I think playing tu twice in the same year for just baseball is fine. Playing them in football is just a trap but baseball is different

dermdoc said:

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W said:

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we'll know in a few weeks what the non-conference schedule will ultimately cost A&M.

will be interesting to see if that prompts Childress to make changes to his scheduling philosophy if the Ags end up in a road regional despite winning 18 or 19 conference games

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If we had actually won our non conference games against tu, Baylor, and TCU, would we even be having this discussion? You can schedule the best teams in the country(of course you can not predict they will be good when you actually play them), the problem is you actually have to win some of those games against good opposition, correct?

What y'all appear to want is somehow magically predicting before the season starts which teams will have good rips that we can beat. That is pretty difficult to do imho.

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I kind of agree with this to be honest, let's say we had played a top 50 team instead of Brown the weekend before SEC play started and we lost two out of 3, would we really be in a better position if that happened?

dermdoc said:

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Fine with all that. But who do you get where you do not have to do a home and home for other two weekends? Or are you okay with giving up a home series at Olsen? And personally, I think season ticket holders and especially Dugout Club members should have the most impact on losing a home series every other year. It is their monetary investment.

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I thought every game was a home game for Derm.

Sean98 said:

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Yep.... If Pepperdine was on the stock market I don't think anyone would encourage you to invest in it despite how they performed 10 years ago.

After a run of 7 straight tourney appearances from 2002-2008 the Waves have made the tourney 3 of the past 8 seasons, staring hard at 3 out of 9.

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Invest in what? The Waves making the post season or the Waves having a top 100 RPI? Their RPI for the last five years have been

91
103
22
114
30

My guess is we "invested" in someone that we thought would at least be closer to RPI 100 than RPI 200 with an upside of being a tournament team. We don't need the Waves to make the tourney (although it would be great if they did) but if they were at 107 (or even 97) instead of 207 that would help a lot and I think that was a reasonable expectation when we scheduled them given their history.


With Brown, we actually did better than we should have expected. They are currently sitting at RPI 212, and that is better than any of the previous 5 seasons.

Cool. But we lost a game to Pepperdine and we lost every game we played against a pre conference high rpi opponent except for tech, correct?

Does it do any good to schedule teams and you lose to them? If so just schedule every perennial top ten team and have a losing record and it won't matter. Scheduling is only part of the equation. You have to win.

My post was about defending Pepperdine on the schedule as opposed to a push to change the schedule, but since you replied to me and asked a question I guess I will answer.

Yes, we lost to all of the pre-conference high RPI teams except tech. No, it doesn't do you any good to just schedule good teams and lose, but I'm not sure we would have lost. All of those pre-conference high RPI teams we played were really high in the RPI (all above 26, two in the top 10, three in the top 15). All of those were close games. Our losing weekends so far are against 3 top 15 teams in Houston, #3 Kentucky, and #28 Vanderbilt. I wouldn't assume that would imply we would be losing a bunch of games to teams in the 50 to 150 range if we played them as opposed to Brown and Bowling Green.

When you only play a couple of teams above 200 before conference play, a few bounces the wrong way in a couple close games and you end up with nothing on your non-conference resume. Play a few more and you are more likely to get a more accurate result of who you are in your non-conference resume.

I wonder if we scheduled "simpler" because our schedulers viewed it as a rebuild and wanted to make some case for post-season play.

sobering stat for tonight...

as of this moment A&M has 17 wins vs. teams outside the top 200. Only 16 wins vs. teams #1 thru #200.

by comparison Florida has zero of its 31 wins vs. teams 200+.

Clemson also has zero wins outside the top 200

dermdoc said:

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W said:

---

we'll know in a few weeks what the non-conference schedule will ultimately cost A&M.

will be interesting to see if that prompts Childress to make changes to his scheduling philosophy if the Ags end up in a road regional despite winning 18 or 19 conference games

---

If we had actually won our non conference games against tu, Baylor, and TCU, would we even be having this discussion? You can schedule the best teams in the country(of course you can not predict they will be good when you actually play them), the problem is you actually have to win some of those games against good opposition, correct?

What y'all appear to want is somehow magically predicting before the season starts which teams will have good rpis that we can beat. That is pretty difficult to do imho.

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1) Whether we won or loss those games, nothing about the SoS would change.

2) Some (myself, at least) of us were talking about beefing up the schedule before the season. I'm certainly not talking about this because we won or loss any particular game.

3) We didn't win, so tough poop.

Texas A&M's selection day non-conference SoS and Opponents' SoS rankings:

2016: 186/106
2015: 195/113
2014: 141/170

There's a trend...

okay, here's the final damage from the non-conference schedule:

A&M finished with a non-conference RPI of #69 and non-conference SoS of #202.

only 2 teams in the top 50 had a worse non-conference SoS: Louisville and Virginia.

the killers:

#272 Bowling Green (15-34)
#191 Pepperdine (20-32)
#221 Brown (13-24)
#251 UT-RGV (24-28)
#284 Prairie View (15-36)
#271 Incarnate Word (20-36)
#273 Abilene Christian (10-39)
#209 A&M-CC (21-31)

that's 15 of 26 non-conference games against teams that were just flat out awful

Have to try and get rid of Incarnate Word and PV each year 200+ RPI and this wont change

We will have a non conference schedule similar to this

Weekend 1: Northern Opponent
Weekend 2: Ivy League Opponent
Weekend 3: Frisco Classic: Baylor, Cali, La Tech
Weekend 4: West Coast (home or away)

I would suggest a Connecticut or Rhode Island for week one...maybe a Big 10 team

If Ivy league...Cornell...we have played everyone else with a decent RPI in last few years... do we have a contract with the Ivy League? I heard there was a five year contract but I don't put much credence from the person I heard it from

Weekend 4: home and home San Diego, Long Beach State (my pref), Stanford (maybe a 4 game series like they have done with Texas) or maybe go East Coast and get a home and home with an ACC power or Coastal Carolina

it will be interesting to see if there is a change in scheduling for next season. Definitely trending in the wrong direction the last few years, since the Ags' bad experience with the Fullerton home & home in 2012 & 2013 (i.e. lost both series)