How Missouri finalizes its hoops schedule will frame expectations

When the calendar turns over to June, college basketball's news cycle should whir with the creaking speed of an industrial fan.

On May 24, the deadline elapsed for underclassmen to pull their names from the NBA draft. Coaching staffs get a reprieve from rushing between sweltering gyms, squeezing into cramped rental cars and carry way too much loose cash to feed the packet racket. By now, most high-level recruits and grad transfers have found homes. As for the players, summer classes start this coming week — and with it, the chemistry experiments performed late at night during open gym sessions.

What passes for news? Unofficial visits from prospects. Updates on players working back from injury. Oh, and scheduling.

In one hour last week, a flurry of tweets gave us better clarity about Missouri's docket —€” a home-and-home series with UCF and its slate for SEC play. A week earlier, MU learned it was left on the stoop for one of 10 matchups in the Big12-SEC Challenge.

In any other year, knowing who the Tigers will face in 24 games would be interesting but far from compelling. But the 12 weeks since Cuonzo Martin's hiring have been chockablock with news. We're waiting to see when Jontay Porter announces his likely reclassification for the 2017 class, but, on the whole, the roster is fixed —€” one infused with the nation's No. 1 prospect headlining a top-five class, an impact grad transfer in Kassius Robertson, and a trio of steady veterans.

It's a reclamation project that has the sports pundit class plopping Mizzou in preseason some preseason top-25 rankings. And the hype surrounding Martin's debut season is percolated by one question: Can Mizzou end a four-year absence from the NCAA tournament.

Once again, Missouri will likely be one the nation's youngest teams. Under most circumstances, it wouldn't be shocking for Martin and his staff to hew to a conservative approach: schedule softly and allow a roster cleaved by youth and raw talent to find itself.

Michael Porter Jr.'s nine-month stopover in Columbia, though, thwarts that logic —€” not that Martin, the athletic department or (until recently) an apathetic fan base.

Rightly or wrongly, the floor starts with getting back on the NCAA tournament bubble —€” a task that hinges on the conscious decisions made right now in the sport's doldrums. How Mizzou assembles the remaining components not only dictates its viability come March, but it reveals how the program will balance capitalizing on fan interest and managing player development.

So, uh, what’s left to do?

Truthfully, not much.

When Mizzou hired Martin on March 15, it had half the non-conference fixed in place. MU opens with Iowa State, hosts Stephen F. Austin, plays three games in the AdvoCare Invitational (hopefully drawing a Big 12 contender in West Virginia) and faces Illinois in what should be a rejuvenated Braggin’ Rights tilt.

The series with UCF could be shrewd. The Knights doubled their win total in Johnny Dawkins’ first year on the bench, reached the NIT quarterfinals and jumped to 68th in Ken Pomeroy's rankings. Starting with big man Tacko Fall, they have enough returning pieces to be intriguing in an American Athletic Conference race that will include the usual suspects like Cincinnati, SMU and (now) Wichita State.

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Five of Mizzou's non-conference games are away from Columbia, meaning there are likely five or six more home dates still open. And that's where things could get interesting or tricky.

Even among power conference programs, locking in a marquee matchup requires shoe leather and some luck. Today, a major home-and-home may be the byproduct of several years' worth of conversations. It can be an equally byzantine process — and one with plenty of jockeying — to score a spot in a premier non-conference tournament. Increasingly, bluebloods are circumventing the process entirely, organizing amongst themselves for events like the Champions Classic.

Power conferences have tried to craft workarounds, the latest incarnations being the Big 12-SEC Challenge and the Gavitt Games, pairing teams from the Big Ten and Big East. Even then, it's likely traditional powers from those leagues will meet, a necessity for TV interest.

When word came down that Missouri was left on the stoop for this year's Big 12-SEC Challenge, it wasn't a surprise. Still, it's a missed opportunity. Instead of a potentially beneficial matchup handed to them in late January, Martin, his staff and an associate athletic director will keep working the phones.

Sure, Martin retains a degree of freedom in sculpting the schedule. Whether he has much flexibility is another matter.

Who can they call?

Looking to the NCAA selection committee for guidance doesn't bring clarity. Past committee chairs are broken records: We take each team on its own. We want to see road games. Or neutral floor games against decent teams.

The 10 members in the room understand athletic directors and coaches don't have perfect foresight. A game that looked good in the summer may not be by the middle of the season. What matters, though, is trying to arrange high-quality matchups.

Keep in mind, too, the SEC has its own guideline for members: the three-year average RPI for a program should be better than No. 175. The league instituted the recommendation —€” there's no enforcement mechanism —€” a year ago with the implicit message that you couldn't schedule teams mired in prolonged stretches of mediocrity.

Using the SEC's cutoff is a handy way to cull the field of teams Mizzou could seek out. Playing around in Excel reveals 175 programs meet the conference's parameters, or half of the Division I membership. Now, if we're talking about quality opponents, those who own an average RPI better than 100, there's still a degree of flexibility. Roughly 40 of those schools are outside the Power Five structure. For example, UT-Arlington, which is out of the Sun Belt, finished 40th in the ratings last season and sports an average RPI of 109th —€” metrics that compare favorably to schools like Penn State or Arizona State.

As a handy reference tool, we've embedded the Google spreadsheet so you can compare teams.

I won't go so far as to offer up a hypothetical slate. You can come up with 1.3 billion combinations, assuming MU is scheduling five games, from the pool of 175 squads. I'm sure any of us could put together a solid mix.

What the spreadsheet does is reveal the respective trend of each team. Which programs are rising? Which ones are waning? Which are stable? Iowa State, which is slotted as No. 10 seed in Joe Lunardi's way-too-early bracket for 2018, has typically finished inside the RPI top-25. Even if they regress this season, the odds are they'll still count as a quality opponent. By contrast, Stephen F. Austin, which dominated the Southland with Underwood on the sidelines, slid to 206th last season from 62nd in 2016. Yet the Lumberjacks sport an average RPI of 101.

None of us can predict how the schedule will look, but we can get a pretty good idea about its relative quality. But as to the underlying calculus, we'll have to wait.

As always, tradeoffs occur. Perhaps you schedule a road game at power conference program to expose a young roster to an environment that mimics what they'll see in SEC play. A preseason tournament is a test run for what life may be like in March:€” games on short turnarounds with quick scouts. And if you're scheduling at home, do you schedule a proven mid-major such as Belmont or Valparaiso —€” games that boost your SOS —€” or bring in a power conference foe that will entice a casual fan to show up to Mizzou Arena on a Tuesday in early December?

Split-personality scheduling

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

To divine Martin's scheduling philosophy, it's useful to look at his tournament-caliber rosters in his previous stops at Tennessee (2012-13 and 2013-14) and Cal (2015-16 and 2016-17) for insights. Rather than clarity, we see a contradiction.

Let's start at UT, segmenting the Volunteers' opponents over two seasons using Ken Pomeroy's ratings:

• Nos. 1-25: 2-3
• Nos. 26-50: 1-2
• Nos. 51-100: 2-2
• Nos. 101-200: 4-1
• Nos. 201-300: 4-0
• Nos. 301-plus: 4-0
• Overall: 17-8

Additionally, I've included the location of games against opponents in the top 100:

• Home: 3-2
• Road: 0-4
• Neutral: 2-1
• Overall: 5-7

Proactive is how I'd describe Martin. The Vols finished 52nd and 33rd nationally in non-conference SOS, according to KenPom. Half of their opponents were top-100 teams, and a majority of those matchups were in hostile gyms or neutral floors. UT sought out Virginia, Wichita State and Xavier for home-and-homes, traveled to Georgetown, and hosted NC State.

Context matters, too. Martin needed to schedule tougher in those seasons. His tenure at UT overlapped a period of historic weakness for the SEC. In 2013, the conference finished behind the Atlantic 10 and Mountain West in KenPom's ratings. Five SEC programs finished worse than 100th, paced by Mississippi State (209th) wallowing under Rick Ray and Auburn (255th) failing to flourish with Tony Barbee. The SEC landed just three schools in the 68-team field that season, with its tournament champion in Ole Miss only notching a No. 12 seed.

While the conference's coaches touted its bonafides during conference calls, the metrics spoke at a higher decibel level. In 2013-14, the SEC went 8-26 against RPI top-50 teams, according to CBS Sports, and 17-23 against fellow Power Five schools. With the conference at its nadir, hunting for tough out-of-conference matchups was a necessity for Martin. Who knows? Perhaps the Volunteers 35-point drubbing of Virginia, which bushwhacked the ACC for the regular season crown, helped them squeak into a tournament where they pulled off a run to the Sweet 16.

And it's what makes his apparent course correction in Berkeley so jarring.

Let's now review the caliber of the Golden Bears' non-conference opponents in Martin's final two seasons:

• Nos. 1-25: 0-2
• Nos. 26-50: 1-1
• Nos. 51-100: 2-3
• Nos. 101-200: 7-0
• Nos. 201-300: 7-0
• Nos. 301-plus: 2-0
• Overall: 19-6

Once more, here's where they played top-100 teams:

• Home: 2-1
• Road: 0-1
• Neutral: 1-4
• Overall: 3-6

Without a doubt, Cal under-scheduled. It's not only that they finished 139th and 226th in non-con SOS for those respective years, either. Among their 65 peers in power conferences, those slates ranked No. 44 and No. 40. Not only did Martin's teams eschew high-quality opponents, but they barely left their state's borders. The only made two road trips — a visit to Wyoming and a transcontinental trek to visit Virginia. The only top-50 team they hosted was Saint Mary's, which only had to commute 13 miles.

And it wasn't as if Cal's was devoid of talent. Upon arriving, Martin inherited former blue-chippers Jabari Bird (No. 32 overall in 2013) and Tyrone Wallace (No. 87 in '12) from a retiring Mike Montgomery. In 2015, he scored a coup by landing post Ivan Rabb and wing Jaylen Brown, plugging in two top-10 talents for a solid nucleus. When Wallace graduated and Brown was picked third overall by Boston in last June's NBA draft, the drop off wasn't steep. Instead, Martin plugged in point guard Charlie Moore (No. 55 in 2016) and a quality asset in UK transfer Marcus Lee.

However, Martin's schedules didn't reflect the caliber of the roster at his disposal.

Granted, we can also gin up some plausible theories behind the diluted schedule.

First, Cal's location isn't ideal. How many coaches will drag an elite team —€” one with options closer to home — across multiple time zones? Few. What are the incentives? Will a game in the Bay Area move the needle? Is it a fertile recruiting territory where the visiting program wants exposure? Again, not so much.

Next, its location and modest fan support — the highest Cal has finished in attendance over the past decade is 42nd —€” may not be enticing for marquee neutral floor games or premier non-conference tournaments.

Still, the implications of soft scheduling were clear. Last season, Cal's lone quality win outside the Pac 12 Conference was on a neutral floor over Princeton, which finished 58th in KenPom and won the Ivy League. While Cal went 10-8 in the Pac 12, seven of those losses were to Ken Pom top-50 opponents. (They were 5-8 against the RPI top-100.) When it came time for the selection committee to weigh Cal's 21-12 record, there wasn't much heft to throw around.

Now that Martin is in Columbia, it's natural to wonder which approach he deploys moving forward and whether it's manifested this season.

The SEC is stronger now than when Martin left. Programs have invested, made smart hires and the likes Auburn, Mississippi State and Alabama are landing top-10 recruiting classes.

He's also in closer proximity to quality opponents, whether they hail from the Big 12, Big Ten or (to a degree) from the Big East. Oh, and his boss used to be one of the guys vetting teams trying to score an invite to the dance, which should help Martin understand what his schedule needs to do.

How’s that phenom working out for you?

Photo by David Banks/Getty Images

Before I finish up, I'll say this: Sam Snelling already skewered the idea that Michael Porter Jr. is destined to emulate one-time LSU phenom Ben Simmons.

We all know how Simmons' lone season in Baton Rouge unfolded. It went rather poorly. We learned about his (totally understandable) indifference to attending class, which left him out of the running for the Wooden Award. There were murmurs about poor chemistry in the Tigers' locker room. Upon declaring the NBA draft, Simmons didn't blanch offering his opinion on the NCAA's spirit of amateurism.

And what did LSU get out of the deal? They made an extra $406,000 in ticket revenue. They missed the NCAA tournament. And the trajectory of the program wasn't altered. It's why Will Wade is in Baton Rouge, and we don't have Johnny Jones to kick around anymore.

Still, it's important to remember the financial stakes tethered to Porter's likely nine-month stay in Columbia, and the schedule put together is a reflection of the program's intention and ability to capitalize on it.

What gets lost in the debate surrounding blue chippers like Simmons, Washington's Markelle Fultz and North Carolina State's Dennis Smith Jr. blazing their respective paths, is that the programs they chose did little in the way to capitalize on their presence.

It's all well and good for LSU to put Simmons front and center, but LSU's non-conference schedule ranked 179th nationally. Sure, Fultz felt the love and loyalty from Washington's staff, but the Huskies didn't dot their schedule (No. 220) with challenging matchups. In fact, their lone high-profile tilt —€” a 27-point drubbing at Gonzaga — only served to confirm that Fultz was treading the same path as Simmons in a season where he couldn't lift UW out of mediocrity. And plenty of postmortems.

The parameters framing the struggles of Simmons, Fultz and Smith are unique to each of their programs. What was common, however, was youth and a schedule that seemingly insulated them. Take a look at the respective non-con SOS for each:

• LSU (2016): No. 179
• Washington (2017): No. 220
• N.C. State (2017): No. 321

As we saw with Martin's teams at Cal, a soft non-conference slate leaves little in the way of wiggle room when you're chasing an at-large bid. In trying to insulate a talented but green roster, you shrink the margin for error that comes into play.

Not only do weak schedules hamper your odds at a potential at-large bid, but they don't make for compelling TV, either. While audience segments are fracturing and cable TV is grappling with cord cutting, live games remain a prime vehicle to draw more exposure. But that hinges on Porter and MU appearing in compelling games.

A quick review shows that neither Simmons, Fultz nor Smith appeared in a non-conference game carried by ESPN, CBS or Fox. None of them, in fact, appeared on those networks until January, when conference play began and the season was halfway done. Often, you had to flip the channel to ESPN2, ESPNU, FS1 or a conference-affiliated network to see them in November or December. Even then, the trio appeared on just 13 times in games broadcast on national networks.

No doubt, Porter will be fodder among sports' pundit class. His highlights will pop up on Twitter. And national writers will parachute in Columbia for features. Ultimately, though, the NCAA tournament is the premier showcase for one-and-done talent. Which circles back to the imperative to build a schedule that can maximize the program's odds of showing up when the bracket is revealed.