Toughest isn't always best when it comes to scheduling

Sporting News, The, Dec 13, 1999 by Mike DeCourcy

Everyone talks tough when it comes to scheduling, except for those few coaches who prefer not to talk of it at all.

"I think a difficult schedule is important in the development of a team," North Carolina coach Bill Guthridge says.

"I've always been a firm believer that if you're going to get better, you have to play against better teams," Arizona coach Lute Olson says.

"It makes for much more interesting basketball, and the coaches seem to have a lot of confidence that `I'm going to find out what my team can do and what my players can and can't do,'" says CBS-TV analyst Billy Packer.

No one likes to admit it helps to have a few Easterns and Westerns and Centrals on the schedule to make the trek to a 20-win season that much smoother.

No one cares to acknowledge there is more than one avenue to the Final Four, and not all of them require a straight uphill climb.

It is healthy for fans of the game to enjoy a constant procession of televised matchups between high-major powers whose obvious destination is the NCAA Tournament, but the reality is nearly all those teams need the experience of playing opponents that can be defeated without a maximum-efficiency effort.

If playing difficult games were the only way to improve, no one would ever bother to practice. It helps teams to see how plays and defensive schemes function against minimal resistance before applying them against top 10 powers.

Think of it this way: weightlifting no doubt helps to make a person stronger, but those who step in and try to bench press 300 pounds before first handling considerably less weight will find it painful, perhaps even deadly.

Consider the teams that found their way to last year's NCAA title game.

Duke rolled through such opponents as Fairfield, South Carolina State and UNC Greensboro. The Blue Devils played nine high-major opponents--four of those in exempt events--among 14 non-conference games. Connecticut played nine non-league games, with four against major schools. The Huskies faced Quinnipiac, Hartford and Wagner. Early in the season, they were ridiculed by some in the media for playing those games. There was no need to apologize in the end.

"The danger of loading up is confidence is such a huge factor in performance," says Olson, "That's the biggest concern I have--how it would affect the guys if you take a bunch of lumps."

A schedule can be rated scientifically by the Ratings Percentage Index, but the problem with that method is it regards the toughest schedule as the best. That's not always the case.

The Goldilocks scale works better.

Too hard: Kentucky in the past squeezed a few light workouts into its relatively demanding schedules. This year's team needs a chance to find its personality, but five of its first six games were against high-major opponents and the sixth was against Penn, an NCAA team last year.

And it gets no easier. The Cats play Saturday at Maryland, December 23 against Michigan State and January 29 at Miami (Fla.).

When the Wildcats arrive at the close of their regular season March 4 against Florida, they'll have played 30 games with only three teams from outside the power conferences: Penn, UNC Asheville and Alaska-Anchorage.

It's hard to believe the Wildcats were criticized for declining a Great Eight invitation to keep that home date with Asheville. They could have used a few more waltzes.

Too soft: Mississippi State. Despite an impressive effort in last season's SEC tournament, the Bulldogs were excluded from the NCAAs bemuse their schedule was so soft they ranked 95th in the RPI standings.

It's not easy to win 20 in a league like the SEC and still barely squeeze into the top 100, but they just might make it two in a row.

Of Mississippi State's 13 non-conference games, only three will be played against high-major opponents (Stanford, Northwestern, Rutgers). Bulldogs opponents averaged 154 on last season's RPI scale, and that doesn't count Alabama A&M, which, as a first-year member of Division 1, wasn't ranked.

Underscheduling is a common problem among teams in the SEC West. LSU's schedule may be even worse, but at least the Tigers have the excuse of trying to escape from five consecutive seasons of 12 wins are fewer. Auburn's is only a little better, even though the Tigers brought back a team most rated in the preseason top five.

You'd figure the league that understands so well the economics of the Bowl Championship Series--SEC commissioner Roy Kramer is its driving force--would recognize the value of paying more money for higher-quality home opponents.

Just right: Texas made things more difficult for itself by reaching the finals of the Puerto Rico Shootout, but no one among the Longhorns complained. They handled their matchup with Michigan State quite nicely, recovering from a double-digit deficit to leave the island with that upset and the tournament championship.

When he coached Clemson, Rick Barnes occasionally drew heat for loading up on low majors before entering the ACC season, but at Texas this season he faced five straight big-time schools in between an opener against Louisiana-Lafayette and Saturday's game against San Diego. The Longhorns also meet Wofford and Niagara. They get Houston at home and will challenge themselves with visits to Connecticut on January 10 and Massachusetts on February 5.