So here’s basically how scheduling works in a flow chart:
- Gavitt Games and Big Ten/ACC Challenge games are dictated by TV networks. Each school has to play in the Gavitt games 4x in 8 years or something like that I believe.
(Last year, this meant Michigan played at Villanova and hosted UNC)
- Most teams, but not all, opt to participate in some kind of exempt tournament. There are limits to how often you can play in the same event and obviously some are better than others. Some are 8 team events and some are 4. There are usually 1 or 2 on-campus games that are tied into these events.
(Last year, Michigan played Providence and George Washington in the HoF tip off and also played NSU/Holy Cross as the on-campus games. Overall, the HoF event would qualify as a crappy exempt tourney but Michigan usually tries to play in good ones like Atlantis, Maui, etc.)
- Teams can set up home-and-home series which usually are against high-major teams. Some mid-majors will likely angle for a home-and-home too, I remember Michigan did a home-and-home against Bradley and Harvard at different points in time. These games are becoming more rare given more conference games, more ‘challenge games’ and more neutral court exhibition type games.
(Last year, Michigan only played South Carolina as part of a home-and-home)
- You usually fill out the rest of your schedule with guarantee games from here. These are called guarantee games not because they are a guaranteed win but because there is a paycheck guaranteed. The going rate is usually $80-120k and there are some smaller schools that bankroll almost their whole AD by playing 10-11 road games in November/December.
(Last year, Michigan scheduled Chattanooga, Western Michigan, Air Force and Birmingham as guarantee games).
Beilein did a good job of playing in exempt tourneys and trying to schedule legitimate home-and-homes. If you look at some other Big Ten schedules, they don’t play real home-and-homes and some teams generally try to avoid the exempt tourneys. I think both are very valuable.
The argument that you could make is that Beilein could have more optimally scheduled guarantee games and had a positive impact on Michigan’s SOS numbers. You would do this by looking at a team’s rolling KenPom rank or something like that (eventually NET but we only have one year).
Would it make an impact? Yes. Would that impact prove to make a major difference? It could in an edge case but generally hasn’t had a huge impact IMO. Looking at last year, playing in the HOF Tip Off is really what killed UM: crappy event, crappy location and horrific draw with George Washington. To be fair, that’s something that Michigan had control over (it chooses what event to play in).
The added pressure of filling in 2 Big Ten games in early December combined with finals, Thanksgiving, etc. makes coaches more likely to balance exact timing that perfect NET SOS maximization IMO.
Gavitt, Atlantis (loaded field), Oregon (home) and Big Ten/ACC should make Michigan’s NC SOS just fine this year I’d say.
I would worry about Juwan’s scheduling a lot more if he a) stopped trying to schedule home-and-homes and b) didn’t participate in high profile exempt tournaments.
Scheduling better guarantee games isn’t going to make a big different in ticket sales or excitement either IMO. If you schedule Coastal Carolina, Cal Baptist, Northern Colorado and Pepperdine next year, I don’t think people are going to be selling out Crisler all the sudden because their NET rankings were better last year.