2009 Schedule?

Maimi gave UNC a run for their money last year. Losing twice in a row at the end of the year by 1 to nil scores. They have 23 on last year's roster and only 3 were Seniors. Let's hope for an upset when these two meet next year.

gnarly wrote:Now we know the first 6 games of the season.

Aug 28 Cal (Merlo)
Aug 30 UW (Away)
Sept 4 Illinios (Nike Invitational Seattle)
Sept 6 Miami (Nike Invitational Seattle)
Sept 11 Colorado College (Merlo)
Sept 13 Columbia (Merlo)

Then I assume we head to A&M for two games with A&M and Texas Tech.
We don't know about Rutgers or Penn St yet.

If we assume we will play Rutgers and Penn State, as well as A&M and Texas Tech, then adding those to the WCC games, we get 17 games. If we add Oregon and Oregon State, that brings us to 19. Possibly, there will be one more. This is a much tougher schedule than last year.

In terms of out-of-region games, this would give us 3 against the Central Region (Colorado College is Central); 2 against the Great Lakes Region (Penn State is Great Lakes); and one each against the Northeast, Mid Atlantic, and Southeast Regions. Are we trying to schedule non-conference games so we play at least one game each year against every other region?

In terms of where teams finished on the RPI (unadjusted) list last year, without counting Oregon and Oregon State or the WCC teams, we have the following:

Penn State 9
Washington 13
Texas A&M 15
Miami 30
Rutgers 32
Illinois 34
Cal 45
Columbia 59
Colorado College 63
Texas Tech 123

You have to figure we will play at least one of the Oregon teams....


<EDIT>

The ducks have their schedule up. We play them the 27th of September - in Eugene

http://www.goducks.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=500&KEY=&SPID=237&SPSID=4314

Portland State also has it's schedule up. We won't Play them this year.

gnarly wrote:UW has posted their 2009 schedule so now we know 4 more opponents: (Miami, Illinois, Columbia, Colorado Col)
Now we know the first 6 games of the season.

Aug 28 Cal (Merlo)
Aug 30 UW (Away)
Sept 4 Illinios (Nike Invitational Seattle)
Sept 6 Miami (Nike Invitational Seattle)
Sept 11 Colorado College (Merlo)
Sept 13 Columbia (Merlo)

Then I assume we head to A&M for two games with A&M and Texas Tech.
We don't know about Rutgers or Penn St yet.
Reg season wraps up the weekend of Nov 6-8th.

Checking the UW schedule, I think you mixed up the weekends. Miami and Illinois will play at Merlo the 11th and 13th

Colorado College and Columbia will be at UW in Seattle the 4th and 6th

http://www.gohuskies.com/sports/w-soccer/sched/wash-w-soccer-sched.html

This jibes with what Illinois folks are saying on BS. They are definite Illinois will play at Merlo.

Phew, I was a little concerned, as in the past we have come out a little flat at UW. cough cough... Purdue. I feel much better having those 2 at Merlo.

Whoa -- Pilots vs Columbia Lions? "Roar, Lions, Roar!" I may have to go turncoat and wear light blue for that match. Labor Day weekend road trip!

I wonder how this schedule can top last year's for difficulty when last season began vs USC and UCLA. RPI wonks, this is your cue.

purple haze wrote:
I wonder how this schedule can top last year's for difficulty when last season began vs USC and UCLA. RPI wonks, this is your cue.

I don't think UPSF is talking about how difficult the wins are, but how much tougher your RPI is.
The short answer is the bonus for playing tough teams extends to the top 40 teams. You get the same credit for beating 39 as for beating 1, as long as they have the same record (or almost). Since that is presumably easier to do, you end up with a better RPI.

Purplegeezer wrote:You get the same credit for beating 39 as for beating 1, as long as they have the same record (or almost).

So you want to schedule teams who will be "pretty" good, not "really" good.

mattywizz wrote:

So you want to schedule teams who will be "pretty" good, not "really" good.

In might be important to schedule some top 5 or top 10 schools, but not for RPI reasons. You want to schedule teams that have good records, are in the top 40, and you have to beat them to maximize your RPI.

It's probably more important to get as many dates with teams in that bonus category than it is to just beat a couple of top five teams and play a middling schedule otherwise. beating teams lower than 65 or so doesn't do as much for you. It also helps a little if you play teams from conferences that have a high conference RPI to give a boost to element 3 of the RPI (OOP)

We can't do much about part of our schedule, obviously, so we are a bit at the mercy of how well other conference schools do in non conference. (If you recall, UPSF had us at #1 RPI going into conference last year)

Last year, by some accounts, I think Santa Clara played the toughest schedule in D1. But they didn't win and their RPI plummeted (taking teams they played with them).

Notre Dame did play a couple tough dates (most notably UNC) and beat them. They also had a remainder of the schedule that wasn't all that tough (but generally top 40) and won all their games.
They ended up with an undefeated season that is hard to ignore and a top 5 RPI to boot.

Element 1 of the RPI is the most volatile part of the RPI, winning your games is really important. UP hasn't lost to a school with a ranking below 15 or so in a very long time.

True. It's not just who you play though, but, where you play them. When the top teams play each other, playing at home can be a nice advantage. I think having 2 games against top 5 teams can give you a good barometer of where you stand as a team. The games against UNC, Notre Dame, UCLA, or other top contenders tend to be 1-0 or 2-1 or pretty close matches, and a team needs to have those experiences before the tourney begins. When we won our first national championship, I believe that our ranking was only about 7th going into the tourney, however, we had beaten some top teams at home. It was the perfect storm...low expectations for a very dominant team as Sinclair was coming into her own.

Sigh. I'm taking this too seriously. They're just student athletes; let them play.

Maybe I have to take it back: on average, if we add Oregon to the other 10 non-conference games we think we know about and if we evaluate this year's opponents based on their last year's RPIs, our schedule is about the same as last year. We play less top teams, but less weak teams, and those two changes even out. Last year, the average RPI rank of our non-conference opponents was 45; and this year's is 44.

But, the real question for "toughness of schedule" purposes is what the ranks will be of the teams this year once they have played their games, not what they were last year.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's how the 11 last year and the 11 we know of this year compare, in terms of unadjusted RPIs:

2008 2009
UCLA 3 Penn State 9
Florida 8 Washington 13
Penn State 9 Texas A&M 15
Washington 13 Miami 30
USC 14 Rutgers 32
Rutgers 32 Illinois 34
Oregon 57 Cal 45
Kennesaw State 72 Oregon 57
San Diego State 128 Columbia 59
Northern Arizona 133 Colorado College 63
Colgate 209 Texas Tech 123

In terms of bonus points, the highest points are awarded for wins/ties against top 40 teams and the next highest points are for wins/ties against teams 41-80. If teams have the same ranks this coming year as last (which they obviously won't), we have 6 opportunities for maximum bonuses this year and had 6 last year. We had 2 opportunities for 41-80 bonus points last year and have 4 this year. However, based on the last two years, the bonus point amounts really don't make much difference in teams' relative ranks.

I think, in the NCAA scheme of things, the Penn State game is going to be very big. I'm expecting Penn State to be considerably stronger this year (due to the return of their U-20s) and possibly a contender for a #1 seed. That strikes me as a "must win" game in order to secure a #1 seed.

I checked out Oregon's 2009 schedule, which is posted on their website. Obviously, they play in a tough conference -- the toughest by far in my calculations, which look not only at conference teams' RPIs, but also the extent to which the conference's teams "out-perform" their RPIs. The Pac 10 is the strongest conference based on RPIs and also greatly outperforms its RPIs, as compared to #2 ACC. But still, given Oregon can be excused for playing a relatively soft non-conference schedule, how soft is it?

Here are the games, plus its opponents' 2008 RPI rankings:

Colgate 209
Colorado 16
Loyola Marymount 49
Seattle 146
Denver 27
Dartmouth 100
Portland State 224
Portland 4
BYU 18
Weber State 200

Average rank: 89.3 (as compared to the Pilots' 44)

Purplegeezer wrote: Last year, by some accounts, I think Santa Clara played the toughest schedule in D1. But they didn't win and their RPI plummeted (taking teams they played with them).

Wouldn't that make their RPI go up? Because the teams they played won, so their records actually went up.

Nevermind, I was thinking SOS

Here's what I've been able to piece together of the 2009 schedule so far:

August 28 v California @ Merlo (source: PilotNation), presumably at 7:00 pm.

August 30 v Washington @ Washington, noon (source: UW website)

September 4 v Colorado College @ Washington, 4:30 pm (source: UW website)

September 5 v Columbia @ Washington, 11:00 am (source: UW website)

September 11 v Illinois @ Merlo (source: UW website), presumably at 7:00 pm

September 13 v Miami @ Merlo (source: UW website), presumably at 2:30 pm

September 27 v Oregon @ Oregon, 1:00 pm (source: UO website)

Other reports on PilotNation have indicated the following possible additional games:

v Texas A&M @ College Station

v Texas Tech @ College Station (Note: In the current Spring games, Texas Tech beat Miami 2-0 and tied defending Big 12 Champion Oklahoma State 1-1.)

v Penn State @ Merlo

v Rutgers @ Merlo

Possible playing dates not already used are September 25 and October 2, 4, 9, and 11. I came up with those dates by figuring backward from the College Cup, which is December 4-6, meaning that the first two rounds of NCAA tournament games will be November 13-15. This means that if the WCC games are played over four weekends, they will start the weekend of October 16-18 and will end the weekend of November 6-8.

I can see the possibility of one more game against an as-yet un-named opponent, perhaps using the September 25 date. If I had my druthers, I'd like to see us play Washington State, as they are developing a very serious program.