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Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 06:22 PM
We won't be hosting despite being 17-13. (I mean, maybe a deep run in Hoover could get us back on the hosting bubble, but the committee tends to lazily pick the hosts before then anyway.)

Had we played a harder non-conference schedule, not a "hard" one, just not so many Q4 games, we would be solidly hosting. Usually 17-13 SEC teams do. But our RPI is about to fall into the mid-20s.

HoopsDawg
05-18-2024, 06:43 PM
Sometimes I hate being right. Maybe we can win a couple in the SECT. Horrible job by Lemonis with that schedule. We should easily be hosting.


Coach34, Homedawg, DownwardDawg, BrunswickDawg and Todd4state all were wrong. They all argued with me vigorously. I've got receipts.

MoreCowbell
05-18-2024, 06:50 PM
We won't be hosting despite being 17-13. (I mean, maybe a deep run in Hoover could get us back on the hosting bubble, but the committee tends to lazily pick the hosts before then anyway.)

Had we played a harder non-conference schedule, not a "hard" one, just not so many Q4 games, we would be solidly hosting. Usually 17-13 SEC teams do. But our RPI is about to fall into the mid-20s.

Playing all those Q4 games was not our downfall, losing to them was

Todd4State
05-18-2024, 07:02 PM
Playing all those Q4 games was not our downfall, losing to them was

This.

Saltydog
05-18-2024, 07:24 PM
If you don't schedule them you don't have to worry about losing them.........

CaptainObvious
05-18-2024, 07:45 PM
If you don't schedule them you don't have to worry about losing them.........

Now Saltydog. You know Lemonis had to schedule soft to try and save his job. No way he thought this team could win 17 SEC games. He was scheduling to get in the Tourney. Who knew the bottom half of the SEC would be so bad, they literally beat up on each other.

PGHBulldogBG
05-18-2024, 07:47 PM
I say the same thing in hoops. Go on the road and play @Duke @UNC @ UConn etc and if we win 1 it counts way more as beating 10 cupcakes at home.

Homedawg
05-18-2024, 07:48 PM
Sometimes I hate being right. Maybe we can win a couple in the SECT. Horrible job by Lemonis with that schedule. We should easily be hosting.


Coach34, Homedawg, DownwardDawg, BrunswickDawg and Todd4state all were wrong. They all argued with me vigorously. I've got receipts.

Great w your receipts. But I've said for weeks we wouldn't host w 17 wins in the league. Thought 18 was possible but not sure. But cool w the rest.

HoopsDawg
05-18-2024, 07:54 PM
Great w your receipts. But I've said for weeks we wouldn't host w 17 wins in the league. Thought 18 was possible but not sure. But cool w the rest.

Yeah, but that was my point preseason. Just a decent non con and we are hosting. It was a scared schedule aimed to save his jobs or stack wins. It was not a schedule built to maximize RPI.

WAH662
05-18-2024, 07:56 PM
We'll be dog shit next year, Lemon will be fired, and we'll start over from scratch like we should have last year with a competent coach. Lemon can't recruit, and we'll start over with a new coach when we should've done it last year.

A Chris Lemonis coached team will never make a run anywhere close to what he did with another man's recruits.

This team will be in and out on the post season faster than a Chick-fil-A drive through. Mark my words.

Bothrops
05-18-2024, 08:10 PM
We won't see full effort again until the Regional. Anybody could beat us next week.

Coach34
05-18-2024, 08:22 PM
Proven right how? Nobody has yet explained to me how losing more games to a tougher schedule would benefit us????

Losing to teams on this weaker schedule has been the problem. I cant help you if you cannot understand that

We will continue to play SWAC teams- we always have. We do that to help keep their programs afloat.

Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 08:32 PM
Proven right how? Nobody has yet explained to me how losing more games to a tougher schedule would benefit us????

For the trillionth time, nobody is saying that we should have played really tough teams and lost to them. We just scheduled really weak teams in the sub-200 range that really ranked our RPI. Replace these 5 games (all 275 or worse):
3 vs. Mt. St. Mary's
1 vs. Alcorn State
1 vs. North Alabama

With teams who are around the 175-200 range, and our RPI is 8-10 spots higher. I just ran the calculation. We'd be safely hosting right now, not praying to make a deep run and then maybe have a shot. We'd still be playing bad teams that we should easily beat (you never know in baseball, but you never know with the 275-300 range either), but our RPI would be much better off. ETA: Even if we'd gone 4-1 against those 5 replacement teams instead of 5-0, we'd be much better off RPI-wise.

We've known for decades (literally) in any sport that playing teams in the high 100s doesn't tank your RPI, while playing teams in the high 200s does, and unless you suck, you shouldn't have a problem beating either, yet in every sport we continue to schedule like idiots.

Coach34
05-18-2024, 08:45 PM
You can spout all that you want. SEC teams arent going to stop playing a few SWAC games a year. It's a way to get your entire roster playing time. It supports lesser programs with a good paycheck. That's college baseball.

I mean damn- our SOS in 19th best in the country. Acting like we played a 75th type of schedule is ridiculous

Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 08:54 PM
You can spout all that you want. SEC teams arent going to stop playing a few SWAC games a year. It's a way to get your entire roster playing time. It supports lesser programs with a good paycheck. That's college baseball.

I mean damn- our SOS in 19th best in the country. Acting like we played a 75th type of schedule is ridiculous

I certainly never claimed we have the "75th type of schedule." The numbers are what they are. We could have had an RPI in the mid-teens even at 17-13, even with the losses to Air Force and Austin Peay (RPIs of 110 and 146 by the way), even with the games we blew, if we had just scheduled a little smarter. It's just basic math.

The RPI formula has existed for years, and those teams have sucked for years. It's not like we were caught off guard in an understandable way.

HoopsDawg
05-18-2024, 08:59 PM
Proven right how? Nobody has yet explained to me how losing more games to a tougher schedule would benefit us????

Losing to teams on this weaker schedule has been the problem. I cant help you if you cannot understand that

We will continue to play SWAC teams- we always have. We do that to help keep their programs afloat.

Lolol, you are still arguing that you were right. We finished 5th in the SEC and we aren't a lock bc our noncon was trash. Just say I was wrong, that was a dumbass schedule.

Coach34
05-18-2024, 09:02 PM
I certainly never claimed we have the "75th type of schedule." The numbers are what they are. We could have had an RPI in the mid-teens even at 17-13, even with the losses to Air Force and Austin Peay (RPIs of 110 and 146 by the way), even with the games we blew, if we had just scheduled a little smarter. It's just basic math.

The RPI formula has existed for years, and those have sucked for years. It's not like we were caught off guard in an understandable way.

And college coaches know about RPI and factor that in when looking at their team as to who they should schedule. Not to mention- sometimes in scheduling you have to get who you can get. Saying we should play La Tech for a weekend preconference and them telling us **** no way is the way the business is. Baseball budgets and such with non-SEC schools limits games they will play as well

Coach34
05-18-2024, 09:03 PM
Lolol, you are still arguing that you were right. We finished 5th in the SEC and we aren't a lock bc our noncon was trash. Just say I was wrong, that was a dumbass schedule.

explain how losing more games to a tougher schedule would help us? You cant do it.

Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 09:13 PM
explain how losing more games to a tougher schedule would help us? You cant do it.

Do you just not read posts before you reply? NO ONE has said "we should have played a tougher schedule and lost more games."

The (indisputably correct) argument is that we should have replaced the 275-300 RPI teams on our schedule with 175-200 RPI teams and likely had the same record (or maybe 1 more loss in the worst case scenario) and that alone makes us a host instead of not a host.



And college coaches know about RPI and factor that in when looking at their team as to who they should schedule. Not to mention- sometimes in scheduling you have to get who you can get. Saying we should play La Tech for a weekend preconference and them telling us **** no way is the way the business is. Baseball budgets and such with non-SEC schools limits games they will play as well
Somehow almost every SEC team to ever go 17-13 in the 64-team era has had a good enough RPI to host. Not all of them of course, we failed ourselves in 2014 at 18-12 for this same reason. But acting like these very basic scheduling recommendations with are just too hard to reliably enact is ridiculous. Almost every figures this out every year. Unfortunately Mississippi State in 2024 failed to do that bare minimum, and in 2 weeks we'll be playing on the road as a result.

Todd4State
05-18-2024, 10:01 PM
Sometimes I hate being right. Maybe we can win a couple in the SECT. Horrible job by Lemonis with that schedule. We should easily be hosting.


Coach34, Homedawg, DownwardDawg, BrunswickDawg and Todd4state all were wrong. They all argued with me vigorously. I've got receipts.

Do your receipts say that we had a higher SOS than Tennessee and LSU?

Todd4State
05-18-2024, 10:03 PM
And college coaches know about RPI and factor that in when looking at their team as to who they should schedule. Not to mention- sometimes in scheduling you have to get who you can get. Saying we should play La Tech for a weekend preconference and them telling us **** no way is the way the business is. Baseball budgets and such with non-SEC schools limits games they will play as well

It's not like we can predict RPI preseason. We could schedule La Tech next year and their RPI might be 100.

Todd4State
05-18-2024, 10:05 PM
Lolol, you are still arguing that you were right. We finished 5th in the SEC and we aren't a lock bc our noncon was trash. Just say I was wrong, that was a dumbass schedule.

No we aren't a lock because we lost to teams like Central Arkansas. If you beat those teams your RPI doesn't go down nearly as much and that is a fact.

Todd4State
05-18-2024, 10:07 PM
This is the current RPI number one team. What a murderer's row like Texas Southern!**

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Texas-AM

Coach34
05-18-2024, 10:10 PM
It's not like we can predict RPI preseason. We could schedule La Tech next year and their RPI might be 100.

Exactamundo. You can project what a team has- but knowing how RPI will shape up is a guess.

aGAIN I say- take our 2 worst losses off this season and we are easily 10 points higher in RPI. Its not what you scheduled as much as it is who you lost to

Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 10:12 PM
It's really dumb to argue against an indisputably mathematically correct statement like "We played too many teams that lowered our RPI, despite the fact that we beat them, and are now suffering the consequences." Mt. St. Mary's, Alcorn State, and North Alabama consistently have RPIs in the 275-300 range, and we've all known for years that playing teams like that lowers your RPI even when you beat them.

Sure, we could have had a better record and gotten into the hosting range despite playing those teams, but even in that case we would be kicking ourselves for being the #12 national seed and playing on the road in the Supers instead of being the #6 or so. The fact remains that we knew we were setting ourselves up to be underseeded when we made the schedule and did it anyway. I don't know why this objectively true statement is facing pushback.

Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 10:16 PM
If Alcorn State usually had an RPI in the 150 range and just randomly was worse than 300 this year, I wouldn't blame anyone for scheduling them, and I wouldn't have used them as an example. Like, jeez, give me some credit for basic decency and reasonableness.

Obviously I know that you can't always predict where everyone's RPI is going to end up. But we could and should have predicted that Mt. St. Mary's, Alcorn, and North Alabama were going to be bad enough to hurt our resume even with a win. Huge self-inflicted error on our part.

RockyDog
05-18-2024, 10:39 PM
This team is HOSTING. BOOK IT. There is a segment of p u s s y fans that can’t stand that Lemons is the right coach for this team. Get over it, LOSERS

Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 10:42 PM
This team is HOSTING. BOOK IT. There is a segment of p u s s y fans that can’t stand that Lemons is the right coach for this team. Get over it, LOSERS

The only way this team hosts is that we make a deep run in Hoover, enough to get our RPI back into the teens, and then we get lucky and the selection committee takes that into account and lets us host.

It's not impossible, but it would be a departure from the way the committee has worked for the last few years.

Cooterpoot
05-18-2024, 10:58 PM
Our OOC schedule was one of the worst in the country.

Cooterpoot
05-18-2024, 10:59 PM
This team is HOSTING. BOOK IT. There is a segment of p u s s y fans that can’t stand that Lemons is the right coach for this team. Get over it, LOSERS

If we win a couple in Hoover, sure

HoopsDawg
05-18-2024, 11:10 PM
No we aren't a lock because we lost to teams like Central Arkansas. If you beat those teams your RPI doesn't go down nearly as much and that is a fact.

Todd, you told me 20 times our non conference didn't matter bc conference play will work everything out. Well, you were wrong. That's ok, it happens.

HoopsDawg
05-18-2024, 11:21 PM
Our OOC schedule was one of the worst in the country.

This thread is so funny to me. People just can't admit when they are wrong.

Quaoarsking
05-18-2024, 11:36 PM
Another fact. If instead of Mt. St. Mary's (who we knew beforehand would likely have an RPI worse than 250, probably closer to 300 and would hurt our resume three times even if we swept), we'd played just one of these teams, we would likely be hosting:
Arkansas State
Northwestern State
Charleston Southern
Texas A&M Corpus Christi
UTRGV


This isn't "play a good team and lose to them." This is play a team around 200 in RPI instead of a team around 300 in RPI. Would any of those teams have been willing to play us? Probably. But if all 5 were unavailable, there's about a dozen more we could have reached out to.

We knew that a weekend series against Mt. St. Mary's, in addition to playing several more midweek games against teams of that caliber, would hurt our RPI. No matter where we ended up in our record, it was going to cost us something. Cost us a top 8 seed, cost us a hosting bid (hey that's probably what happened!), cost us a 2 seed, cost us making a Regional at all, something. We were destined to end up a little bit worse than our record would typically get us.

What's the best case scenario now? We make a deep run in Hoover, maybe win it, get our RPI up and the committee makes a late change and lets us host after all. That would be awesome. If that happens, the usual suspects are going to be all like "haha I told you we would end up hosting!!!" and gloat and beat their chest. But actually, my earlier statement still holds. A team that goes 17-13 and wins the SEC Tournament is usually going to get a top 8 national seed, or maybe barely missing it. Instead in that scenario, we'll be like #13 or maybe worse.

So if we do make that run in Hoover, our poorly made schedule still cost us something, it's just a top 8 seed rather than a hosting bid overall. Don't let the usual suspects gloat if that happens.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:05 AM
Todd, you told me 20 times our non conference didn't matter bc conference play will work everything out. Well, you were wrong. That's ok, it happens.

Are we not in contention to host?

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:08 AM
Exactamundo. You can project what a team has- but knowing how RPI will shape up is a guess.

aGAIN I say- take our 2 worst losses off this season and we are easily 10 points higher in RPI. Its not what you scheduled as much as it is who you lost to

And no responses to the RPI 1 schedule I gave which included two SWAC teams. I could link others and again- no response will be given because it proves their point wrong.

If you win your OOC games RPI will not go down much if at all.

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 12:11 AM
And no responses to the RPI 1 schedule I gave which included two SWAC teams. I could link others and again- no response will be given because it proves their point wrong.

If you win your OOC games RPI will not go down much if at all.

When you play teams in the bottom 50 or so it does. Come on, we all know that and have discussed it when it happened this year.

I don't understand why you are trying to die on this hill that the schedule wasn't a problem. It was. We should be gaming our schedule every year to maximize RPI, hiring mathematical consultants if necessary. Instead we do the opposite and suffer the consequences.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:15 AM
Another fact. If instead of Mt. St. Mary's (who we knew beforehand would likely have an RPI worse than 250, probably closer to 300 and would hurt our resume three times even if we swept), we'd played just one of these teams, we would likely be hosting:
Arkansas State
Northwestern State
Charleston Southern
Texas A&M Corpus Christi
UTRGV


This isn't "play a good team and lose to them." This is play a team around 200 in RPI instead of a team around 300 in RPI. Would any of those teams have been willing to play us? Probably. But if all 5 were unavailable, there's about a dozen more we could have reached out to.

We knew that a weekend series against Mt. St. Mary's, in addition to playing several more midweek games against teams of that caliber, would hurt our RPI. No matter where we ended up in our record, it was going to cost us something. Cost us a top 8 seed, cost us a hosting bid (hey that's probably what happened!), cost us a 2 seed, cost us making a Regional at all, something. We were destined to end up a little bit worse than our record would typically get us.

What's the best case scenario now? We make a deep run in Hoover, maybe win it, get our RPI up and the committee makes a late change and lets us host after all. That would be awesome. If that happens, the usual suspects are going to be all like "haha I told you we would end up hosting!!!" and gloat and beat their chest. But actually, my earlier statement still holds. A team that goes 17-13 and wins the SEC Tournament is usually going to get a top 8 national seed, or maybe barely missing it. Instead in that scenario, we'll be like #13 or maybe worse.

So if we do make that run in Hoover, our poorly made schedule still cost us something, it's just a top 8 seed rather than a hosting bid overall. Don't let the usual suspects gloat if that happens.

You really think playing Arkansas State would have made that much of a difference? Seriously? That's what you're going with here? LOL. Their RPI was 211. Northwestern State was RPI 179. It's all quadrant four. Re-arranging deck chairs for the same result.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:19 AM
When you play teams in the bottom 50 or so it does. Come on, we all know that and have discussed it when it happened this year.

I don't understand why you are trying to die on this hill that the schedule wasn't a problem. It was. We should be gaming our schedule every year to maximize RPI, hiring mathematical consultants if necessary. Instead we do the opposite and suffer the consequences.

When you find that crystal ball to game RPI let Chris Lemonis know. In fact why don't you tell me right now who is going to have a satisfactory RPI and what it will be right now?

Also explain how come when we played and beat Mizzou our RPI didn't go down Thursday or Friday? That in and of itself proves you wrong right there.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:21 AM
https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Arkansas

This is RPI 2- good thing their crystal ball figured out that James Madison would be RPI 44 like we all knew.

And oh look at that- Arkansas Pine Bluff.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:24 AM
RPI 3 Kentucky. Everyone knew South Carolina Upstate would be RPI 87 and Lipscomb who has been a decent team would be RPI 221. Obviously.**

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Kentucky

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:27 AM
And now for the kill shot.

Tennessee- RPI in top 10 and SOS worse than MSU.

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Tennessee

What's the difference? 24-2 in OOC play. Win your OOC games and your RPI goes up. Period. Good night.

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 12:36 AM
You really think playing Arkansas State would have made that much of a difference? Seriously? That's what you're going with here? LOL. Their RPI was 211. Northwestern State was RPI 179. It's all quadrant four. Re-arranging deck chairs for the same result.

Yes. As in I literally have an Excel RPI workbook on my computer and replaced our wins over Mt. St. Mary's with wins over Arkansas State and it raised our RPI by 8-10 slots (give or take, because everyone else's schedules would have changed and it ripples out from there) just by switching those out. That's my point that I've said several times. We DON'T have to play a bunch of great teams to have a better RPI. Just swap out teams in the 275+ range with teams in the 175-200 range. It's just math.


When you find that crystal ball to game RPI let Chris Lemonis know. In fact why don't you tell me right now who is going to have a satisfactory RPI and what it will be right now?
Like I said, I wouldn't criticize our athletic department if we played a team that was usually in the 100s and just randomly happened to be in the 300s or high 200s this year. I picked those 3 schools on purpose because they consistently have terrible RPIs.


Also explain how come when we played and beat Mizzou our RPI didn't go down Thursday or Friday? That in and of itself proves you wrong right there.

Missouri's RPI is around 100. Mt. St. Mary's is around 300. I honestly am flabbergasted that you don't grasp the difference here.

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 12:38 AM
And now for the kill shot.

Tennessee- RPI in top 10 and SOS worse than MSU.

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Tennessee

What's the difference? 24-2 in OOC play. Win your OOC games and your RPI goes up. Period. Good night.

You participated in threads where we talked about how the Alcorn State and North Alabama wins hurt our RPI. You were one of the people who said we needed to cancel the North Alabama game because it would hurt our RPI. What is even going on here?

It's not just that you're literally arguing with math, it's that you understood this all along this season until tonight, when you suddenly felt the calling to defend the honor of our athletic department or something?

Coach34
05-19-2024, 01:07 AM
Damn Todd gonna get arrested for beating a poor soul like a slave from the 1830's

SpaceBully
05-19-2024, 04:48 AM
Yeah, but that was my point preseason. Just a decent non con and we are hosting. It was a scared schedule aimed to save his jobs or stack wins. It was not a schedule built to maximize RPI.

....normally play against some decent competition in those events, but probably for same reason you said.....Lemon was too scared to play in a tourney against good teams. This was easily our weakest OOC schedule in my memory. Need to get back in a tourney next year......@ Houston, @ Frisco, @ Arlington or any in Florida or the West Coast. Would be cool to get back into the Dodger Classic in LA. I think we played there a few years ago vs OK, UCLA, and USC.

TheLostDawg
05-19-2024, 06:50 AM
....normally play against some decent competition in those events, but probably for same reason you said.....Lemon was too scared to play in a tourney against good teams. This was easily our weakest OOC schedule in my memory. Need to get back in a tourney next year......@ Houston, @ Frisco, @ Arlington or any in Florida or the West Coast. Would be cool to get back into the Dodger Classic in LA. I think we played there a few years ago vs OK, UCLA, and USC.

We went from playing Texas tech in Gulfport to a mixed bag with new orleans and South Alabama, one of those games a loss. Very weak ooc schedule and I see why he did that. We are obviously keeping Lemonis but we can't keep playing scared turtle when it comes to schedule.

BrunswickDawg
05-19-2024, 07:42 AM
....normally play against some decent competition in those events, but probably for same reason you said.....Lemon was too scared to play in a tourney against good teams. This was easily our weakest OOC schedule in my memory. Need to get back in a tourney next year......@ Houston, @ Frisco, @ Arlington or any in Florida or the West Coast. Would be cool to get back into the Dodger Classic in LA. I think we played there a few years ago vs OK, UCLA, and USC.

If I recall correctly (and I may not, but apparently Hoops has the almighty receipts so he can let me know) - this was the point I argued about RPI. Our schedule, both non-con and conference have not been bad. Our OOC SOS is 143 and RPI is 57. Go back to 2022 when we were getting our asses kicked as defending national champ and we had a non-con SOS at 275 and RPI of 174. That is a shit schedule and we lost 9 times in OOC play. I know there are other seasons like that out there - and I pointed out '91 when we were literally playing NAIA and DII schools and losing to them.

Other than MSM - which I think is a legit schedule complaint - we played teams we have played regularly going back decades. And as I pointed out, have lost to a number times and it not really effected our post season chances. As always it's about winning games. winning against MSM vs. someone else with a lower RPI likely wouldn't have changed that - because at the end of the day we lost too many games.

Frankly, with the unknowns we had coming into the season, I don't think our scheduling was a bad approach.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 08:13 AM
Yes. As in I literally have an Excel RPI workbook on my computer and replaced our wins over Mt. St. Mary's with wins over Arkansas State and it raised our RPI by 8-10 slots (give or take, because everyone else's schedules would have changed and it ripples out from there) just by switching those out. That's my point that I've said several times. We DON'T have to play a bunch of great teams to have a better RPI. Just swap out teams in the 275+ range with teams in the 175-200 range. It's just math.


Like I said, I wouldn't criticize our athletic department if we played a team that was usually in the 100s and just randomly happened to be in the 300s or high 200s this year. I picked those 3 schools on purpose because they consistently have terrible RPIs.



Missouri's RPI is around 100. Mt. St. Mary's is around 300. I honestly am flabbergasted that you don't grasp the difference here.

And again you don't understand that RPI is completely random and an unknown before the season. I'm flabbergasted that you don't understand that. We have literally played people like Arizona before and their RPI ended up being 100. And I provided multiple examples of teams that had RPI's in the top 100 that were no name teams like Xavier. Still waiting on you tell me who is going to be RPI top 100 next year. You can't. Chris Lemonis can't. Kendall Rogers can't. That's my point.

When we played North Alabama and won our RPI dropped 2 spots. That's it. That literally just happened.

Homedawg
05-19-2024, 08:18 AM
And now for the kill shot.

Tennessee- RPI in top 10 and SOS worse than MSU.

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Tennessee

What's the difference? 24-2 in OOC play. Win your OOC games and your RPI goes up. Period. Good night.

This is a fact. If take away the bad losses, we are fine.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 08:20 AM
You participated in threads where we talked about how the Alcorn State and North Alabama wins hurt our RPI. You were one of the people who said we needed to cancel the North Alabama game because it would hurt our RPI. What is even going on here?

It's not just that you're literally arguing with math, it's that you understood this all along this season until tonight, when you suddenly felt the calling to defend the honor of our athletic department or something?

I did say that about North Alabama and our RPI dropped two points. That was also before the alleged memo came out about dropping teams to help RPI came out about the NCAA committee penalizing teams for doing so.

I've already provided examples of teams with lower SOS than MSU but had higher RPI's. You win games your RPI goes up. You lose to Central Arkansas it gets damaged. Badly.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 08:25 AM
....normally play against some decent competition in those events, but probably for same reason you said.....Lemon was too scared to play in a tourney against good teams. This was easily our weakest OOC schedule in my memory. Need to get back in a tourney next year......@ Houston, @ Frisco, @ Arlington or any in Florida or the West Coast. Would be cool to get back into the Dodger Classic in LA. I think we played there a few years ago vs OK, UCLA, and USC.

Tourneys are invitation only. They like to have different teams- and we have played in a lot of them recently. We'll be back in some soon but it's not something that is completely in our control.

Bdawg
05-19-2024, 08:34 AM
For the trillionth time, nobody is saying that we should have played really tough teams and lost to them. We just scheduled really weak teams in the sub-200 range that really ranked our RPI. Replace these 5 games (all 275 or worse):
3 vs. Mt. St. Mary's
1 vs. Alcorn State
1 vs. North Alabama

With teams who are around the 175-200 range, and our RPI is 8-10 spots higher. I just ran the calculation. We'd be safely hosting right now, not praying to make a deep run and then maybe have a shot. We'd still be playing bad teams that we should easily beat (you never know in baseball, but you never know with the 275-300 range either), but our RPI would be much better off. ETA: Even if we'd gone 4-1 against those 5 replacement teams instead of 5-0, we'd be much better off RPI-wise.

We've known for decades (literally) in any sport that playing teams in the high 100s doesn't tank your RPI, while playing teams in the high 200s does, and unless you suck, you shouldn't have a problem beating either, yet in every sport we continue to schedule like idiots.

Wasn?t north Alabama the last non con? What were they going to do if we canceled it? Factor it in like we played?

Bdawg
05-19-2024, 08:49 AM
Quaoarsking, what do the numbers say if we won all our non-con? Just curious if you don’t mind? This may settle the beef. I didn’t like our weak non-con either, but I can understand if you win them all it won’t hurt that bad. But if you happen to lose to some, I can only assume it’s much better to lose to team in 100-150 range than a team in 200+ range.

DawgFromOxford
05-19-2024, 09:25 AM
Both arguments can be true right?

Had we not lost so many poorly ranked OOC games I?m assuming we would be hosting regardless of who we scheduled.

Even with the losses we have, had we scheduled historically better RPI teams im assuming we would still probably be hosting.

HoopsDawg
05-19-2024, 10:29 AM
And now for the kill shot.

Tennessee- RPI in top 10 and SOS worse than MSU.

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Tennessee

What's the difference? 24-2 in OOC play. Win your OOC games and your RPI goes up. Period. Good night.

Haha, yeah, I mean if we had gone undefeated in the non conference our RPI would be higher. Same as if we had swept Arkansas on the road. That's not the point.

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 10:44 AM
And again you don't understand that RPI is completely random and an unknown before the season. I'm flabbergasted that you don't understand that. We have literally played people like Arizona before and their RPI ended up being 100. And I provided multiple examples of teams that had RPI's in the top 100 that were no name teams like Xavier. Still waiting on you tell me who is going to be RPI top 100 next year. You can't. Chris Lemonis can't. Kendall Rogers can't. That's my point.

When we played North Alabama and won our RPI dropped 2 spots. That's it. That literally just happened.

Again ... I'm not saying you have to know exactly where someone's RPI is going to be every year. But yes, you can make a really good guess if someone's RPI is going to be in the bottom 50 or somewhere in the middle.

Xavier's RPI has been in the top 100 in 4 of the last 5 years and #101 in the year it wasn't. So yes, I would have expected Xavier to probably be in the top 100 again this year, or worst case in the 150 - 200 range. Big East teams don't generally get much worse than that.

On the other hand, Alcorn State, North Alabama, and Mt. St. Mary's were always going to have terrible RPIs. Year in year out, most of the ASUN and MAAC are worse than 200 - Mt. St. Mary's actually had a winning conference record and still had an RPI of 284. Even if they had turned out to be unexpectedly good and won their conferences (which there was no reason to expect, but is always possible I guess), the best case scenario was going to be that those games were a wash for us. The SWAC is even worse. Every SWAC school is worse than 200, with 5 of the 12 (including Alcorn State as usual) in the bottom 15.

Again, you and Coach 34 are literally arguing with math. And it doesn't even make sense. Why are you being so defensive about this? Did your relative schedule the Mt. St. Mary's series or something? Our athletic department screwed up when we scheduled that series because all indications, everything we knew going into it, suggested it would drag down our RPI, and it did. We should 100% adopt a "smart scheduling" mindset where we try to maximize our RPI, project teams are going to help our RPI the most, and use that in filling it out.

Edit: Todd directly acknowledges in the post that we dropped a couple of ranks by beating North Alabama. I listed 4 other games against teams with worse RPIs than North Alabama. So even if he doesn't understand the guts of RPI calculation, he gets the concept that you can lose 2 ranks by playing 1 team with an RPI that bad. So what happens when we play 5 games against teams that bad? And we know historical RPIs of these teams and know that those schools are consistently this bad, that it wasn't some freak fluke thing? You're basically there, Todd. You're not a disloyal fan or anything if you just acknowledge the numbers for what they are.

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 10:59 AM
Quaoarsking, what do the numbers say if we won all our non-con? Just curious if you don’t mind? This may settle the beef. I didn’t like our weak non-con either, but I can understand if you win them all it won’t hurt that bad. But if you happen to lose to some, I can only assume it’s much better to lose to team in 100-150 range than a team in 200+ range.

If we had gone 25-0 in the non-conference instead of 19-6, I have our RPI at #9.

Or if we hadn't scheduled Mt. St. Mary's, North Alabama, or Alcorn State and replaced them with teams around #200, and then gone 25-0, our RPI could have been #6. (It's hard to improve much in the rankings at the highest levels because teams aren't bunched together anymore.)

But the thing is that almost no one ever goes literally undefeated in the non-conference. (Texas A&M did this year, and that's a key reason why they're #1, in addition to a great SEC record.) We can't really count on that. What we can count on is not scheduling games that we know are very likely to hurt our RPI. It would have been very easy to schedule someone other than Mt. St. Mary's for a weekend series. Is it possible that that replacement team could have surprisingly been terrible and hurt us anyway? Sure. But we knew that even in a best case scenario that a program like Mt. St. Mary's wasn't going to be able to have a good enough RPI not to hurt us.

Bdawg
05-19-2024, 11:04 AM
If we had gone 25-0 in the non-conference instead of 19-6, I have our RPI at #9.

Or if we hadn't scheduled Mt. St. Mary's, North Alabama, or Alcorn State and replaced them with teams around #200, and then gone 25-0, our RPI could have been #6. (It's hard to improve much in the rankings at the highest levels because teams aren't bunched together anymore.)

But the thing is that almost no one ever goes literally undefeated in the non-conference. (Texas A&M did this year, and that's a key reason why they're #1, in addition to a great SEC record.) We can't really count on that. What we can count on is not scheduling games that we know are very likely to hurt our RPI. It would have been very easy to schedule someone other than Mt. St. Mary's for a weekend series. Is it possible that that replacement team could have surprisingly been terrible and hurt us anyway? Sure. But we knew that even in a best case scenario that a program like Mt. St. Mary's wasn't going to be able to have a good enough RPI not to hurt us.

With our non-con schedule, I think we knew from the beginning it was weak and didn’t need to lose many or there would be some kind detriment to our seasons results.

Cooterpoot
05-19-2024, 11:11 AM
RPI is a terrible metric with some lack of transparency. It's used by the NCAA to do whatever they want. Our other programs have been sent out west already, don't be surprised if baseball is sent there too. It's a BS system but we didn't do anything to help ourselves. Too much SWAC and not enough Swag.

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 11:17 AM
RPI is a terrible metric with some lack of transparency. It's used by the NCAA to do whatever they want. Our other programs have been sent out west already, don't be surprised if baseball is sent there too. It's a BS system but we didn't do anything to help ourselves. Too much SWAC and not enough Swag.

Agree that it's a terrible metric. It is not very predictive.

Disagree that it's not transparent. Anyone can build their own model to "check" the results although admittedly it's tough to know exactly which games count as home vs. neutral.

Despite all of that, the #1 takeaway is that it is manipulable. We could schedule in a way to maximize our RPI, but we don't. This exact team with its same record could have a better RPI, one that's good enough to host, without changing anything about our performance. We should be doing that in every sport that uses RPI. We should be looking to manipulate the NET to our advantage in basketball too.

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 11:21 AM
With our non-con schedule, I think we knew from the beginning it was weak and didn’t need to lose many or there would be some kind detriment to our seasons results.

Sure, or we could have not scheduled games against teams we knew would hurt our RPI and replaced them with teams that project into the 175-200 range, had the same 19-6 non-conference record, and we would be hosting right now.

I think we're probably around the 20th best team in America. We could have scheduled smart and gotten ourselves and RPI around #15, but instead we scheduled dumb and got ourselves and RPI of #23. "How can we maximize our RPI?" should be the top concern when making our schedule, and it's just crazy to me that that's apparently not a factor at all.

State82
05-19-2024, 11:40 AM
Our OOC schedule was one of the worst in the country.

It was by no means good but there are 4 conference teams with worse and a fifth, LSU, was only two spots better than ours.

Cooterpoot
05-19-2024, 11:40 AM
Imagine sweeping a conference opponent and your RPI falls. Teams have no control over that.
We can only schedule our OOC games and we really hurt ourselves with both scheduling and performance in those games. Even if we schedule great, if teams end up not being great later in the year, it hurts you. You get penalized for playing a team with injuries too. They might've been great to start but they fell off because of injury. Teams also get better as the season moves forward and there's no way to make up for those games really. You penalize a team playing great. You reward a team that might not be. We've been good late. But what happened 3 months ago is held over your head. It's a poor system.

State82
05-19-2024, 11:50 AM
Imagine sweeping a conference opponent and your RPI falls. Teams have no control over that.
We can only schedule our OOC games and we really hurt ourselves with both scheduling and performance in those games. Even if we schedule great, if teams end up not being great later in the year, it hurts you. You get penalized for playing a team with injuries too. They might've been great to start but they fell off because of injury. Teams also get better as the season moves forward and there's no way to make up for those games really. You penalize a team playing great. You reward a team that might not be. We've been good late. But what happened 3 months ago is held over your head. It's a poor system.

It is a poor system for sure. Like has been said already, you should be able to drop two or three of your worst rpi opponents at year end and calculate from there.

State82
05-19-2024, 11:57 AM
Sure, or we could have not scheduled games against teams we knew would hurt our RPI and replaced them with teams that project into the 175-200 range, had the same 19-6 non-conference record, and we would be hosting right now.
Question for you Q since you have the numbers. And I am assuming this is what you are talking about. For example say we play a 180 rpi team, at home of course, and lose. Or we play a 280 rpi team and win. How do those two scenarios compare?

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 12:04 PM
Again ... I'm not saying you have to know exactly where someone's RPI is going to be every year. But yes, you can make a really good guess if someone's RPI is going to be in the bottom 50 or somewhere in the middle.

Xavier's RPI has been in the top 100 in 4 of the last 5 years and #101 in the year it wasn't. So yes, I would have expected Xavier to probably be in the top 100 again this year, or worst case in the 150 - 200 range. Big East teams don't generally get much worse than that.

On the other hand, Alcorn State, North Alabama, and Mt. St. Mary's were always going to have terrible RPIs. Year in year out, most of the ASUN and MAAC are worse than 200 - Mt. St. Mary's actually had a winning conference record and still had an RPI of 284. Even if they had turned out to be unexpectedly good and won their conferences (which there was no reason to expect, but is always possible I guess), the best case scenario was going to be that those games were a wash for us. The SWAC is even worse. Every SWAC school is worse than 200, with 5 of the 12 (including Alcorn State as usual) in the bottom 15.

Again, you and Coach 34 are literally arguing with math. And it doesn't even make sense. Why are you being so defensive about this? Did your relative schedule the Mt. St. Mary's series or something? Our athletic department screwed up when we scheduled that series because all indications, everything we knew going into it, suggested it would drag down our RPI, and it did. We should 100% adopt a "smart scheduling" mindset where we try to maximize our RPI, project teams are going to help our RPI the most, and use that in filling it out.

Edit: Todd directly acknowledges in the post that we dropped a couple of ranks by beating North Alabama. I listed 4 other games against teams with worse RPIs than North Alabama. So even if he doesn't understand the guts of RPI calculation, he gets the concept that you can lose 2 ranks by playing 1 team with an RPI that bad. So what happens when we play 5 games against teams that bad? And we know historical RPIs of these teams and know that those schools are consistently this bad, that it wasn't some freak fluke thing? You're basically there, Todd. You're not a disloyal fan or anything if you just acknowledge the numbers for what they are.

Accuses me of arguing with math. Then admits that our RPI would be 9 had we won all of our games in the very next post. So in other words win the games and you minimize any hit.

I'm laughing at you because you don't get it and won't get it. Maybe you will if Arkansas State is RPI 200+ next year which is possible.

Goldendawg
05-19-2024, 12:33 PM
Hasn't it been posted here many times by many of our learned "experts" in this RPI formula, that if you schedule a tougher opponent and lose, the RPI fall is minimal? But you can even beat a cupcake (that we seem to have scheduled too many of), and still fall? And Heaven forbid you lose to said cupcakes ( and at home games of course) you fall off the RPI cliff. Or was this a basketball only formula? Color me confused.

HoopsDawg
05-19-2024, 12:39 PM
Post from Todd:

QUOTE=Todd4State;1582351]I don't really understand why MSU fans always run down the OOC schedule other than we like to see good baseball games. And it seems like every time we play someone like Arizona they have a down year and end up being a RPI killer.

None of this really matters much. How we do in SEC play will determine our postseason fate. It's fun to look at RPI but our true magic number is 13 SEC wins.

As far as this year we would be dumb to play a killer schedule OOC. We're rebuilding our pitching staff and four weeks to build some confidence and figure out roles is what we need to do.
[/QUOTE]

Goldendawg
05-19-2024, 12:40 PM
And now for the kill shot.

Tennessee- RPI in top 10 and SOS worse than MSU.

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2024/schedule/Tennessee

What's the difference? 24-2 in OOC play. Win your OOC games and your RPI goes up. Period. Good night.

But did they lose 5 Quad 4 games to these teams? We win against these type teams, no problem and no discussion. We seemed to think we could just beat these teams based on the name on our jerseys for several of these games. Coming off the '22 and '23 seasons this is squarely on the Coaching staff and players for sleep walking through several of these mid-week games. Winning solves most all problems.

HoopsDawg
05-19-2024, 12:44 PM
Coach34:

QUOTE=Coach34;1582279]This. We'll have a top SOS at the end of the season. Every SEC team will.

23-3 OOC is very realistic when you consider last year's team was 18-5 OOC[/QUOTE]


I could go on and on, but I won't.

It's not hard to say, I was wrong, hoops and others were right. Lemo screwed up.

Goldendawg
05-19-2024, 12:47 PM
Tourneys are invitation only. They like to have different teams- and we have played in a lot of them recently. We'll be back in some soon but it's not something that is completely in our control.

Doubt we were an attractive tourney invite after '22 and '23. Might hurt the RPI of the good teams in said tourney to lose to us by arguments on this thread.****

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 12:49 PM
Accuses me of arguing with math. Then admits that our RPI would be 9 had we won all of our games in the very next post. So in other words win the games and you minimize any hit.

I'm laughing at you because you don't get it and won't get it. Maybe you will if Arkansas State is RPI 200+ next year which is possible.

Yes, you are arguing with math because for some reason you think I'm attacking Lemonis over this (I'm not, it's just numbers) and you want to reflexively defend him.

Asking the team to go 25-0 in the non-conference is unrealistic. Every baseball team drops a couple of games here and there. Yes, Texas A&M didn't lose a non-conference game so far this year, but they're the only one in the country out of 305. Last year it was just 1 team (Virginia). In 2022 it was nobody. It's not something you can realistically expect even a great team to do.

On the other hand, asking the athletic department not schedule games that we know with high certainty will hurt our RPI is realistic, or at the very least don't schedule FIVE of them. That's an easy problem to fix. Whoever is in charge of scheduling baseball games hurt this team before the season even started, and probably took away a hosting bid from us.

Again, it's really bizarre that you're arguing against this. Did you hit your head this morning? Did your wife schedule the Mt. St. Mary's series? It's just basic mathematics of the RPI formula, something we've all understood for years and discussed many times in the decade+ this season has existed, including as recently as a week ago, discussions which you participated in and agreed that scheduling North Alabama was a bad idea (!)

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 12:55 PM
Here's a summary for those who don't want to read the whole thread:



"Hey guys I've run the numbers and found out an easy way we could have had a better RPI just with smarter scheduling. We should do that going forward."

"THAT'S NOT TRUE! YOU'RE MAKING THAT UP!"

"No, it is. I have an Excel model and replaced the games to measure the impact."

"NO! IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE KNOWN THAT PROGRAMS LIKE MT. ST. MARY'S AND ALCORN STATE WOULD HAVE HAD SUCH BAD RPIS! NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED THAT, NOT EVEN KENDALL ROGERS!"

"Actually, those teams routinely have really bad RPIs, so we had a pretty good idea that they would again this year. If we had just aimed for teams in that 150-200 range we would be hosting."

"NO! THE SCHEDULE WAS FINE! WE SHOULD HAVE JUST GONE 25-0 AGAINST THE NON-CONFERENCE PORTION!"

"I mean, yeah, that would have helped our RPI, but that's not very realistic. And even if we had gone 25-0, it still would have been better to not play 5 games against teams that would plummet our RPI. And didn't you agree with me on this like a week ago, only to flip on this thread?"

"YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!"

Commercecomet24
05-19-2024, 07:55 PM
Delete

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 08:46 PM
But did they lose 5 Quad 4 games to these teams? We win against these type teams, no problem and no discussion. We seemed to think we could just beat these teams based on the name on our jerseys for several of these games. Coming off the '22 and '23 seasons this is squarely on the Coaching staff and players for sleep walking through several of these mid-week games. Winning solves most all problems.

Exactly. Good to see someone gets it.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 08:58 PM
Yes, you are arguing with math because for some reason you think I'm attacking Lemonis over this (I'm not, it's just numbers) and you want to reflexively defend him.

Asking the team to go 25-0 in the non-conference is unrealistic. Every baseball team drops a couple of games here and there. Yes, Texas A&M didn't lose a non-conference game so far this year, but they're the only one in the country out of 305. Last year it was just 1 team (Virginia). In 2022 it was nobody. It's not something you can realistically expect even a great team to do.

On the other hand, asking the athletic department not schedule games that we know with high certainty will hurt our RPI is realistic, or at the very least don't schedule FIVE of them. That's an easy problem to fix. Whoever is in charge of scheduling baseball games hurt this team before the season even started, and probably took away a hosting bid from us.

Again, it's really bizarre that you're arguing against this. Did you hit your head this morning? Did your wife schedule the Mt. St. Mary's series? It's just basic mathematics of the RPI formula, something we've all understood for years and discussed many times in the decade+ this season has existed, including as recently as a week ago, discussions which you participated in and agreed that scheduling North Alabama was a bad idea (!)

Where am I defending Lemonis in any of this? My annoyance is every year fans like you bitch about our easy OOC schedule no matter what and if we win it takes care of itself. And lo and behold we sit here with 17 SEC wins and are in the thick of the hosting conversation. So no- I wasn't wrong. You are. And you decided to call me out even though you were wrong while repeatedly ignoring the examples I provided that show you were obviously wrong. We didn't win enough so our RPI didn't get high enough. We beat Central Arkansas and South Alabama and we're fine.

I do agree it's unrealistic to expect a team to go 26-0 OOC. However it's not unrealistic to expect us to go 22-4 or 23-3. And had that happened our RPI would have been much higher. The fact that your own data shows you that the ceiling of our schedule is a RPI of 9 in and of itself proves you wrong but you don't get it. So now you're stuck making up BS about my wife wanting us to play St. Mary's because you can't even defend your own findings.

So again- no we're not here because of our schedule. We're here because the team didn't beat what was on the schedule enough. You think you can "game" RPI and you really can't. Which is why you still haven't told me who we should schedule next year yet. And won't be able to because I actually understand RPI and you clearly have no clue. It's actually pretty funny. You're like someone declaring the Earth is really flat because that's what it looks like to your eye but everyone else knows you're wrong.

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 09:01 PM
Here's a summary for those who don't want to read the whole thread:



"Hey guys I've run the numbers and found out an easy way we could have had a better RPI just with smarter scheduling. We should do that going forward."

"THAT'S NOT TRUE! YOU'RE MAKING THAT UP!"

"No, it is. I have an Excel model and replaced the games to measure the impact."

"NO! IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE KNOWN THAT PROGRAMS LIKE MT. ST. MARY'S AND ALCORN STATE WOULD HAVE HAD SUCH BAD RPIS! NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED THAT, NOT EVEN KENDALL ROGERS!"

"Actually, those teams routinely have really bad RPIs, so we had a pretty good idea that they would again this year. If we had just aimed for teams in that 150-200 range we would be hosting."

"NO! THE SCHEDULE WAS FINE! WE SHOULD HAVE JUST GONE 25-0 AGAINST THE NON-CONFERENCE PORTION!"

"I mean, yeah, that would have helped our RPI, but that's not very realistic. And even if we had gone 25-0, it still would have been better to not play 5 games against teams that would plummet our RPI. And didn't you agree with me on this like a week ago, only to flip on this thread?"

"YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!"

Here's the real summary:

Quaors doesn't understand RPI and his own findings prove him hilariously wrong so now he is blaming Todd4State's wife for scheduling St. Mary's and creating straw men while trying to ignore Todd4State's examples that also prove Quoars wrong.

But no one is buying it.

Coach34
05-19-2024, 09:04 PM
Schedule:

Austin Peay tied for their conference title- 35-19 this season
Evansville tied for 2nd in their conference
MSM finished 4th in their conference
Air Force won the Mountain West
Samford finished 2nd in their conference
New Orleans was 3rd in their conference
Southern Miss was 2nd/Georgia Southern was 4th

Coach34
05-19-2024, 09:08 PM
Quaors doesn't understand RPI and his own findings prove him hilariously wrong so now he is blaming Todd4State's wife for scheduling St. Mary's .

You finally tricked that chick into marrying you? Good job

My future son-n-law will be joining you in Nola at work this Fall- maybe my daughter as well. Both are pharmacists

Todd4State
05-19-2024, 10:35 PM
You finally tricked that chick into marrying you? Good job

My future son-n-law will be joining you in Nola at work this Fall- maybe my daughter as well. Both are pharmacists

LOL. No not yet. She has said the "hey let's go look in that jewelry store though.

If they're pharmacists there is a chance I'll run across them in NOLA. It's an awesome city. I love it!

Quaoarsking
05-19-2024, 11:57 PM
"You don't understand RPI" to the guy who built his own RPI workbook in Excel and is running hypothetical scenarios. I kinda think I'm getting pranked here? It's hard to pick up on tone on a message board.