I’ve seen some silly suggestions here and there that Virginia’s conference basketball schedule has been easy. But now that a semi-serious journalist like Bob Molinaro has written to the world that a “favorable unbalanced schedule has helped the Cavaliers tie for first in the ACC standings,” it’s time for some debunking with the help of my friends.

First off, as someone on the boards pointed out (sorry, can’t find the post now), obviously the top teams in the ACC will have beaten a lot of the bad teams in the ACC. So, yes, UVa has beaten a lot of bad teams. What a surprise!

Now, let’s get a bit more specific….

Kenny Saw does a bang-up job destroying the myth in this post.* He so good here, that I’ll post the whole thing here to preserve his analysis forever:

There are 100 ways to calculate this, but I just went simple: Seed for the tourney as of today, multiplied by 0.6 for a home game and 1.4 for a road game (the same weighting RPI uses).

This approach can’t be used for the whole league; it would look like the top teams had easy schedules, while the bottom ones had tough roads. Well, that’s ’cause the top teams beat the bottom teams. That said, it is a reasonable way to compare the top 4 teams’ SOS.

Here’s what you find:

Virginia Tech has played the toughest schedule of the top four (82.6), UVa is a close second (79.4), and UNC (71.6) and BC (63.4) had much easier paths. Please note that BC’s pathetic SOS comes AFTER them playing an additional game as compared to the other top 4 teams. VPI’s 5 home, 7 road is a contributor to their top SOS, but they would still be 0.8 points ahead of us if that last game they played had been at home.

Using this scoring system, and looking forward, BC’s total SOS would wind up 87.4. UVa’s would be 92.6. So they will close the gap considerably by the end of the season, but still have a weaker schedule than us.

Why is that, you ask? Well, excepting Duke, BC has played only the bottom half of the league on the road. It’s hard to whine about having to
play GT and VT on the road to end the season, when they’ve already notched road dates with Wake, Miami and NCSU while we were playing
at BC, UNC and VT. Like us, they home-and-home with VPI, but then they had home games only with UNC and UVa. We, conversely, played only road games in those contests. That is why our schedule is tougher
than theirs, hands down…

UVA:
1,2,3,4,7,8 at home = 25 X 0.6 = 15
3,5,7,9,10,12 on road = 46 X 1.4 = 64.4
Total SOS = 79.4
6,9 left at home
1,2 left on road
Pro Forma SOS = 24 + 68.6 = 92.6

VPI:
2,3,7,11,12 at home = 35 X 0.6 = 21
1,3,4,6,8,10,12 on road = 44 X 1.4 = 61.6
Total SOS = 82.6
1,5,10 left at home
11 left on road
Pro Forma SOS = 30.6 + 77 = 107.6

UNC:
1,2,4,6,9,11 at home = 33 X 0.6 = 19.8
2,3,5,8,9,10 on road = 37 X 1.4 = 51.8
Total SOS = 71.6
3,8 left at home
6,7 left on road
Pro Forma SOS = 26.4 + 70 = 96.4

BC:
1,4,7,8,9,11,12 at home = 52 X 0.6 = 31.2
1,2,3,4,5,8 on road = 23 X 1.4 = 32.2
Total SOS = 63.4
5 left at home
6,9 left on road
Pro Forma SOS = 34.2 + 53.2 = 87.4

Great analysis. Note the critical point that we played the top teams in the conference on the road. In contrast, BC and UNC hosted more of the top teams than the Hoos did. So, it looks like this lack of balance tips against Virginia.

And, if the lack of “balance” is due to whether we play the top teams twice or not, it’s not like UNC and BC are playing a “balanced” schedules themselves. Each only played the other teams in the current top three once, and we all play the Hokies twice. So, I beginning to wonder if Bob just noticed that we don’t play Duke in Durham, and started typing away.

And even if Virginia’s schedule was either easier or less balanced than the other top teams (which it appears that it is not), I’ll let Hoodlum explain another important factor via the Edge board* (formalized formatting by me):

…. the same bozos could have read it when they picked us 8th in the conference a few months ago.

I also wonder how many coaches are going to say that sweeping MD and NCSU were easy games, given what they are doing in conference right now. To me, the only realy pass we get this season is avoiding going to Cameron. I would not be upset about getting a shot at BC, Clemp, or NC at home.

Exactly. If our schedule was truly weaker from the outset, rather than due to the fact that we’re kicking butt and other supposedly strong teams are not, then Bob would’ve written that line at the beginning of the season. Some teams didn’t have to play once-ranked Maryland two times – including all of the other top four teams – but had the Terps beaten us both times, this would fuel an imbalance in our disfavor in Bob’s world.

As Kenny pointed out, our schedule has turned out to be pretty tough. And as Hoodlum pointed out, our schedule was pretty tough to begin with.

Finally, I’ll close out with the most important consideration – we’re beating the good teams on our schedule too. As ESPN columnist Phil Forde pointed out:

Record versus RPI top 50 (11): Simple part of the equation: How have you done against the highest-caliber teams you’d be facing in the NCAAs?

Who’s bragging: Butler (4-1), Creighton (5-3), Oregon (5-3), Vanderbilt (5-3), Notre Dame (4-3), Stanford (5-4), Boston College (6-5) and Virginia (6-5)….

Signature wins (13): Defined for this exercise as a victory over an opponent in the current RPI top 25.

Who’s bragging (to make this list you must have more than one, and at least one must be away from home): … Virginia (four, three at home and one on the road) …

Even setting aside the win (Arizona) and losses (Purdue, Standford) out of conference, Forde’s observation shows that we’re beating some good ACC teams regardless of our allegedly soft schedule. Wins against top 50 RPI teams like Duke, Clemson (on the road), Maryland (twice), and FSU show that the discussion about an easy schedule is not only false, it’s a bit deceptive if you don’t also mention that we’re beating the best teams on the schedule while making that accusation. And I wonder if Bob bothered to mention that when he suggested we’re just some cupcake-fattened team? Nope.

(So as not to be deceptive, I’ll note that Hoodlum also opined that “the ‘favorable unbalanced schedule’ thing is true to an extent.” I think that Kenny debunked that assertion, so I moved that part of Hoodlum’s opinion down here so as not to distract from his larger point.)

*message board links that will expire

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Men's Basketball, UVa Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.