One of the reasons I started this thread is to look at how scheduling really tough OOC can hold up a team and how it impacts your rpi week to week. I agree with both figgie and Chris above for the most part. But I’m a little more confident our OOC schedule will hold up our rpi. Figgie has looked at the history and noted most Top 40 teams get in somehow. I’ve set the bar more at 33-35 just to be safe.
I expect us to tear thru the A10 even with our current injuries. Building mental fortitude is critical to do that because our team is so young. Senior leadership is critical plus junior Sierra’s development on the Rightside. She expected to be playing MB in college and she is making a huge contribution to the TEAM in agreeing to play outside right now. I have a lot of respect for her and will support her even thru tough matches. We all need to do that, becuase it kind-of yucks having to p,ay out of position.
Finally, even when we go undefeated in the regular season A10, my guess is rpi will drop 10-15 slots. That’s a guess. I have zero historical knowledge to support it except looking at the 2010 team that scheduled MN, ILL and NE and lost all 3, but the rpi held up. This year we have one more loss, but we’ve played a tougher OCC schedule which includes top teams in more conferences that should win a bunch more games now that everyone will start playing conference matches. I’ll go back and post our OOC foes records from 2010 versus this year’s and post that comparison in about two weeks so we can track that too. Again, the reason for this thread...to find out.
So sitting at 15ish right now looks very, very good to me even with 4 losses. I consider this our safety net if something happens in the A10 tournament. We’ve had a key player get injured in set 2 of a tournament match and lost and missed the dance. It can happen, but right now if we take care of business, I think we are sitting in a good spot. Team has to keep working hard and getting better. I can tell you we played better last week up at Pitt. We did not play as well physically this weekend. Where we got better is I think we mentally raised our game. We played bad in several sets, but did not fold mentally. We let it go and kept fighting. I credit our 3 seniors for keeping everyone focused forward on the next point. That’s a critical issue that we need to see more of. It’s something that was missing last year on a team that had a lot of seniors, but I’m not sure it had the leadership it needed.
Back on the road this coming weekend. Two most important words this week are... air conditioning. It’s going to still be mid 80s.
Last edited by BeckysTXA; 09-17-2018 at 10:57 AM..
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