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Grist for the Hot Stove

This week I take my annual look at schedule issues. The full list of intended schedule strength numbers is online; here are the top twenty:

      All            Non-conf
Rank SoS   SD    Rank SoS   SD   Team

  1 114.6  6.5     6 113.3  6.4   Long Beach State
  2 114.4  5.2     5 113.5  6.1   Southern California
  3 114.2  5.1     1 114.0  5.6   UCLA
  4 113.7  5.8     4 113.6  7.2   Stanford
  5 113.1  6.5     8 112.0  7.0   Cal Poly
  6 112.8  6.3    11 111.7  6.8   Pacific
  7 112.7  5.3    14 111.1  5.3   Cal State Northridge
  8 112.5  5.0     9 112.0  6.2   Cal State Fullerton
  9 112.4  5.5    16 110.5  5.2   UC Santa Barbara
 10 111.8  6.1    18 110.2  7.2   Texas
 11 111.4  6.3    24 109.3  5.9   UC Riverside
 12 111.3  5.9    23 109.4  5.5   UC Irvine
 13 111.3  6.8    13 111.3  6.8   UC Davis
 14 111.2  6.9    30 107.4  6.7   California
 15 111.0  6.2    12 111.3  6.8   Portland
 16 110.8  6.2     7 112.3  5.8   San Diego
 17 110.6  8.7    37 106.7 10.1   Texas A&M
 18 110.4  8.0    27 108.5 10.5   Georgia
 19 110.3  6.1    10 111.9  6.2   Pepperdine
 20 110.3  9.1    33 106.8 10.8   Baylor

There's only one SEC team in the top 20 (and no ACC teams, of course), but the overall trend is positive; there are six SEC teams in the top 40 this year. The toughest ACC team is Clemson at #38.

The ten toughest non-conference schedules:

 1.  UCLA
 2.  Nevada-Las Vegas
 3.  San Diego State
 4.  Stanford
 5.  Southern California
 6.  Long Beach State
 7.  San Diego
 8.  Cal Poly
 9.  Cal State Fullerton
10.  Pepperdine

As usual, the non-conference series that the Pac-10 teams play against each other (I mean it, cut that out; you're hurting yourselves by limiting your number of opponents) aren't counted here, so adjust mentally as needed. As an aside, that's the second straight year for that parenthetical; that practice also hurts the conference teams that don't participate in it, so if you were, say, Pat Murphy or Steve Rousey, you might want to consider putting some pressure on your conference mates to stop.

Teams with the highest standard deviation in their opponent strength (who are therefore harder to rate):

 1.  Western Illinois
 2.  Mississippi Valley State
 3.  Hawaii-Hilo
 4.  Duke
 5.  Jackson State
 6.  Savannah State
 7.  Florida A&M
 8.  Maryland
 9.  Boston College
10.  Memphis

Finally, the 25 teams most likely to be overrated by the RPI:

 1.  Bucknell
 2.  South Florida
 3.  Holy Cross
 4.  Wofford
 5.  Connecticut
 6.  St. Joseph's
 7.  Seton Hall
 8.  Northeastern
 9.  Hartford
10.  Towson
11.  Iona
12.  Cornell
13.  Coastal Carolina
14.  Virginia Tech
15.  Rutgers
16.  Vermont
17.  Wake Forest
18.  Radford
19.  Maryland
20.  Lafayette
21.  George Mason
22.  William and Mary
23.  Penn State
24.  Miami, Florida
25.  Maryland-Baltimore County

And the most likely to be underrated:

 1.  Utah
 2.  South Dakota State
 3.  UC Riverside
 4.  Alcorn State
 5.  UC Irvine
 6.  San Diego State
 7.  UC Davis
 8.  Washington
 9.  Western Illinois
10.  Loyola Marymount
11.  Cal State Fullerton
12.  Oregon State
13.  Santa Clara
14.  Savannah State
15.  St. Mary's
16.  Cal State Sacramento
17.  San Francisco
18.  San Jose State
19.  Brigham Young
20.  Hawaii
21.  Pacific
22.  Utah Valley State
23.  Nevada
24.  New Mexico State
25.  Air Force

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Grist for the Hot Stove

About the author, Boyd Nation