Posted by bballchamp3 on 9/13/2016 8:03:00 AM (view original):
Last season I missed the tourney. We had a weak OOC schedule thus my RPI wasn't good bc our conference isn't good. I should win my conference pretty easily imo. Was it a good strategy to schedule super tough OOC schedule to help RPI?
Remember, RPI is made of 3 components: 25% your win percentage, 50% your opponents win percentage, 25% your opponents' opponents win percentage.
For the most part, you can't control the last variable. I suppose if you wanted to spend a ton of time scouting the schedules of your possible opponents you could, but it would mostly drive you crazy.
So your goal is to find teams that (1) you can beat and (2) are going to win a lot of games. You do not care about whether these teams are actually good. Indeed, your ideal opponent, for RPI purposes, is a mediocre team that you can crush on the road, but who will win a ton of games during the rest of the season.
So here is how I scheduled at D2/D3. Sort the possible opponents by conference (click the word conference at the top of the list). Then find SIM-heavy conferences and try to pick out the teams that are junior/sophomore heavy. I would never choose a team with more than 4 seniors and would only pick one with three if at least one of those seniors was a marginal bench player. Basically, you want to predict who will be the best SIM team in the conference next year. If I found a good candidate, I would look at their schedule for next season. If they are playing more than 3 human teams already, forget about them. Their winning percentage will take too big of a hit. So then I might look at their second best SIM team.
Example: Team 1 has 7 juniors, 3 sophomores and 2 freshmen. And they having good ratings in all of the key attributes. Fringe top 25 team. But they play 4 human teams that made the NT last year in the nonconf scheduled.
Team 2 has 3 seniors, 4 juniors, 4 sophomores and 1 freshman. Two of the seniors start, but one is the 7th-8th guy off the bench. Decent ratings, should win 12 to 14 conference games. Possible PIT team. No humans scheduled yet.
Team 1 is the better team, but Team 2 is the better opponent for RPI purposes. Team 2 is more likely to get to 20 wins and you are better off beating a 21-5 PIT-level team than a 17-9 top 25-level team.
Your ideal opponent will be one who plays nothing but SIMs in the NC schedule (except for you) and is favored to win 10+ games in conference play. If you find 10 of these teams, play them on the road and go 9-1 or 10-0, your RPI will be just fine. Unless you think you have an Elite Eight caliber team, go this route. I used this scheduling technique with great success at
Bridgewater State.