Before you sign up to take the court for a program, look carefully at the team's schedule.
As the regular season schedule wraps up and the annual barrage of conference tournaments looms, now is a good time to take a closer look at the schedule and results of the programs that you might be considering. It's important to see beyond just the number of wins and losses and focus on exactly when and specifically whom those victories or defeats came against. Additionally it's imperative that you define for yourself just how important a program's success or struggles are going to be in your decision.
Realistically, there aren't too many recruits out there looking for the opportunity to be the catalyst behind a rebuilding project. More often than not, an athlete's first choice is to hitch their wagon to someone else's star and be part of something rather than the start of something else. Who can blame them? There aren't too many one-year turnarounds in women's basketball and the growing pains of advancing a program can be challenging athletically, mentally and emotionally.
At the same time, there's a misperception out there concerning wins, their role in the recruiting process and just how much impact each W should have in the grand scheme of things. Wins can be a deceiving basis for the inclusion or exclusion of a program as you evaluate those interested in your future. Prosperity and failure are often only a season apart in college athletics and if you're going to give weight to a team's record as you narrow the scope of your choices, you'll need to look deeper into and beyond the immediate season in front of you.
It's worth giving consideration to the past couple of seasons to see if there has been any consistency to what a team has and has not been accomplishing on the floor. If its recent success is the culmination of strides taken over the last few years, you may be looking at a growing program with a sound foundation rather than a senior-laden flash in the pan. But before you pat them on the back and say, "Tell me more," take a look ahead as well. Scan the roster and stats and see what players are returning next season and what their contributions have been over the course of the current schedule. Finding value in the winning percentage of a program means you've got to have the peripheral vision of Sue Bird and see everything to ultimately give it proper perspective.
If you're going to put that kind of stock in a "winning program," then make sure those wins are more than just numbers in a column. Be sure that a team is competing with the caliber of competition that you're interested in playing against and that its success in not an illusion of soft wins and strategic scheduling.
Coaches, depending on what conference their school is a member of, have control over a specific number of nonconference games each season. Each one has a strategy as to what they want to accomplish with those games and often there's more to it than just looking for challenges to get their team ready for conference play.
While it's a given that everyone wants to win them all from a competitive standpoint, sometimes there are other influences that lead to coaches scheduling for wins. Job security can, and often does, comes into play. If the pressure is on and their administration is demanding some improvement, it's not unusual for a coach to soften up the nonconference schedule to create some breathing room.
That mythical 20-win standard to make the NCAA tournament can influence who's going to find a place on the schedule. Often coaches in conferences that annually get multiple bids to the tournament tend to feel they'll get beat up in conference play so they look to stockpile nonconference wins early in the year. Fortunately, the tournament selection committee has done a good job in recent years of discounting 20-win teams that have not achieved those victories against quality competition.
Conversely, a program that is dominant in a mid-major conference and is generally a lock to get its share of wins would be one you would hope to see loading up the front end of the schedule. However, not all take that approach. Some are worried if they slip up in conference play or get upset in their conference tournament that they'll need the wins to get any at-large consideration at all. Again the committee, for the most part, hasn't been investing at-large bids in programs, taking the Bernie Madoff approach to scheduling.
The five top-ranked teams in the current AP poll average only five nonconference games against schools from mid-major or conferences whose strength and depth might be perceived to be weaker than their own. This isn't in any way meant to demean or downplay those particular conferences, but it's obvious that programs challenging for the national championship are looking for the competition as well as the wins.
Often rebuilding programs will soften up the schedule to get some wins and build a winning mentality before they enter into conference play that may not be quite so friendly to them. That approach at times also has a basis in recruiting. Having spent a large majority of my coaching career helping rebuild programs, I've heard time and again from athletes that we weren't being considered an option because we weren't a "winning program." Often that statement came from someone who hadn't looked at anything beyond our record and may well have found a great fit and opportunity if we had a few more wins on the board.
Look closely at the record and schedule of the programs you're considering. You can see all conference standings as well as each individual Division I team's game-by-game results by following this link:
Women's College Basketball Standings
No scheduling strategy is gospel. Any victory feels good to coaches and players, but not all wins are created equal. A competitive loss to a top-25 program often says much more than a 30-point win over a program that hasn't had a winning season since Nixon was in office. From a recruiting standpoint it's important to know how to interpret a program's competition and success as well as identify just what it might mean to you and your future.
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