Boyd Nation has released his 2009 Strength of Schedule numbers. Here's how the Big Ten breaks down.
85) Minnesota
108) Northwestern
123) Iowa
124) Penn State
130) Michigan State
146) Ohio State
150) Illinois
152) Michigan
168) Indiana
188) Purdue
My one word summary: Yikes. I realize SOS is a fluid situation, as teams thought to be strong in the preseason falter and programs written off are better than anticipated. Nonetheless, to have the best SOS figure in the conference to be at eighty-fifth in the nation isn't good.
If these figures stay even remotely close to their current levels as the season progresses, the Big Ten is going to have a difficult time landing an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament.
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2 comments:
Something that would had helped is Louisville at the Big10/BigEast challenge. Instead of being able to play a weekend series versus a high RPI team from last year, all of the Big10 teams are left playing the BigEast, which wasn't overly impressive last year.
It does hurt that the entire Big East isn't participating, but I'll bet Big East fans don't think the Big 10 programs are helping their RPI, either.
The painful truth is that both are correct.
The good news, for at least about three Big 10 programs, is that they have Louisville on their schedule anyway.
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