What I wonder is if playing only 19 true road games will be a negative for the RPI.
What I wonder is if playing only 19 true road games will be a negative for the RPI.
It depends on what your end goal is in making the schedule. Do you wanna give your fans a few games against schools they know or give your team the best chance of making the postseason? If it’s the latter, those 2 are toss ups on if they help you. The SWAC games (the guaranteed negatives) are the biggest issue.
. . . do you really think Rice and Tulane were down or expected to be down when we scheduled them . . .
Then you have these single weekday games
Louisiana will host 10 midweek games during the 2024 season – Northwestern State (Feb. 21), Southern (March 19), McNeese (March 20), Grambling (March 26), Nicholls (April 2), Prairie View (April 9), Louisiana Tech (April 10), SLU (April 17), Houston Christian (April 24) and Jackson State (May 7).
. . . who else are you going to get that can drive in, play a game and drive back home for a weekday game . . .
Considering Rice hasn’t had a winning season since 2017, that’s a pretty safe bet.
. . . with a 52 game season, one could pick apart and pick on the scheduler every single season with points like that . . .
Every game of the 50+ matters, as evidenced by St. Peter’s in 2017.
Personally I’d rather a few less poorly attended Tuesday night home games and hit the road some more. Toss ups are one thing. Signing up for guaranteed negatives is another entirely.
Just can't have these SWAC games. They're killers. SLC games instead would have made more sense.
Yearly reminder (not from Brian) that you can't look at their ranking when it comes to our RPI. You need to consider the opponent's W-L record.
Grambling, Southern, and Jackson State finished a combined 6 games under .500 in 2023, so not exactly RPI killers from an RPI standpoint, although you are insinuating as such by just posting their final ranking. PVA&M was 19 games under .500, so we'll need to handle our business against them.
If every OOC team has the same record as 2023 in 2024, then Rice does more damage to our RPI calculation than Grambling, Southern and Jackson State. I would have removed Houston Christian and PVA&M from the schedule and added another game against those 3 SWAC schools if given the option.
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