Thursday, January 9, 2014

Conference schedule imbalances, part 2

This will be a much quicker post, but let's look at conference schedule imbalances for the lesser conferences.

WCC, MVC - Round robin schedules!

A-10:  16 league games, 13 teams:  play 4 teams twice and 8 teams once
A very unusual one-year format for the A-10 with an oblong number of teams.

Let's focus on the top 5 teams:  UMass, St Louis, and VCU (near-locks right now) and Dayton/GW (probable bubble teams).

UMass gets those other four only once apiece, and get VCU and StL at home.  This upps the ante to have a shiny record in order to get a high seed.

St Louis gets a chance to play up.  2 games against Dayton and VCU.  This means they have room for error.  VCU gets St Louis and GW twice.

Mountain West:  18 league games, 11 teams:  each team misses 2 other teams a 2nd time

No breakdown needed.  They've manipulated the schedule so that all the relevant bubble teams and NCAA teams play each other twice.  Move along.

In mid-major conferences, let's do some quick hits:
In the MAC, the two teams still breathing for at-large consideration, Ohio and Toledo, play each other twice.
CUSA is a mess.  16 game schedule, 16 teams.  Charlotte has to go to USM and La Tech, so they're probably done.  Southern Miss gets to host La Tech.

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