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2002 Intended Schedule Strength

Publication Date: February 12, 2002

Bring 'em On

The 2002 Strength of Schedule numbers for the preseason are out, and I wanted to take this week to look at some of the details. The usual disclaimers apply, most notably that there's no moral compulsion to play a tough schedule, but strength of schedule has to be considered in determining a team's quality.

As always, any relationship between these rankings and the actual strength of schedule at the end of the season is purely coincidental. Schedules change due to rainouts and makeups. These rankings are based on last year's ISR's; obviously, each of a team's opponents will change in quality from last year to this year, and the changes don't always cancel out. In practice, though, a team's SoS ranking at the end of the year tends to end up within about 25 spots of where it begins.

Because last year was such a heavily dominant year for the West Coast -- the Pac-10 and Big West went 1 and 2 in the conference ISR's for last year -- and those teams tend to schedule mostly each other, all of the toughest schedules are out west this year, at least at this point. The toughest schedule by a non-Western team is LSU way down at #21. Obviously, this could change some if there's a general quality dip for the West Coast conferences. It's too early to tell if that's going to happen, although it's hard to imagine another year like last year -- the only real points I can find so far off-hand are the Arizona State-Tennessee, Tulane-Pepperdine and Stanford-Florida State series, although lots of smaller series will factor in before it's over.

Southern California once again has scheduled the nation's toughest schedule. I won't read you the whole list, of course, but here's the top 10 for non-conference schedules, since I don't have it sorted that way:

      All            Non-conf
Rank SoS   SD    Rank SoS   SD

 13 112.8  7.5     1 118.2  4.5   Loyola Marymount
  2 116.7  6.9     2 116.6  5.9   Long Beach State
  1 116.9  7.2     3 116.5  7.7   Southern California
  5 115.5  7.3     4 116.1  8.0   Cal State Fullerton
  6 114.7  6.9     5 116.0  8.6   Fresno State
 23 111.6  8.2     6 115.3  7.2   Houston
 17 112.5  7.8     7 114.9  5.6   Hawaii
  4 115.7  6.6     8 114.3  6.7   Stanford
  3 116.1  8.7     9 114.2  9.2   UCLA
  8 113.3  7.0    10 114.1  8.5   Nevada

A few that are playing tough schedules in an attempt to outgrow their conference affiliations or generally strengthen their programs:

      All            Non-conf
Rank SoS   SD    Rank SoS   SD

 32 110.3 10.0    24 110.7 10.1   Miami, Florida
 49 108.4  7.3    19 111.9  6.0   Louisiana-Lafayette
 73 106.2  8.0    29 110.0  7.8   Creighton
 76 105.7  7.8    30 110.0  9.3   Brigham Young
 78 105.5  8.3    27 110.3  9.8   San Diego State
222  91.3 15.0    69 105.3  9.3   Mississippi Valley State

The Louisiana-Lafayette schedule may be an example of the lag time that can sometimes occur in scheduling; some schools try to schedule 2-3 years ahead, so their 2002 schedule may be a reflection of the success of the 2000 team.

Finally, the average non-conference strength of schedule for each conference:

112.7 WCC
111.0 Big West
110.9 WAC
109.7 Pac 10
107.3 Mountain West
105.8 C-USA
104.3 Big 12
103.1 Southland
103.0 SEC
102.7 Sun Belt
102.0 MVC
101.8 ACC
100.8 OVC
100.6 Mid-Continent
 99.5 Atlantic Sun
 98.9 Big Ten
 98.7 Independents
 98.7 Big South
 97.9 Southern
 96.3 MAC
 94.3 CAA
 94.2 MEAC
 93.8 Horizon
 93.8 Big East
 92.1 Atlantic 10
 91.7 Ivy
 90.3 MAAC
 90.0 SWAC
 89.9 Patriot
 89.0 NEC
 88.7 America East

The SWAC numbers are somewhat skewed by Alcorn State, who has no games scheduled against non-conference Division I opponents. The code I wrote accidentally ends up counting that as a 0; since I don't have any idea what to do with it, bump them up a few spaces if you like.


Pitch Count Watch

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye.

Date Team Pitcher Opponent IP H R ER BB SO AB BF Pitches
Feb 15 Louisiana State Bo Pettit Mercer 7.2 8 4 0 3 12 31 35 123
Feb 16 Mercer Brett Jarrett Louisiana State 6.1 7 5 5 5 7 22 29 125

(*) Pitch count is estimated.

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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> 2002 Intended Schedule Strength About the author, Boyd Nation