Scheduling Conflict
Pitt's Non-Conference Slate Unlikely To Change
By Ray Mernagh

Mike Montgomery was recently asked about the difference between his last coaching job, Stanford, and his new gig leading the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. Montgomery's answer that 'the big difference is that you can schedule 10 wins, a third of your games in college, to win. You don't control that here. You have much more control in college,' illuminates how much thought goes into the schedule-making process in major college basketball.

Not only do coaches and administrators (it's often administrators deciding schedules) have to evaluate the strength of their conference and the talent of their team, but they also have to consider the bottom line. Scheduling an out of conference slate in Division One basketball can often mean between $200,000 to 300,000 for some programs.

Carping about Pitt's out of conference basketball schedule has become an annual event here in the 'Burgh. The minute the schedule is released, local scribes go on the attack about how Pitt needs to bring in more worthwhile opponents to play before the Big East season begins.

Memphis' John Calipari is one head coach who thinks, based on the results Pitt's scheduling philosophy has produced, that Pitt shouldn't change a thing. 'The tournament committee tells us to go out and play people,' says Calipari. 'But what happens in 2000-01 when we win 22 games playing people and Pitt wins 26 - plus when they didn't play anyone outside their league? Pitt gets a high seed and we get an NIT invite. Why would they change? In that case Pitt was right.'

Pitt is hardly breaking new ground with the home-dominated, out-of-conference schedule. They're following a tried and true blueprint, designed for them by the likes of John Thompson's Georgetown teams and Lou Carnesecca's Redmen (before the Storm). Jim Boeheim has perfected the blueprint and escorted generations of Orangemen, from Pearl Washington to Carmelo Anthony, to the Big Dance. And make no mistake about it, this blueprint is all about getting to the NCAA Tournament.

Dick 'Hoops' Weiss of the New York Daily News has seen the scenario played out the same way for years. 'Historically you've not seen a lot of major conference teams, particularly the Big East teams, schedule tough out of conference,' says Weiss. 'Most December schedules are never going to be difficult because the idea is if you can schedule 10 wins, then that plus the conference RPI will get you in the tournament. Most coaches are paranoid about wins and losses and will schedule judiciously. The lesson learned is Tom Izzo at Michigan State last year.'

Weiss is referring to MSU's out of conference schedule that included a masochistic six-pack of games, Kansas, Duke, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Syracuse and UCLA, that resulted in the Spartans having a six-loss hangover before even starting conference play. Talk about a confidence problem. MSU never fully recovered from the rough start, somehow squeaked into the tournament, and ended up losing in the first round to Nevada. Izzo was hurt by both player defections, Ezram Lorbek inexplicably turning pro just before his sophomore year, leaving MSU soft in the middle, and the fact that he probably hadn't evaluated his team's talent level correctly.

Larry Keating knows the importance of evaluation. Keating was the Athletic Director at Seton Hall for twelve years (1985-1997) and now, as the Senior Associate Athletic Director at Kansas, is in charge of scheduling for the Jayhawks. During his time at Seton Hall, Keating developed a reputation for knowing exactly how to schedule, often a year ahead of time, in order to give PJ Carlesimo's Pirates the best possible chance at a tournament berth.

'The very first thing in scheduling is evaluation,' explains Keating. 'You have to evaluate your own team as to what they can handle. You have to know if your team is a tournament team. The RPI is one factor but it's meaningless if you're not a tournament team. You might be a bubble team and if that's the case then you need to schedule as many wins as possible through buy games or guarantee games.'

A buy, or guarantee game, is when a team pays a lesser opponent to come play for a substantial fee. It's why you see teams like Colgate go willingly into the Carrier Dome, and for a $40,000 guarantee, absorb a 35 to 40 point loss. And it makes both dollars and sense for Syracuse.'Boeheim gets killed every year for not going on the road out of conference,' says Keating, 'but I'm willing to bet it's not Boeheim making that decision but the administration. If they're getting $300-400,000 for each game at the Carrier Dome, the administration is going to want you there as much as possible.'

Even defending National Champion UConn, whose strength of schedule last year was 115th, traditionally has its fair share of Quinnippiacs on their non-conference home docket.The reason? The strength of the Big East Conference makes it foolhardy to play more than three or four 'quality' games out of conference. Keating explains that, 'in a conference like the Big East you're going to potentially play five-to-seven teams with a top 60 RPI, sometimes twice.'

For his part, Pitt coach Jamie Dixon defends his out of conference schedule.

'We're very happy with who we're going to play,' he says of the '04-'05 slate. 'We've got three teams that were in the NCAA tournament last season on our non-conference. And of course I think the Big East is as good a conference as there is, and I think the success of the teams has proven that.'

By playing in such a competitive conference, teams like Pitt and UConn can both schedule wins out of conference and presumably gauge how tournament tough they are by their in-conference battles (witness the three games they played against each other last year). When Mark Warkentien, now the Director of Player Personnel for the Cleveland Cavaliers, was an assistant for Jerry Tarkanian at UNLV, the Rebels had the opposite problem playing in the 'not so' Big West conference.

'We needed to play as many games out of conference as possible,' explains Warkentien. 'And we had to play those games during our conference season in order to gauge where we were as far as being tournament ready because beating San Diego State by 30 every night really doesn't tell you much about your team.' No matter what kind of conference your team is in, the trick with scheduling seems to be a balance of different priorities.

Many people would argue that Pitt's out of conference schedule hurt them by causing them to get a #3 seed in the tournament last year. Pitt got what they deserved, and had they held on to win the Big East Tourney Title, would've gotten their #1 seed and it would've been St Joe's screaming bloody murder. Playing the tougher out of conference schedule, as Calipari noted earlier, might not have helped at all. Again, as Keating explains, you need to juggle different philosophies when looking long-term at potential seeding implications at tournament time.

'My task as an administrator with this year's team at Kansas was to not do something in scheduling to affect them in the tournament because we're considered a top-eight type team which means we have a legitimate shot at a national title,' says Keating. 'It's a balance between understanding the RPI, guarantees, the difference between an opponent's RPI who's projected to go 20-7 juxtaposed with the opponent who might go 10-17. Coaches will generally want to play the weaker of the two teams. At the same time that choice could possibly effect the seed at tournament time.'

Will Pitt and other Big East schools heed the cries of folks like Dick Vitale by changing their scheduling philosophies? With Marquette, Louisville, Cincinnati and DePaul set to enter the Big East a year from now, this powerhouse conference will become the greatest in the history of college basketball. Eleven teams could have legitimate shots at NCAA berths in the new Big East. Change? Don't bet on it.

Ray Mernagh writes for Basketball Times and Eastern Basketball. He also publishes Hoopfactor.com and can be reached at Mernaghr@aol.com.