preferably SLU and/or NW State who are usually .500 teams or better, but we could replace this with some of those teams that were former SLC teams that moved to the WAC, Sam Houston, SFA alternating playing this game at home and then away every other year. To be honest I would prefer if we played 2 of these and one would be at home and the other on the road.

At least one Road game vs P5 opponents, but possibly 2. I would love if we did a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 with a P5 opponent, but understand thats not the position of the athletic department.

1 alternating home/road game with a team similar to Drake, Samford. A traditional upper level mid major from a conference that we don't normally try to play. The A-Sun, Horizon, WAC, ETC.

Possibly one non D1 school as a warmup to the season

That would be a total of 11 out of conference games.

2 P5 road games (with the caveat that we might get one back at the CD)
1 Road Southland game
1 Home Southland game
2 Tournament games at neutral sites
1 Home Mid Major from an outside conference mate
1 Road Mid Major from an outside conference mate
1 Home MAC game
1 Road MAC game
1 La Tech game alternating home and home each year.
1 Non D1 game

I could live with that.