The Purpose of This Schedule Preview Post, Generally
The purpose of this schedule preview post is to view a list
of scheduled games before they (i.e. the scheduled games) take place.
The Purpose of This Schedule Preview Post, Specifically
Specifially, the schedule that will be dissected (and it
should be made clear that this took place with as little effort as possible on
the part of the author) is the one belonging to the 2013-14 Calvin Knights
Men’s Basketball team.
One might alternatively consider this post an attempt by the present
author to alert the readership to the fact that he is indeed still alive.
Regarding the Schedule, What it Consists of
A full-list of the 25 games (plus one exhibition) can be found by following this internet
link, but, generally speaking, the schedule can be thought of as:
- One exhibition game
- One pre-conference-season tournament
- Two “classic” style weekend events with pre-scheduled opponents
- Five singular non-conference games
- Fourteen conference games against MIAA opponents
- The possibility of participation in a four-team MIAA Tournament
- The possibility of participation in the NCAA Tournament
Regarding the Actual Opponents, Who They Are
As has been the case more often than not in recent years,
the list of opponents will be familiar to Calvin fans as 85%* of the schedule
(including any and all exhibition games but not including any and all potential
post-season games) is comprised of opponents who also appeared on last season’s
schedule.
*Depending on how the
Calvin Tip-Off Tournament plays out (e.g. if Calvin and Grace Bible both win
their first game), this number could jump to 88%.
Opponents that would roundly be considered “new” to the
schedule include Kuyper College, NCCAA-2), University of Redlands, and
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. It’s also possible
(but seemingly unlikely) for Calvin to meet up with College of Faith – who lost to Hope by 98 points
on a neutral court last November – in the Tip-Off Tournament.
Kuyper, typically the doormat of the Grand Rapids Small
College Basketball scene, had what the author will call (without having the
requisite knowledge) their best season ever. They finished with a 1-2 record in
a seeminly evenly played season series with Grace Bible with the win coming in
NCCAA-2 tournament play. In the three head-to-head games combined (two of which
took place at Grace), Kuyper was outscored in regulation by five points. After
adjusting for home court advantage, considering only these three games, and
performing a back-of-the-napkin calculation, one might guess that Grace would win
something like 53% of hypothetical matchups between these two schools. This is
all to say that Kuyper matched up well with a team that Calvin beat by 31
points last year.
The author could not, while employing only a minimal amount of effort, get the Massey system to simulate a matchup between last year's Calvin and Kuyper teams, but he's pretending it's because the servers which control the website in question simply couldn't count high enough to display an appropriate margin of victory in favor of Calvin.
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, the combined athletic program of
Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Scripps College, finished
as the runner up in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
with an 18-8 (13-3) record. Their final Massey
Division III Rank of 100 put them roughly 30 spots below Adrian and 30
spots above Trine, which is to say they would have competed favorably in the
MIAA. The Wilson
rankings more or less agree with this assessment.
The Massey system estimates that a similarly scheduled meeting
between last year’s teams would finish in Calvin’s favor 90% of the time,
with a 14 point margin being the most likely result.
Redlands, who apparently operates under the philosophy that
institutions of higher learning should each have their own athletics
departments, finished the 2012-13 season as the SCIAC champion with 22-6 (15-1)
record. The lone SCIAC representative in the NCAA Tournament went on to drop
their opening round game to Whitworth by six points. Their final Massey
Division III Rank of 47 indiates that they were quite a good team, though
perhaps not quite as good as Hope, who checked in 17 spots ahead of them. The
Wilson rankings doesn’t quite agree, but still lists Redlands (39) and Hope
(45) very similarly.
The Massey system estimates that a similarly scheduled meeting
between last year’s teams would finish in Calvin’s favor 82% of the time,
with a 10 point margin being the most likely result.
Calvin will host the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame
Classic with Cornerstone, Aquinas, and Hope on their normally scheduled
rotation, but, due to an aparent conflict, they’ll also be hosting the
MIAA-CCIW Classic with Carthage and Wheaton in what would “normally” be Hope’s
year to host.
Also on the schedule is a return trip to Anderson for the
third installment of what appears to now be a yearly rivalry, a home game with
Manchester, and a home game with Finlandia in a continuing series that is
hopefully dropped at Calvin’s earliest convenience.
Regarding the Actual Opponents, Who They Are Not, Most Notably
A notable fact about Calvin’s scheduled 2013-14 opponents is
that they are not – at least not with the desired frequency – officially
recognized Division III in-region opponents. Only 17 of the 25 scheduled
regular season games (68%) can be classified as in-region: the 14 MIAA
conference games, Anderson, Manchester, and Finlandia.
The Significance of Opponent Regionality
In this case regionality isn’t considered in a pure
geographice sense, but rather in a pre-defined and, in the present author’s
opinion, ill-conceived NCAA sense. At
any rate, regionality is significant because the NCAA has announced that teams
must play 70% (up from 50%) of their games against in-region Division III
competition in order to be eligible for at-large consideration for the NCAA Tournament.
Under this new system the NCAA will be counting all results versus Division III
opponents in the primary criterea, instead of results only versus in-region
competition.
The astute reader will recognize that Calvin’s scheduled
percentage of in-region games (68%) does not meet the reported threshold.
Specific details aren’t exactly known, but it is entirely likely that
conference tournament games will count toward this total and that Calvin would
be meet the criterion if there were able to reach the MIAA Finals.
One might ultimately consider it a “bummer” if Calvin were
to have a terrific, nigh unblemished regular season, suffer an upset loss in
the MIAA Semifinals, and finish with a schedule containing only 69% regional
games. A large part of the bummer would be their potential disqualification
from Pool C consideration, but another, non-insignificant part of the bummer
would be that the schedule, as constructed, follows the spirit of the law, if
not the letter.
The Author’s Prediction Re: Calvin’s Performance Against the Schedule in Question
Conceding that the author knows very little about both (1) the
construction of Calvin College’s 2013-14 men’s basketball roster and (2) the
roster construction and relative quality of the various opponents he feels
compelled by the conventions of sports media to offer up some manner of final
record prediction.
The prediction is as follows: 20-5 (11-3).
It should be noted
that the style of this post was directly stolen from actual-writer Carson Cistulli and that the present author deserves zero
credit for anything you, the reader, enjoyed and all the blame for anything you
did not.
