> The biggest is the big conferences don't want to schedule weak teams for one
> reason or another.
>
> It's a chicken-egg scenario for both sports, mid-major teams
> (Missouri-Valley/Ivy/Mid-American/MAAC in basketball, MAAC in hockey) need
> to schedule tougher opponents to boost their RPI to make them better, but
> major teams won't schedule them until they're better and won't hurt their RPI.
 
I don't think this is true for college basketball.  Go down the list of
non-conference opponents of any top-25 team and you will see a bunch of what
fans call "patsies" on their schedule.  At the risk of generalizing, major
conference teams in the top-25 know that their conference play will most likely
dictate if they get in, while their NC performance determines their seeding.
 
I know that a lot of big-10 teams (UM, MSU, OSU) play MAAC teams (EMU, WMU, CMU,
Toledo) in their NC schedule.
 
The forumula for these teams from major confs is to schedule a bunch of patsies
to pad the w-l record, enter a couple of tournaments where they will face good
competition and the rest will be for traditional rivalries like teams from the
local area, or traditional national rivals (Duke-UCLA or Duke-Michigan).
 
Judging from the NC schedule for a lot of top college basketball teams, I don't
see a big issue with mid-major teams (like the MAAC) getting games with the
top-tier teams, especially, if they'll travel to the top team site.
 
Iyer
 
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