🗓 2025/26 Men's Basketball NonCon Schedule Announcement

[Jerome]

https://twitter.com/UVAMensHoops/status/1958561808827969746/photo/1

[Jerome]

Yeah I mean if this was the schedule next year after we’d had a successful 1st year under Odom, I’d get the angst. But to me it’s a perfectly fine schedule for a 1st year coach with an entirely new team.

[haney]

https://twitter.com/UVAMensHoops/status/1958561808827969746

O/U on Q1 games? I got 1.5 and I’m taking the under. Is that “fine” ? Sure. I’d say “fine” is a fine word to describe it.

Is Maryland a top 30 team? Maybe but probably not. Is Ohio State a top 50 team? I’d say it’s 50-50 (recall that they’re still coached by Jon Diebler)

[Foresthoo]

So Marshall is the new add. Puts us 31 total. Right?

I think UMD and OSU both land in the 40s

[Foresthoo]

Yep and while we may not love Dayton and Marshall, better than the Morgan St and Delaware St of the world. That’ we know some teams will opt for

[Jerome]

What about Butler? Any chance they could be top 50? Probably not much of a path for that, but I kinda like their roster.

[haney]

I’d rather watch us play Dayton than Morgan State, but Dayton could be a Q3 loss. There’s like a 15% chance that’s a Q3 loss.

Let me do this off the cuff - let’s say 33% chance of a loss, plus 30% chance they are Q3. I guess that works out to about 10%…

@AdventiveQuasar does this make any sense from a stats perspective or am I basically just pointing the odd stepwise nature of the quads, which is why WAB, with a continuous nature, is preferable?

(Of course my view on that would be — if there’s a continuous function taking this all into account, and doing it well, then there’s no downside to playing a killer noncon, at least from a tourney selection perspective; there could be some team-building / experimentation advantages to playing some cupcakes)

[zh00s]

On December 10 after the UMES game, our record is …

• 10-0
• 9-1
• 8-2
• 7-3
• 6-4
• Worse?!

[AdventiveQuasar]

@haney

@AdventiveQuasar does this make any sense from a stats perspective or am I basically just pointing the odd stepwise nature of the quads, which is why WAB, with a continuous nature, is preferable?

(Of course my view on that would be — if there’s a continuous function taking this all into account, and doing it well, then there’s no downside to playing a killer noncon, at least from a tourney selection perspective; there could be some team-building / experimentation advantages to playing some cupcakes)

Agree with the stepwise nature of quads causing some issues in resume evaluation, though I think it’s an open question as to what the tourney committee “sees.” They get the exact opponent NET on the team sheets within each quad, so they might not treat everything within the quad the same, or might not treat a strong Q3 game too differently from a weak Q2 game. But since they don’t get too much in the weeds about how they evaluate teams, we don’t really know. But yes, that’s why I prefer WAB, because it mitigates the possibility of dumb human biases and cognitive errors taking over.

[5clutch]

Feel like for an at-large berth I’d feel good at 9-1. Need 2 of 3 against Texas, Maryland, and Ohio State.

[UVApride7]

I think we’re in a good spot if we exit non con at 11-2. 10-3 or worse and it starts to get dicey, would probably have to be really good in ACC play to make the tourney.

[dave92]

Another issue is that the committee is apparently focused on a team’s ordinal rank, which masks the underlying difference in teams. For instance, teams #50 through #80 could be all “effectively the same” in efficiency metrics, essentially a 30-way tie, yet the committee will see #50 as “30 spots better” than #80. WAB would capture this accurately.

So even if committee members are mentally getting rid of the “quad steps”, we should try to schedule the upper part of that “middle of the spectrum.” An only slightly better team can be many points ahead in rank simply because of how many teams exist in that part of the spectrum.

[haney]

@haney

Is Maryland a top 30 team? Maybe but probably not.

In their latest pod, Will Warren and Jim root both have MD missing the tourney.

@haney

Who is a guaranteed, solid lock to be a Q1 win opportunity? I’d put Texas in that category, and really nobody else.

And they also have Texas missing it! but at least TX could miss it and still be Q1, narrowly

[AdventiveQuasar]

Maybe working at VCU breaks your ability to think about non cons, cause this is a stinker from Rhoades:

https://twitter.com/pennstatembb/status/1958884517856297399?s=46&t=wAzMZR-0PRGT1LpN6U5x0g

[73CAV]

Going forward, as long as we’re not just recruiting nationally, but internationally, why not a neutral site game far away? While it’s a bit too late, a P6 match-up, played in Hamburg or Cologne (Koln for @jazznutUVA and other Jarrett fans) would have been great this year. It would have given our international transfers’ families a chance to see them play, be an educational experience for the team, and I suspect it wouldn’t hurt recruiting in Europe. I also have a suspicion that there would be enough money to be made from such a game as to pay for all the traveling expenses. I have no idea if the NCAA prevents such games, but, if they don’t… I cannot travel to Europe just as easily as I cannot travel to Tennessee. Going forward, future games in London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Athens, Melbourne, Sidney, Warsaw, Sarajevo, Vienna, Oslo, Rio de Janeiro, et al. become recruiting tools in a variety of ways.

[Weirdowlhoo]

I like the Cologne suggestion. Easy flight to Dusseldorf and a very underated tourist destination, IMHO. And Dusseldorf is one partying downtown starting early Friday afternoon.

[superhelix]

LOVE this idea.