Posted by vegaskevin on 3/26/2020 12:26:00 PM (view original):
The highest prestige I'm qualified for is B- Harvard.
The rest of them are C and below.
I think this is a load of crap. It is pretty tough to get a decent seed in the NT when you're playing 14 sim games in conference a season.
I automatically lose out on most recruits that desire a good conference.
2nd round NT 2 of last 3 seasons, 9 straight 20 win seasons. NT or PI 5 of the last 6 seasons.
Conference division winner 8 out of 9 seasons.
Yet ineligible for better jobs.
Looks like I'm dropping this world.
Dang. I had quite the write up on this and accidentally closed the page.
Anyway, I wish you'd stick at VMI one or two more seasons as a few small changes will put your right where you want to be. I (admittedly, selfish of me) guess I'm glad I won't see your team in recruiting trails around VA if you do leave, but I think you're giving up on a great squad and really strong situation! Besides all of that, I'm all for criticizing HD but only if it's justified and I don't know if your situation is unfair by any means.
"I think this is a load of crap. It is pretty tough to get a decent seed in the NT when you're playing 14 sim games in conference a season."
- Hard disagree. It's only tough to get a decent seed when playing so many SIMS in conference AND scheduling one of the easiest non-conferences. I'm almost sure it was you who made a post about your successes not being valued several seasons ago during job applications. The overall response in the thread could be narrowed down to "dude, you need to schedule a more difficult out of conference". It looks like you've changed all your games to away games, which is great, but it doesn't help if you're beating teams like @Rutgers and @Arkansas (both have 270+ RPI). It won't boost you at all if you win and puts you at some serious RPI trouble if some weird roll-of-the-dice simulation doesn't go in your favor.
- Teams like Oral Roberts (5 seed), Marquette (7 seed), Cal Poly SLO (8 seed) - heck even Oakland and Santa Clara coached by SIMS (9 seeds) - had higher seeds than yourself and they all played just as much, if not more, SIMS in conference.
- Scheduling road games against teams you think you'll beat, not knowing you'll beat, is key.
"I automatically lose out on most recruits that desire a good conference."
- I'm surprised you think this considering how well you do in recruiting. I think you have one of the more talented teams amongst mid majors, if not amongst D1, and you limit that with scheduling. Your recruits become very good every year.
"2nd round NT 2 of last 3 seasons, 9 straight 20 win seasons. NT or PI 5 of the last 6 seasons."
- Two 2nd rounders in the NT is great, but it really gets killed with the no postseason in between. Also, your 'resume' is essentially 10 seasons long so you have to consider all of it. The two NT 2nd rnds, one PI F4, three PI 1st rnds, and three no appearances (and a non appearance 10 seasons ago in D2). Luckily, the more recent is weighted heavier (I believe so, at least) so your recent NT success at D1 knocks out a bit of those early struggles.
- I don't know if I really understand why 20 wins is being brought up. I don't mean to play coy, but I can only assume you're placing an arbitrary value on 20 wins over say 18 wins? Why should those 20 wins matter though if ~14 of them are against the throwaway SIM AI in your conference, ~10 are against the throwaway SIM AI in your non-conference, and then 2-3 in the CT / postseason.
"Conference division winner 8 out of 9 seasons."
- I don't think conference division winner counts towards your resume and it shouldn't for this very reason. The prize you get for winning your conference is a first-round CT bye - which brings me to the point of:
- You only won your CT once in nine seasons at VMI. You can't simultaneously believe both "it's not my fault these SIMS are so bad and are holding me back" and "it's not my fault I can't beat these SIMS three games in a row - it's a simulation". You need to win those, especially if you are handicapping your chances of the NT by scheduling such an easy season. If an NC State or Georgia were looking at your resume, don't you think the first thing they'd ask would be "why did you never beat those teams in the CT?".
- Look at your season before the NT, don't you think the people making the brackets would ask "why do they deserve a higher seed when they lost the only 3 somewhat challenging games on their schedule?" (and I do mean somewhat - @ 92 RPI, @ 48 RPI, neutral court vs. 48 RPI and that 48 RPI was probably inflated because they beat your VMI twice)
"Looks like I'm dropping this world."
- Again, I think you're so close to getting the D1 teams you want but that's up to you. You have a really strong young core and it looks like your primed to replace those seniors that are leaving. You'd probably deal with the same seeding issue next season (as it looks you didn't schedule - might not be a bad thing though with the computer possibly giving you a tougher SOS than you had) but you'd shine two seasons from now and can probably get a team you really like after that.
Just my two cents.