PDA

View Full Version : Clemson's tough schedule



gofurman
02-11-2008, 11:19 AM
I am for Duke first / Clemson second. I noticed that CU only gets the two I clearly consider the worst - UVA, BC - once. Most teams would at least happen across one of these, if not both, twice. Durn I hate this unbalanced schedule... Hope the Tigers don't let last nights loss diminish their season. I think Purnell is making them a good ACC team and I like for the ACC to be strong. I think they will rebound and finish 8-8 / 9-7

Classof06
02-11-2008, 11:31 AM
I am for Duke first / Clemson second. I noticed that CU only gets the two I clearly consider the worst - UVA, BC - once. Most teams would at least happen across one of these, if not both, twice. Durn I hate this unbalanced schedule... Hope the Tigers don't let last nights loss diminish their season. I think Purnell is making them a good ACC team and I like for the ACC to be strong. I think they will rebound and finish 8-8 / 9-7

I see where you're coming from because Duke had the hardest ACC schedule last year. Unbalanced scheduling has its winners and losers every year and this one is no different.

yancem
02-11-2008, 11:49 AM
I am for Duke first / Clemson second. I noticed that CU only gets the two I clearly consider the worst - UVA, BC - once. Most teams would at least happen across one of these, if not both, twice. Durn I hate this unbalanced schedule... Hope the Tigers don't let last nights loss diminish their season. I think Purnell is making them a good ACC team and I like for the ACC to be strong. I think they will rebound and finish 8-8 / 9-7

At least they don't have to play Duke twice (a blessing for both teams, I think). They also only have to MD once which is also helpful since they are currently third. I do agree that the unbalanced schedules suck. It's really difficult to judge the strengths of teams relative to one another when the schedules are so different.

ScreechTDX
02-11-2008, 12:00 PM
*ahem*

Please see Clemson's preconference schedule. Now ask yourself, "Why has Clemson been a top 25 team until conference play starts."

Thank you,

Josh

loran16
02-11-2008, 01:27 PM
*ahem*

Please see Clemson's preconference schedule. Now ask yourself, "Why has Clemson been a top 25 team until conference play starts."

Thank you,

Josh

They'd be a T25 team if they could hit a darn free throw.

HumboldtDevil
02-11-2008, 04:10 PM
Yeah, the unbalanced schedule sucks, but there's nothing that can be done about it, really.

Something interesting I noticed last night when looking at the remaing games for Duke and UNC: in ACC play, Duke has back-to-back road games three times while UNC doesn't have any. I don't think this is fair at all. Duke already had to go to VT and Maryland one week, has Wake and Miami, and then State and Virginia. I'm not complaing that UNC has it easy or anything because this isn't about Duke/UNC, it is about unbalanced schedules in general.

It seems that if you're gonna have an unbalanced league slate you should at least make it as even as possible regarding road trips and such. There's no reason why one team should never play back-to-back road games while another has three such trips. You could argue that two of Duke's back-to-backs feature local schools (Wake, State), so they don't require heavy travel.

Looking at UNC's conference schedule, not only do the Heels never play consecutive road games, but in the middle of ACC play the schedule shift from road-home-road-home to home-road-home-road so they got Duke and Clemson at home back-to-back. Plus they get Wake at home and State on the road in consecutive games, which means another week without travel.

I wish the conference could find a way to do something along the lines of what the Pac-10 does. Yes, the Pac-10 has a balanced schedule and the teams split up by twos in specific geographic areas, but I don't see why the ACC can't even the schedules out so that the road trips or home stands aren't even. Why can't everyone flip-flop between home and road games? Why can't everyone rotate between a week on the road and a week at home, like in the Pac-10? I just want things to be as even as possible and UNCs schedule is a perfect example of a team getting a beneficial schedule based on travel, etc.

gw67
02-11-2008, 04:49 PM
The PAC 10 has some advantages over the ACC geographically which allows them to pair off teams and play, I believe, Thursday and Saturday, to minimize the time on the road.

I suspect that the coaches at BC, Md and the Florida teams cry crocodile tears at the awful travel that the centrally located Tobacco Road teams have to endure. Every away game for BC is a long trip. The unbalanced schedule makes it very difficult to be fair, then you have some teams who insist on playing OOC games in the middle of the conference season which makes it worse. Every year, there are winners and losers.

gw67

gofurman
02-11-2008, 04:51 PM
*ahem*

Please see Clemson's preconference schedule. Now ask yourself, "Why has Clemson been a top 25 team until conference play starts."

Thank you,

Josh

While I certainly agree with your statement that is not the point I was making. I was just stating that unbalanced schedules stink and can put a team at a disadvantage when the NCAA looks for that all-important 8-8 / 9-7 ACC record..not really getting into why Clemson isn't currently a top 25 team (though I think they are currently playing like one and Purnell is a good coach)

Lulu
02-11-2008, 07:53 PM
I was looking at the unbalance schedule a while back, and while it's neither here nor there, there was one little tidbit that I found interesting.

Apparently there wasn't much attention given, or interest, in trying to evenly distribute the home-and-home and one-and-done pairings. If you divide each teams opponents into two groups, the home-and-homes and one-and-dones, there are two instances where teams have zero overlap in their opponents. The first is Clemson and Maryland, and the second is Virginia and FSU. It would be quite funny to me if Maryland and Clemson were to find themselves at the top of the league, having schedules as dissimilar as possible (and by virtue of having zero overlap, clearly only playing each other once, too).

Of course, having dissimilar opponents doesn't necessarily mean one team's schedule was tougher then the other's, since for instance Clemson gets UNC twice while Maryland gets Duke twice. On a related note, NC State is the one team in the league that faces both Duke and UNC twice. And gee, they also get Clemson twice this year, too. Good for ticket sales... bad for losses, I suppose. Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, and Wake each get both Duke and UNC only once.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, while no two teams have perfectly matched schedules, there are six instances where two teams share 5 one-and-done opponents (meaning they share 3 home-and-home opponents, plus they play each other in home-and-home matchups). These pairings are CLE-FSU, NCS-FSU, UNC-NCS, UVA-UM, UM-VT, and UVA-VT. There's not a lot to take from that, except that comparing these teams is relatively easy within conference.

And FWIW, Wake seems to have the most "balanced" conference-wide schedule, in the sense that they have the fewest excessively similar or dissimilar schedule pairings with the other teams in the league. Duke is probably a close overall 2nd.

I'm not sure how interesting this will be to others but I already wrote it, so I'm posting it.