Putting together a college basketball schedule is an art. It requires manipulating the terrible RPI system with bad-but-not-terrible opponents and sometimes even playing fringe, non-NCAA teams rather than the worst teams in Division I.
Indiana put together an almost incredibly terrible schedule last year—one that both angered fans and hurt the team’s strength of schedule.
Somehow, despite playing Kansas, North Carolina, Louisville, and Butler during non-conference season, the Hoosiers’ non-conference strength of schedule ranked 310th nationally, according to KenPom. You almost have to try to find the worst “cupcake” opponents possible to get that bad of a ranking with four blue bloods in the schedule.
The home schedule was even worse. The Hoosiers got North Carolina at home through the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, but the games they scheduled were hideous: UMass Lowell, Liberty, Mississippi Valley State, SIU Edwardsville, Southeast Missouri State, Houston Baptist, Delaware State, and Austin Peay.
That’s not exactly what fans want to see.
Indiana seems to have taken notice, and in an effort to properly game the RPI and get butts in seats, new coach Archie Miller will be incentivized to play fewer horrible teams.
Under the terms of his first Indiana contract, obtained by The Herald-Times on Tuesday through an open records request, Miller will receive an annual bonus of $125,000 for playing no more than one non-conference opponent that has a sub-300 RPI rating.
That’s a smart, savvy move by Indiana in case it’s on the bubble any time soon, and it’s a smart way to get fans excited about early season basketball. This year’s IU scheduling strategy was almost unimaginably incompetent. It looks like that won’t happen again for awhile.
