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You're only looking at the game that have been played to this point. If you look at the overall schedule, it's not even close that Marquette has the far better schedule. Of their 13 OOC games, they have 7 gimme wins, 3 toss ups that would be considered good wins, 1 should win that would be solid, and 2 likely losses where they are essentially freerolling. That's pretty perfect. Them beating Buffalo would be a better win than any of our first 12 games. And that's their 5th or 6th toughest game.

On KenPom, which everybody including the committee looks at now, we dropped 5 spots since beating Cal + VCU. Marquette moved up 1 in their loss to Kansas.

Again, these coaches and ADs have their jobs on the line depending on their program's success, almost all of that revolves around making the NCAA Tournament for major conference teams. If the easiest way to ensure success was to load up on easy wins then everybody would do it. These guys wouldn't be risking their jobs by scheduling good teams if that wasn't the optimal strategy.

Yes I'm only looking at the games that have been played thus far because I can't see into the future and yes MU has a better schedule, I'm not denying that and maybe SJ schedule stinks, I'm not denying that either but I can't help but notice that with all that typing you did you avoided answering a simple question.

I'd rather be 3-2 with Marquette's schedule than 5-0 with ours. We will likely need to have 3-4 more wins than them to be in a better position on selection sunday

Okay then, 3D chess it is. I'd rather win games than lose them.

The year is 2058, Johnny Jungle is still talking about the scheduling of the 2018-19 season.

I'd rather be 3-2 with Marquette's schedule than 5-0 with ours. We will likely need to have 3-4 more wins than them to be in a better position on selection sunday

And you are 20 years post-op from your sex change, prefer to be refered to as gender queer, and continue to bless the board with sunshine and snowflakes.

I wonder if there’s still time to back out of the Duke game and play St Francis that day instead

Assuming that you could have made the schedule in an ideal world: how many losses do you think it would benefit SJ to have going into conference play?

Marquette's remaining "perfect" OOC schedule comprises four quite loseable good home losses against Louisville, K St, Wisconsin and Buffalo (the latter three ranked) and four pretty much garbage wins against Charleston, UTEP, North Dakota, and Southern. All eight games are at home and they should be favored in each. If they split the four good loss games (obviously they could win all four) and sweep the garbage that makes them carry the one 9-4 going into conference play, having played one road game, a loss, and having lost three at home, and having two quality wins and three good losses. They'd have 18 conference games left, meaning they need to go 11-7 to win 20. Is that about where you'd like SJ to be? Having lost half as many games as they've won and having to win twice as many as they lose to win 20? That is, IOW, with 2/3's of their wins comprising garbage, and a couple of quality wins and a couple of quality losses and one road game out of 13?

I'd rather be 13-0 or 12-1, where .500 ish in conference (and if they go .500 in conference what difference does it make if they make the tournament, they'll get bounced in the first round) and a BE tournament win gives them 23 or 24 wins in one of the top three conferences in the country.

PS Marquette is currently 35th at KenPom and SJU is currently 44th, shirley that must be a mistake.

The point is not having a certain amount of losses, it's about having opportunities to pick up good wins. When scheduling games where you can pick up good wins, that usually means those are against teams that can beat you. Losses to Kansas, @Indiana and Wisconsin won't hurt you, but beating them would definitely help beyond just adding a 1 to the W column. Losses to Cal, VCU, Georgia Tech would hurt, and those wins are pretty much only adding a number before the dash.

Yes, Marquette pretty much has 7 slam-dunk wins on their schedule. That's probably a good number. The other 6 games range from 2 likely losses which are essentially freerolls (Kansas, @Indiana), 2 true toss ups (Wisconsin + Kansas State at home) and 2 small favorites (Louisville neutral, Buffalo home).

If you go 3-3 in those 6 games, that's not great, but still pretty good. Even 2-4 isn't a backbreaker by any stretch of the imagination. Any worse and you're probably not good enough to achieve anything anyway.

Compare that to our schedule. We have 1 likely loss (@Duke), 0 true toss ups, 1 small favorite (@Rutgers), 2 moderate favorite (VCU + Georgia Tech) and 9 slam-dunk wins.

Marquette pretty much has 6 chances to pick up wins better than any of ours. So even if they go 2-4, those 2 wins are better than any of ours.

Let's assume we go 12-1 and Marquette goes 10-3 in OOC. If both teams then go 10-10 in the BE regular season + tournament, they would be in a better spot than we are in terms of the NCAA Tournament, probably by a solid amount.

Marquette also has margin for error where we don't. Anything worse than 12-1 for us hurts because those would then be bad losses. If we go 10-3 in OOC we'd need to win 12-13 BE games at least to re-enter the NCAA Tournament conversation. Marquette just has to go .500 in the BE with a 10-3 OOC record.

Also, while the BE was certainly a top 3 conference the past few years, that just isn't the case this year. The ACC, B10 and SEC are solidly ahead of the BE this year. The league is down this year. That's another reason why the weak OOC schedule especially hurts this year.

PS Marquette is currently 35th at KenPom and SJU is currently 44th, shirley that must be a mistake.

Doesn't this kind of prove my point? We are 5-0, they are 3-2 and yet they are ranked higher.

My entire point is that this is by far the best SJU roster since Ron Artest was named Ron Artest. If the goal and expectation for this team is to be an 9 seed and either lose in the first round or win and then get throttled by the 1 seed, then this schedule is fine. We also may as well move to the NEC as we'll never achieve anything worthwhile again if that's all we're shooting for this year. The goal for this team should be a 4-5 seed and a Sweet 16. It will be much more difficult to achieve that if you don't have any good non-conference wins.

We will not miss the tournament due to SOS or any other advanced metric. We're not St. Mary's or Hofstra. It might affect our seeding.  We can miss he tournament due to a lack of wins. We weren't good last year. Marquette was close to good. It's far more likely they make the jump than us.

Marquette came a very odd blown call goon going in its favor  away from losing its third game to an unimpressive Louisville team tonight.

The mistake you make is assuming we'll be very good. We haven't even been okay yet under Mullin.

In my hypothetical situation I had SJU as having a better record than Marquette, yet the assumption you took from it is that Marquette is the better team.

We were a missed call away from losing to VCU.

Not really a missed call: more of an uncalled call. That shot was short when it left the shooter's hand. If I'd been on the other side of it - and I've been on the other side of a bunch of bad calls going back to Reggie Carter - I'd have whined, but I'd rather the players  decide it than the referees.

Perhaps this is where the main disagreement lies. I believe this team has sweet 16 level talent, and therefore I think that is the goal. I'm not assuming they'll be that good but I'm hoping they will be because they certainly can be. Making the tournament as a 8-9-10 seed and being a one and done will be an underachievement for this roster IMO.

Yes, Marquette was an odd blown call away from losing to Louisville today. We were a missed call away from losing to VCU.

Where we disagree is on when this team will be good. You assume we will progress as the same pace as other more steady programs. I think we will get there in February--if at all.

To me, the season hinges on how willingly and soon Simon accepts his manifest destiny of playing PF.

Next, we need to adopt an unrelenting rebounding style on offense.

The cherry on top is getting 15 mpg from Keita playing close to the basket.

Everything else is masturbation. Which I'm not opposed to, I have a PhD in that.