To try to get the conversation rolling, here are last seasons final standings: 1. St. John's 7-1-1 15-4-1 2. DePaul 6-1-2 12-4-4 3. Georgetown 6-1-2 11-5-4 4. Butler 6-3-0 16-7-1 5. Marquette 5-3-1 8-8-4 6. Providence 5-4-0 13-8-1 7. Xavier 3-6-0 8-9-1 8. Creighton 2-7-0 10-10-0 9. Seton Hall 1-8-0 2-14-2 10. Villanova 1-8-0 2-16-0 Any predictions for 2016? Which teams should improve? Which will struggle?
St. John's loses a lot with Perry and Daly graduating. Who can replace them? Any internationals coming? Villanova wouldn't surprise me if that is on the hot seat. Capable of way more there. Perhaps another Providence - Butler final may be in the cards.
Finally some B.E talk... defiantly the most under-rated conf, My sister is committed to Georgetown so I am going to be a little bias and say they will be back in the hunt and lock in the final 2 next fall.
Alot can change in 1 year but looks to be PC is on the rise. Georgetown will always be there and will Marquette come back to being a NCAA tourney team? Villanova has a good class coming in so they should improve. ST. Johns got BC transfer MMcC who will help a lot. PC vs Georgetown final.
Nice to see some BE chatter. I think the league will be competitive and exciting next season. It should be interesting to see which players and teams step up. The league lost a lot of top line players to graduation but there are several freshmen that showed some great potential. I was a little disappointed that none of the teams advanced very far in the NCAA tourney and I think that will make it tough on the at large selections next season.
As a matter of interest, the Big East was #9 in average ARPI for 2015. However, the conference average ARPIs were much more compressed this year than in the past, so #9 actually isn't bad. I have seen no evidence that how far a conference's teams advanced in the NCAA tourney, in any year, has had an impact on at large selections in subsequent years.
The new coach at Creighton did not "renew" scholarships for 7+ players and sounds like they won't be playing a spring schedule since there's not enough even to field a team. Coach better hope his incoming freshman class can contribute quick or it will be a long season for the Jays. It will be interesting to see what the 2016 class looks like but sounds like it be upward of 15 players.
If you are referencing the coach whose first year was the 2015 season, sounds like he had players to evaluate for the year (Fall 2015 season) and decided the players did not fit what he is trying to do / accomplish. Situations similar to this have been discussed in the past. Sucks for everyone. Hopefully it was managed well, meaning coach was upfront, kids moving on were 'helped' in finding new places to play, etc. Never good, but it is reality. Hopefully this was in the works for a while and the girls had plenty of time to work things out.
Spring is almost here: Butler: No spring schedule released Creighton: No spring schedule released DePaul: No spring schedule released Georgetown: http://www.guhoyas.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/030116aaa.html Marquette: http://www.gomarquette.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/030216aaa.html Providence: No spring schedule released St. John's: http://www.redstormsports.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/020316aaa.html Seton Hall: No spring schedule released Villanova: http://www.villanova.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/020916aac.html Xavier: http://www.goxavier.com/news/2016/2/29/womens-soccer-opens-spring-schedule.aspx A few interesting games on the schedules. Hopefully they give us some clues to next year. It would certainly help if the 5 schools would release a schedule. Any thoughts to the importance (or non-importance) of spring soccer?
Some spring games have started, any results or comments about the games? I have only found the following results so far: Xavier 3 Cleveland St 0 Xavier 0 Ohio State 2 Anyone know other scores? Georgetown vs. Navy?
Some teams starting to release schedules: Creighton http://www.gocreighton.com/news/2016/5/5/-w-soccer-womens-soccer-announces-2016-schedule.aspx Play Kansas but in exhibition match. Otherwise a weak non-conference schedule St. John's http://www.redstormsports.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/050916aaa.html Much more challenging non-conf with a road trip to Portland to play Portland & Washington as well as game against Lasalle
I look forward to seeing it. G-town was one of the bigger disappointments to me last year. Very inconsistent for such a high quality team.
They will get it going again every so often the quality programs have a dip. Creighton are going to struggle. The recruiting class is average at best and from everything I'm hearing the coach is out of his depth. Did anyone see DePaul in action this spring? Interested to see how they are shaping up.
I'd like to see a rule, for the Hot Seat threads only: In order to post, you must use the name on your birth certificate.
Yeah they did but they lost their 4 yr starter that set the tone for the team. They were trying to find out how to play with out her. This year they are young only 3 seniors I think and most starters are returning with a incoming class that I think will surprise many. DN really does recruit well despite not being able to get sophomores and freshman in Gtown so early.
Wow...You weren't kidding! That has to be one of the top 3 most difficult non-conf schedules in all of WoSo. West Virginia, Rutgers, Stanford, Virginia ... wow, wow, wow. It is going to be one tough year for the Hoyas! Looking at Big East non-conf scheduling in general, it appears they have gone out of their way to schedule tough opponents. G-Town, Providence, Marquette, SJ, etc.. have all gone that route. Do you think it was a conference directive to these schools? I wonder if CP Thomas has any data on the correlation of non-conference difficulty and at large berths.
There's a good correlation between really good wins/ties and at large berths. The Adjusted RPI has the best correlation, and the ARPI coupled with really good wins/ties comes in second. In order to get some really good wins/ties, a team has to schedule a good number of high level opponents, since it's not going to win all its games against high level opponents. The objective is to win or tie one or two. If you're in the Big East, most of your conference teams aren't going to be that highly ranked (I'm thinking of top 20, maybe even top 15). So, to get one or two really good wins, you're going to need to schedule a number of really good non-conference opponents. For an expanded explanation of this, go here: NCAA Tournament: Scheduling Towards the Tournament.
As I'm entering schedules into my data base, I just ran into Providence. Here are their non-conference games (including 2015 ARPI ranks): BostonCollege (38) Rutgers (4) Northeastern (59) MaineU (200) BostonU (55) Colgate (154) Brown (114) Harvard (73) CentralConnecticut (180) MassachusettsU (199) I have no idea how Boston College and Rutgers will be this year, as compared to last. Beyond those, I wouldn't say it qualifies as their having gone out of their way to schedule tough non-conference opponents -- only one really tough opponent, based on 2015 ARPI ranks. It doesn't fit what I suggested in my preceding post as what one would want to schedule in order to have a good chance of getting an at large selection to the NCAA tournament.
Thanks cpthomas Some interesting thoughts although clearly the correlation is with actually winning or draw vs. those top ranked opponents Simply scheduling them doesn't guarantee anything. Your Providence analysis is interesting. I saw a tweet buy AWK that mentioned Providence having the 10th most difficult non-conference schedule of those released (sent 5/23) Either a mistake? or he is measuring differently? Have you looked at G-town schedule? It appears to be extremely tough to me. 4 of last years final 8 on it.
I haven't looked at Georgetown yet, but I hear it has a tough NC schedule. I just looked at St. Johns, which looked weaker to e than Providence's. Here's Marquette, with 2015 ARPI rank of its opponents followed by Providence's 2015 rank of its opponents. It gives a picture of why I consider Marquette's schedule much tougher: Stanford (5) (as compared to 4 for Providence) SantaClara (24) (38) NorthwesternU (44) (55) NebraskaU (45) (59) MichiganU (46) (73) KansasU (69) (114) CalPoly (96) (154) CalStateNorthridge (119) (180) Milwaukee (134) (199) IllinoisState (191) (200) From my perspective, in thinking about getting an at large selection for the NCAA Tournament, the two key games for Marquette are Stanford and Santa Clara. They really could use at least a tie against one of them. Either that or end up with an end-of-season ARPI rank of #34 or better.
Because heaven knows that RPI is the be all end all. Certainly being co-champs (Wisconsin) of a conference that had two teams in the College Cup and the National Champion wasn't enough to get them in to the tournament! Still puzzles me to this day. Always tough for a non P5 conference to get more than one team into the tourney if they don't play a tough schedule. Even that - a decent non-conference schedule - combined with an undefeated season (DePaul 2014) gets you a first round draw, away, against Wisconsin in six inches of snow.