How BYU Basketball and Volleyball got smart with scheduling

After years of postseason frustration brought on by a weak conference slate, both BYU Basketball and BYU Women’s Volleyball have gotten smart with scheduling.

Both BYU Basketball and BYU Women’s Volleyball have been hampered in recent years by one major obstacle – their conference.

In both sports, the West Coast Conference isn’t exactly a powerhouse compared to the big names like the ACC, PAC-12, SEC, etc.

With basketball, Gonzaga is practically a shoo-in for the NCAA Tournament each year, and maybe one other team (BYU or St. Mary’s) gets a second bid most years. Cougar and Gael teams with 24-30 wins are routinely ignored while 20-win teams from bigger conferences get at-large berths.

In volleyball BYU has begun dominating the WCC, earning the conference’s automatic berth regularly. But their low RPI has led to much lower seeds by the Selection Committee than their record and play has earned.

The WCC Weakness

Both teams have been dragged down by their conference slate. Basketball gets RPI boosts when they play Gonzaga or St. Mary’s, but those boosts don’t help much when all of the other games ding your rating.

Same with volleyball. One or two teams each year can help the Cougars’ RPI, but the rest are just drags on it.

And there’s not much either team can do to change that.

Yes, the WCC has shortened the conference slate from 18 games to 16 games in men’s basketball, but that still doesn’t solve the fact that 12 of those 16 games are still RPI killers.

And yes, the conference is doing better as a whole in volleyball this season, but four teams are still sporting abysmal RPI’s.

That’s not going to change enough in either sport to make a drastic difference.

So both basketball and volleyball have finally found the key to changing their course for the better.

The non-conference slate.

Bolstering from Without

If you can’t improve your schedule in-conference, then improve the non-conference slate. It seems obvious, but most successful teams try to schedule a good number of cupcakes with two or three big-name teams sprinkled in. It inflates the record and makes the team look good (and feel confident) going into conference play.

But when the conference is going to drag you down, you’d better be as high up as you can before the dragging begins.

Both teams have learned that. Just look at this year.

BYU Women’s Volleyball took on the No. 1 team in the nation (Stanford), the No. 10 team (USC), the No. 24 team (Utah), the No. 25 team (Marquette), and a team that was receiving votes (Wichita State).

That’s a murderer’s row of matches, and it propelled the Cougars to the No. 1 ranking and the No. 1 RPI in the nation.

Now that conference play has been in swing for a while, BYU’s RPI has begun to drop as expected.

Now they’re No. 2.

They’ll probably drop a few more spots even if they win out, but if they finish the season 30-0 with a No. 1 ranking and a Top 10 RPI they’ll be a near lock for a No. 1 seed.

In past years that was never a realistic opportunity, even with gaudy records.

Can Basketball Copy?

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The basketball team has done the same thing. They’ll face a much tougher non-conference slate, starting with the opening game. They’ll travel to Nevada, who’s expected to be ranked in the Top 10 (maybe Top 5) to start the season.

They’ll also take on Mississippi State, who will likely be ranked in the preseason, as well as Houston, Utah, San Diego State, and UNLV.

Not quite the murderer’s row that volleyball faced, but still a much stronger RPI-boosting schedule before WCC play begins.

Will their RPI drop once they hit conference play? You betcha. Just like volleyball’s did.

But a drop from the 20’s to the 40’s still keeps the Cougars in the at-large discussion, unlike their normal drop from around the 50’s to the 70’s.

While both basketball and volleyball have adjusted their schedules brilliantly, the basketball team still has to do one thing that volleyball has already done.

Win.