Articles on unbalanced schedule

[allenmurray]

DBR is getting perilously close to losing its right to refer to unc as a "whine and cheese" crowd given that DBR now has two front-page articles whining about our schedule.

[DukieInKansas]

DBR is getting perilously close to losing its right to refer to unc as a "whine and cheese" crowd given that DBR now has two front-page articles whining about our schedule.

Interesting take on the articles. I didn't take either one as a whine about the schedule. But I will take some wine and cheese, thank you very much.

[NSDukeFan]

DBR is getting perilously close to losing its right to refer to unc as a "whine and cheese" crowd given that DBR now has two front-page articles whining about our schedule.

One thing that should always be mentioned when discussing rest days before games, is the fact that Duke has scheduled an extra game vs. some (most?) ACC teams. It may only impact 1 or two games, but if there are going to be complaints, that should be taken into account as well.

[Wander]

Top 7, bottom 4? What kind of a ridiculous way is that to divide a conference into groups?

Oh, I see. Duke plays the #6 team once, the #8 team once, and the #7 team twice. So that division makes Duke's schedule look harder. Got it.

[airowe]

Well, we do play the #11 team twice so I'd say we have it pretty good ;)

9F

[Faustus]

The good news about all this is that Duke doesn't have to play Duke this year.

I do believe, however, that this recent absurdity of bunching so many of these conference home-and-home series either very early or very late in the calendar is truly dumb and totally unnecessary by the league planners.

[JasonEvans]

Top 7, bottom 4? What kind of a ridiculous way is that to divide a conference into groups?

Oh, I see. Duke plays the #6 team once, the #8 team once, and the #7 team twice. So that division makes Duke's schedule look harder. Got it.

I think his reason for dividing that way was that he considers the top 7 teams to be, based on the RPI, in the hunt for an NCAA bid. He considers the bottom 4 to be so bad as to have no shot at an NCAA bid. He put Va Tech on the bubble between the top and bottom.

It is not an absurd or random way of breaking down the conference. I actually think it makes more sense than just saying "top half and bottom half." Tiers of quality is what he was looking for and sometimes those tiers do not break down evenly.

That said, I am not buying into any conspiracy theories or other such nonsense. It agree that Duke plays a tougher ACC schedule than might be expected this season and that the unbalanced schedule punishes us a bit this year. But who cares? Unlike some other silly sports, college basketball lets it all be decided by the teams at the end of the season. We get an ACC tournament and then an NCAA tournament.

-Jason "as others have pointed out, we have exactly zero games against the toughest team in the ACC this year ;) " Evans

[JasonEvans]

I do believe, however, that this recent absurdity of bunching so many of these conference home-and-home series either very early or very late in the calendar is truly dumb and totally unnecessary by the league planners.

A-men!!!

Duke facing Ga Tech, Clemson, and BC twice before we have any games against UNC, Maryland, Miami, Va Tech, and Virginia?!?!? It makes no sense. Flip one of the Clemson games with Va Tech. Put Virginia in place of one of the games with Ga Tech. Move Carolina to the 2nd BC slot. This is not rocket science!!

I long for the good old days when you played everybody once and then, shockingly, played everybody again. Of course, a 22 game ACC regular season schedule is impossible. Still, I long for those days...

-Jason "we really should go to divisions or something that makes more sense than this almost random scheduling" Evans

[Faustus]

What is so maddening about this bunching of sesaon series is that it would seem to be so completely unnecessary. Even when the full round robin ended, the league still more or less continued a "first time through the league" then "second time through" concept, which is the best and fairest way to do it. Only this year have they suddenly decided to end that. It makes no sense, and someone somewhere had to go out of their way to purposely change it, which in my mind moves it from the category of "unconsciously casual stupidity" to "aggressively deliberate stupidity", a far greater crime.

[UrinalCake]

Maybe I'm still waking up but I'm a little confused as to how there can be such disparity in the number of rest days between games, given that everyone plays the same number of games over the same time period. As a previous poster mentioned, Duke schedules out-of-conference games during their off days in the rotation, so this data must be including these in its calculations. Still, there must be some other way to explain it.

The only explanation I can come up with is that on the games that Duke does have an "advantage," it actually has a significant advantage, i.e. more than just one day. Then for the games where Duke is at a disadvantage, that disadvantage is usually only a single day. This would mathematically allow for them to have a few games with a big advantage, and a lot of games with a small disadvantage.

So if this is in fact the case, perhaps we should treat this as a good thing in terms of preparation for the NCAA tournament, when we're going to have two games in three days and then a long break. Granted our opponent will be facing the same thing, but overall I'd rather view these schedule disparities as a way to toughen our team and prepare them for playing games on short recovery, rather than an excuse for how life isn't fair.