Posted by Fregoe on 7/11/2022 10:01:00 AM (view original):
I have been going back and forth on this lately. Curious on what others strategies are?
1. When? early to get the teams you want? Late to have more info?
2. SIM/ Human
3. Home/Away
4. RPI manipulation strategies
1. situational - i used to schedule after 13-14 games, because this is when folks mostly stop jumping crazily up and down the rpi and projection report. nowadays, i often wait for a day or two (or three or four) of recruiting because the promise situation is wide open and because i'd like to know whether i'll have 11 players or 8. i assume d2/d3 folks have less reason to wait so long.
2. this is also situational but the approach is not. for everybody, the best scheduling technique is going to be to schedule games you expect to win, but that aren't total gimmes. if you are say, a NT-1 level team (rd 1 loss projected, so 30-50th best more or less), then maybe this means you are scheduling borderline top 100 teams, with mostly humans. if you are a rebuilding d+ team, this could mean 10 sims. for a top 10 team, 10 humans should be nearly automatic.
3. this is much less important than it used to be. the projection report does not value home/away, while rpi overvalues home/away. home vs away is pretty much in balance now. basically, if you are playing a team who is on the weak side, where you can reliably beat them on the road, you should aim for that. but home wins against top 100 rpi teams are gold. projection report keys heavily off of wins against top 100 rpi teams (the better the RPI, the better, but having at least some top 100 rpi wins in non-conf is essential if you want to be dancing come march).
for teams outside the post season, where projection report is irrelevant, RPI manipulation is just as valuable as ever - go beat easy sims on the road.
4. this is also less important than it used to be. projection report is the be-all end-all, and there, top 100 rpi wins are gold. but RPI manipulation is still valuable, to be sure, RPI has a significant impact on the projection report and on prestige in general. ideally, you balance aiming for top 100 RPI wins and RPI, which you accomplish by playing teams who will have good records relative to their true quality.
teams who are not likely to be dancing, if you can make the PIT, great - but if not, and i'm assuming d1 here because there's enough post season slots for everyone elsewhere... then record and RPI are what you are aiming for. playing better sims from weaker conferences is going to be your ticket. you want as many wins as possible and against as solid of records as possible. the lower RPI of the sims is basically irrelevant if you aren't going to be playing in the NT/PIT because the projection report is where that mostly comes in (it does impact your RPI too but not nearly as much as their record does). you can get D- d1 prestige up to a C- or C without making the post season at all, but it requires decent records and rpi. once you want to start dancing, that's when making sure you have some top 100 rpi wins for your resume becomes essentail (go get them at home if they are tough to get!).
7/11/2022 10:27 AM (edited)