Yep, Michigan is gonna need those Q1 games since they’ll likely be on the bubble again. Gotta win those Q1 home games that they couldn’t finish this past season.
Easiest is MSU if I read it right. Nice 
It’s gonna bum me out a little when MSU cruises to a 2014-Michigan-style Big Ten regular season crown.
Do teams have input on the conference schedule?
Nope. I’m sure they can complain about stuff and have some sort of input/venting. But it is done by the league.
Right. So we take the schedule we were given and try to win the league and if we do, the tournament bid will take care of itself. Now, putting together the non-con schedule is a different matter.
Yeah, in this case we are discussing whether a decision that Michigan didn’t make is good or bad for Michigan. Not whether Michigan made the right or wrong decision.
I wasn’t commenting on a decision Michigan made or didn’t make. I was saying, the team’s first goal is to win the conference. If you are conceding the title, then I guess you can worry about “quality win opportunities “ within the schedule.
Reminder that when comparing strengths of schedule between conference teams the (expected) best teams in the conference will be biased towards having an easy schedule and the (expected) worst teams in the conference will be biased towards having a hard schedule because teams don’t play themselves.
This isn’t a problem if you’re analyzing absolute schedule difficulty: the schedule is what it is. But if you’re trying to compare schedules to see who got a “fair” or “unfair” schedule relative to another team, you would have to judge each schedule according to which percentile of schedule difficulty the actual schedule was out of all possible schedules for that team. A 50th percentile schedule for Michigan State is easier than a 50th percentile schedule for Minnesota, because MSU gets to play Minnesota and doesn’t have to play MSU (and vice versa), but those schedules would be equally “fair.”
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Not sure if serious but that’s because barttorvik has MSU as the best team. From a SOS perspective its the equivalent of MSU not having 1 or 2 games against the best team in the conference. SOS isnt normalized to remove your game from your opponents schedule. If anyone is getting the cake walk this year its Minnesota.
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yep – wanted to come in here and say that when I saw the MSU conversation. Although, they also only get Purdue once, which feels notable.
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Yep. Good point.
Yeah, it feels like the “MSU got a baby soft schedule” conspiracy conversation happens every year, but the (sad for us) reality is that it largely looks that way because MSU is near the top of the conference each year. sigh
Well, that second part hasn’t been as true of late. MSU also had one of the toughest schedules in the league this year.
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I totally get the rational statement that we want a hard schedule to get Quad-1 wins. Totally logical.
But I do think that you need some “get right” games just to pile up a couple wins and build confidence. Ultimately the entire league is resetting (except MSU and Wisconsin) so hard to predict what SoS looks like other than “MN sucks”.
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It’s basically just how many times you play MSU (and a bit Purdue) and then how many times you play the two bad teams (Minnesota and PSU).
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