REPORT: Murray to the Valley?

[valleydays]

From everything I have seen there has been no confirmation of this since that tweet. No movement or statement from the MVC office or from Murray State. Should we be concerned? What might be holding this up?

More importantly, I think, is that no one official has denied it either. That is encouraging.

[rally]

Stealing from Bradley Brave on the Bradley board:

The formula is simple:

- 1 non-DI
- 1 P5 paycheck game
- 2 low major buy games
- 2 quality mid-major H/H (even if not a "challenge" this can easily be coordinated among 3-4 leagues with the same need)

15 home games, 13 road games, and 3 neutral site

Teams that don't want to take buy games are going to have to take them. You can still give yourself 3 near automatic wins, and ideally the league wins 75% or more of the MM H-H series, and 30% of the P5 buyouts. Most league teams will get a quality tournament every year.

So yes, you're adding more .500 ball into the equation, but you're also reducing the number of overall losses OOC and even more importantly the number of toxic games that don't do anything for you even if you win.

And you are better winning a higher percentage of fewer, but better games.

We need to think what is best for the conference as a whole. Non-D1 games make sense individually, but the wins don't help the conference. If you do that conference wide, that's potentially 22+ wins (conf. games + tourney) that aren't going to factor in your opponents W/L when calculating SOS.

When was the last time the MVC was below .500 OOC? Yes, you reduce OOC losses but you're going to be increasing total losses overall. More .500 ball means more losses.

[smidge34]

From everything I have seen there has been no confirmation of this since that tweet. No movement or statement from the MVC office or from Murray State. Should we be concerned? What might be holding this up?

More importantly, I think, is that no one official has denied it either. That is encouraging.

This is a fair assessment too as I’m fairly certain our admin would be in lessen the blow mode immediately.

[Mikovio]

I am going to still assume Murray State will be joining the MVC....it just makes sense and has for some time. Quality basketball team and university, with passionate fans that travel. Forget the small market...who gives a rip? The MVC needs great teams to be a greater league. They and Belmont together move the needle considerably, thus making an already good conference, a great one. I would expect multiple bids in most years, plus you can add in an NIT bid as well. This pulls this league very favorable towards challenging the Atlantic 10 for best mid-major league, and as mentioned earlier, they are not as far behind the AAU as some might want you to believe. Everyone should be pleased with this move.

Expect the AAC to add the F_U’s for their middling FBS programs.

[squirrel]

We need to think what is best for the conference as a whole. Non-D1 games make sense individually, but the wins don't help the conference. If you do that conference wide, that's potentially 22+ wins (conf. games + tourney) that aren't going to factor in your opponents W/L when calculating SOS.

When was the last time the MVC was below .500 OOC? Yes, you reduce OOC losses but you're going to be increasing total losses overall. More .500 ball means more losses.

Right. And I don't think you understand how the ratings math works. . .and also leagues don't earn bids. Teams do. And the more teams that can earn bids, the better the league is.

Take Loyola's 2020 schedule for example. They played 5 teams ranked 234 or worse that season and ended up around 95 or so in the Pomeroy heading into the conference tournament. If you remove 4 of those games the rating is 65-70 spots higher, and if you replaced them with 4 more league games, Loyola's ranking is 55-60 spots higher. If you eliminate the 5th garbage game and replace it with a non-DI, that's another 5-15 spot boost.

You want to bring in a stronger rating into the .500 math.

[stl scooter]

We need to think what is best for the conference as a whole. Non-D1 games make sense individually, but the wins don't help the conference. If you do that conference wide, that's potentially 22+ wins (conf. games + tourney) that aren't going to factor in your opponents W/L when calculating SOS.

When was the last time the MVC was below .500 OOC? Yes, you reduce OOC losses but you're going to be increasing total losses overall. More .500 ball means more losses.

Right. And I don't think you understand how the ratings math works. . .and also leagues don't earn bids. Teams do. And the more teams that can earn bids, the better the league is.

Take Loyola's 2020 schedule for example. They played 5 teams ranked 234 or worse that season and ended up around 95 or so in the Pomeroy heading into the conference tournament. If you remove 4 of those games the rating is 65-70 spots higher, and if you replaced them with 4 more league games, Loyola's ranking is 55-60 spots higher. If you eliminate the 5th garbage game and replace it with a non-DI, that's another 5-15 spot boost.

You want to bring in a stronger rating into the .500 math.

Nice explanation, thanks!

[rally]

We need to think what is best for the conference as a whole. Non-D1 games make sense individually, but the wins don't help the conference. If you do that conference wide, that's potentially 22+ wins (conf. games + tourney) that aren't going to factor in your opponents W/L when calculating SOS.

When was the last time the MVC was below .500 OOC? Yes, you reduce OOC losses but you're going to be increasing total losses overall. More .500 ball means more losses.

Right. And I don't think you understand how the ratings math works. . .and also leagues don't earn bids. Teams do. And the more teams that can earn bids, the better the league is.

Take Loyola's 2020 schedule for example. They played 5 teams ranked 234 or worse that season and ended up around 95 or so in the Pomeroy heading into the conference tournament. If you remove 4 of those games the rating is 65-70 spots higher, and if you replaced them with 4 more league games, Loyola's ranking is 55-60 spots higher. If you eliminate the 5th garbage game and replace it with a non-DI, that's another 5-15 spot boost.

You want to bring in a stronger rating into the .500 math.

You can't just adjust one variable for one team and make wild assumptions on it while ignoring how adjusting that same variable for the rest of the conference would impact metrics.

Loyola was 7-5 in the non-conference. Drop the bottom four games, and they were 4-4. Nice to drop that Coppin State loss. Do the same for the entire conference, assuming conservatively a 3-1 for all, and the conference falls below .500 to 37-38 in the non-conference. Bigger issue might be only winning 75% of the games against the bottom feeders of the schedule.

You can see the correlation between NC WP and conference rank. The MVC drops at least a spot or two.
https://www.warrennolan.com/basketball/ ... ferencenet

The other thing overlooked is that teams aren't just going to be dropping the four lowest games. It will be a few of those games and H/H series or two. AD's aren't going to want to give up two home games every year.

On the flip side, the MVC was 11-0 vs. non D1's. That's 78-48 and 0.619 NC WP if they are against D1's. Good enough to jump the MWC? Most likely. More importantly for Loyola, their opponents added 20 wins to their records.

Conferences don't earn bids but they play a big role in one's own rankings. It's not just that it makes up the majority of your schedule, but it makes up the majority of your opponents schedules. Your metrics and success is all interconnected with the success of the conference. It's important for everyone in the conference to be on the same page.

[squirrel]

I did sim everyone out and adjust their schedules similarly. And swapping St. Joseph's for the Coppin State loss only made a -8 spot difference. I honestly didn't even look at wins and losses when running the numbers. But even still, it's negligible when discussing the Pomeroy.

[Sir Sci]

The Big Ten does and Southland did prior to losing teams last year. Instead now, the Southland has implemented an in-season conference tournament.

Once the ACC adds their new teams, they'll go to 22 or 24.

It's only a matter of time before all the BCS teams start playing 22 or more games. As leagues continue to get bigger, everyone will eventually be doing it.

Most of the relevant leagues are already playing 20.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding who you're replying to, but the Big Ten plays a 20 game conference schedule, not a 22 game conference schedule. I'm not saying it's impossible for a conference schedule to be 22 games, but nobody does that right now. Maybe the MVC is the conference to do it so they can continue the round robin, but I'm not so sure we can make that assumption.

Horizon plays a 22-game double round robin.

Then I stand corrected. But I did know for a fact that the Big Ten still was at a 20 game conference schedule.

[municup14]

Not trying to start a rumor,but,my beloved Aces fan base is getting older and they are considered the big donors.Also our enrollment is at a all time low.So if we cant get a good fan base of donors,and increase our enrollment you'll have to find a replacement for UE in about 5 years.Just saying .