Late season check on the unbalanced schedule

[77devil]

Thanks for the additional information, especially the three-year schedule. Maybe that should change so that the schedule can be set every year, taking into account the relative strength of each team.

Frankly, I prefer the roll of the dice to subjective meddling by the league office.

[pfrduke]

Ok, so I did a schedule analysis based on tempo free performance (offensive and defensive efficiency) and home/road splits, with the team's individual performance zeroed out to discount for the team effect (so UNC's schedule doesn't look comparatively weak because the teams played UNC).

The biggest potential flaw with the methodology is that I treat each team's home and away performance as essentially two separate teams. So the teams that play Duke at home only get credit for playing the Duke team that's played outside of Cameron, and gets no credit for playing the Duke team that played in Cameron. I think this may be too drastic of an adjustment, but that's how I've done it.

The schedules didn't differ by a ton - a total spread of just 3 points per possession between the toughest schedule and the easiest.

First, the underlying information - here's how teams played at home this season (by efficiency margin):

Duke          		18.79
North Carolina		18.12
Clemson	        	14.17
Wake Forest		10.78
Florida State		8.11
Miami	        	6.38
Maryland		0.84
Virginia Tech		-1.19
Boston College		-2.28
NC State		-3.59
Virginia		-6.11
Georgia Tech		-7.40

And how they played on the road:

North Carolina		8.50
Wake Forest		-0.05
Florida State		-0.31
Clemson      		-0.45
Duke		        -1.02
Boston College		-2.01
Miami	        	-6.32
Virginia Tech		-7.28
NC State		-9.14
Georgia Tech		-12.12
Virginia		-14.03
Maryland		-15.26

With that in mind, here's who faced the toughest set of offenses (sorted by highest opponent offensive rating to lowest):

Georgia Tech		105.43
Virginia		105.41
Florida State		104.89
Duke	        	104.83
Miami	        	104.82
Wake Forest		104.57
NC State		103.81
Virginia Tech		103.77
North Carolina		103.31
Maryland		103.30
Boston College		102.75
Clemson      		102.07

And here's who faced the toughest slate of defenses:

Virginia Tech		102.86
North Carolina		103.09
Maryland		103.23
NC State		103.46
Duke	        	103.52
Clemson      		103.76
Wake Forest		104.16
Boston College		104.27
Miami	        	104.59
Virginia		104.91
Florida State		105.02
Georgia Tech		106.97

With all that, here's how the schedules stacked up, ranked by opponent efficiency margin:

Duke        		1.31
Virginia Tech		0.92
Virginia		0.49
Wake Forest		0.40
NC State		0.36
Miami	        	0.23
North Carolina		0.21
Maryland		0.07
Florida State		-0.12
Boston College		-1.52
Georgia Tech		-1.54
Clemson	        	-1.69

Duke hosted the three toughest road teams and traveled to seven of the eight toughest home teams (no counting Duke).