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Originally Posted by Cannon Shell
I just read where the chair of the committee said that Syracuse was hurt by the unbalanced league schedule. What are they suppoed to do about that? I am far from a Syracuse fan but to hold the way a conference is set up against a team is stupid. I know that its a hard job and its impossible to make everyone happy but I think that more of the criteria should be required. You should have to have a winning conference record, SOS must be under 100 for power conferences, higher for midmajors, win at least 20 games or 66% of your games. If you do all these things then you are eligible to play in the tourney. If not then you better win the conference tourney. Having mid majors makes the tourney special, not the Stanfords or Illinois of the world.
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The superconferences are hurting the sport a lot. No conference should have so many teams that you can't play each team twice and if you do you should absolutely be split into divisions. I think the committee is sending their disapproval on this trend to big conferences. The end result though is that Syracuse has year after year scheduled one of the more pathetic non-conference schedules. They knew it was going to burn them one of these times and it finally did. They are going to have to adjust in the future or risk not making the tourney. They played 6 games non-conference against teams in the top
140 in the RPI. Niagara is in the play-in game and they are in the top 140. In those six games they went 3-3. They beat Penn, Hofstra, and Holy Cross. They lost to Wichita St, Oklahoma St, and Drexel. Of their 14 non-conference games they had 12 at home and one in NYC against Oklahoma St. If they want to improve their tournament resume they have to go on the road more than once in the non-conference schedule. It can only help their recruiting base to play a few games on the road. So while I would have put Syracuse in for sure, I can't feel sorry for them when their only road game non-conference was two hours away at RPI #247 Canisius.