You can't control your conference schedule our how strong the teams are, but you do fully control your non-conference schedule. And even when the new schedule comes out, some of it will be guesswork because we don't know where teams will land for sure, but you should have a decent idea. The first picture is UNLV's composite for last year, the second is UNR's. Obviously, UNLV did not schedule for a chance at an at large, but Reno did. Let's see where we have to make up ground using the two charts. The quadrant thing is pretty new, but it's seemed to gain a ton of validity. I like it, myself. The only place where it might suck is cusp teams. It sucks to drop a category because a team just missed the cutoff. But essentially, Quadrant 4 games don't matter, they only matter if you lose any, the only teams that lose those games can't dribble the ball... Quadrant 3 is similar but obviously to a lesser extent.
UNLV
The Rebels had 11 games against the dregs of college basketball (again, some were in conference, which you can't control And they had 11 games against scrubby teams that you should almost always beat. 22 of UNLV's 33 games were against bad teams. And by dropping 5 quadrant 3 games, your fate is pretty much sealed when it comes to an at large unless you can offset it with strong Quad 1 and Quad 2 games, which the Rebels didn't, they were 3-8.
UNLV really, REALLY needs to cut down that 11 games against Quad 4 teams - you'll still probably have 4 or 5 because of conference teams. To be honest, you don't need to add a lot more to that Quadrant.
Let's look at UNR:
UNR only played 5 quad 4 games and I suspect 4 of them came in conference. They did have a lot of quad 3 games and they lost a couple (one might have been against us, I believe). They were respectable in quad 1 games, and did REALLY well in quad 2 games to easily offset the two losses in group three. That's why they had the high RPI. Also, and this plays into the quads, playing on the road can matter. Alot. UNLV only played two non-conference road games while UNR played 5 true non-conference road games and 3 other games away from Reno (neutral site games). That's challenging yourself. They didn't play the top teams in the nation, but they still ended up with a very strong and very well planned out schedule. And it paid off big time.
Diamondhead is going to really help the schedule because I believe it's three guaranteed games, all neutral site games. That combined with a road game vs Illinois, even though they aren't good right now, already makes it a better non-conference schedule than last year, so that's good. But still need to get rid of those YMCA league teams and replace them with some teams that have guys who had more than one offer out of high school.
It's going to be interesting to see how the schedule plays out. I know coaches spend a lot of time and thought on scheduling, it's critical, as we've seen. But I also believe that the schedule tells you alot about what a coach is trying to accomplish and how much confidence they have.
UNLV
The Rebels had 11 games against the dregs of college basketball (again, some were in conference, which you can't control And they had 11 games against scrubby teams that you should almost always beat. 22 of UNLV's 33 games were against bad teams. And by dropping 5 quadrant 3 games, your fate is pretty much sealed when it comes to an at large unless you can offset it with strong Quad 1 and Quad 2 games, which the Rebels didn't, they were 3-8.
UNLV really, REALLY needs to cut down that 11 games against Quad 4 teams - you'll still probably have 4 or 5 because of conference teams. To be honest, you don't need to add a lot more to that Quadrant.
Let's look at UNR:
UNR only played 5 quad 4 games and I suspect 4 of them came in conference. They did have a lot of quad 3 games and they lost a couple (one might have been against us, I believe). They were respectable in quad 1 games, and did REALLY well in quad 2 games to easily offset the two losses in group three. That's why they had the high RPI. Also, and this plays into the quads, playing on the road can matter. Alot. UNLV only played two non-conference road games while UNR played 5 true non-conference road games and 3 other games away from Reno (neutral site games). That's challenging yourself. They didn't play the top teams in the nation, but they still ended up with a very strong and very well planned out schedule. And it paid off big time.
Diamondhead is going to really help the schedule because I believe it's three guaranteed games, all neutral site games. That combined with a road game vs Illinois, even though they aren't good right now, already makes it a better non-conference schedule than last year, so that's good. But still need to get rid of those YMCA league teams and replace them with some teams that have guys who had more than one offer out of high school.
It's going to be interesting to see how the schedule plays out. I know coaches spend a lot of time and thought on scheduling, it's critical, as we've seen. But I also believe that the schedule tells you alot about what a coach is trying to accomplish and how much confidence they have.
