The complaints about Vandy’s nonconference schedule are stupid

A recurring theme on Twitter lately has been fans of other SEC schools discounting Vanderbilt basketball — currently undefeated and ranked 11th in the AP Poll, 8th in KenPom, and 6th in the NCAA’s NET rankings, higher than any other SEC team in all three — because of its nonconference schedule.

This is one of the stupidest complaints imaginable. For one thing, Vanderbilt’s nonconference strength of schedule currently ranks 88th in KenPom, and sixth among SEC teams. For comparison, Tennessee’s vaunted schedule ranks 126th. Tennessee, though, has lost three games against its nonconference schedule while Vanderbilt has lost none. Vanderbilt also has three Quad 1 wins, which is more than any SEC team has accumulated to date. It’s true that other SEC teams have played more Quad 1 games to date, but Vandy has actually won all of theirs and thus their 3-0 Quad 1 record beats Alabama’s 2-3 record or Kentucky’s 1-4 record. It’s also true that Vandy might end up with more Quad 1 wins out of its nonconference schedule; currently, VCU is ranked 59th in NET and would become a Quad 1 win if it were to move into the top 50 since that game was on a neutral; Memphis currently ranks 114th but might get into the top 75 if it starts winning in the American. SMU ranks 36th and would become a Quad 1 win if they rise into the top 30.

(Also, the SMU game wasn’t scheduled by Vanderbilt; that was scheduled by ESPN as part of the ACC/SEC Challenge. ESPN clearly wildly underestimated how good Vanderbilt would be when scheduling the matchups. Tennessee did draw Syracuse at Syracuse, which they got a Quad 2 loss out of. But never mind that.)

The genius of Vanderbilt’s nonconference schedule is that Mark Byington scheduled a bunch of games that would be low-key impressive wins while being eminently winnable. Saint Mary’s is currently ranked 28th in NET, and Vanderbilt blew them out on a neutral court. UCF, because the game was in Orlando, would only need to be in the top 75 of NET, and the Knights currently rank 33rd (and also haven’t lost since Vanderbilt beat them, including a win at the SEC’s Texas A&M.) Wake Forest ranks 68th, and Vanderbilt’s blowout on Sunday counts as a Quad 1 win because the game was in Winston-Salem. If you’re trying to rack up Quad 1 wins, those should be the kind of games you schedule, not neutral-site games against powerhouse programs that are 50-50 propositions at best even if you’re a good team.

What’s more — and this is an underrated point — Vanderbilt has only played four Quad 4 games. Tennessee has played five and Kentucky seven. If you’re trying to impress the NCAA Selection Committee, you schedule like Mark Byington. If you’re trying to impress morons on Twitter and keep Greg Sankey happy, you schedule like Tennessee and Kentucky.

Wait, what’s that I’m getting at? Yeah, what’s actually going on here is pretty directly related to the recent ESPN- and FOX-led shitting on the G5 in football, because let’s not pretend like the SEC and Big Ten cartoon-villain plot to break away from the NCAA isn’t going on in other sports too. Vanderbilt was one of just two SEC teams (Texas, which played in the Maui Invitational, was the other) that played in a traditional eight-team MTE, and all three of Vanderbilt’s games in the Battle 4 Atlantis were against what would qualify as mid-majors; the two teams playing in eight-team MTEs was fewer than the three (Tennessee included) who played in the Emirati/David Ellison Invitational in Las Vegas. Vanderbilt also played Memphis on the road, a few years after Tennessee completely chickened out of playing the series, and this was one of just two road games played by SEC teams against non-power conference teams not named “Gonzaga.” (Missouri opened the season with a road game at Howard, which is ranked 248 in NET. That’s not even remotely the same thing.)

Vanderbilt has played four non-home games against teams outside the power conferences. The rest of the SEC has played eight* combined, and even that’s reaching to include stuff like Florida playing George Washington at the Florida Panthers’ arena and Alabama happening to draw UNLV as one of its opponents in the Players Era. It also includes Texas fucking up and winding up in the loser’s bracket in Maui and playing Chaminade there. And, again, it includes only one actual scheduled road game (Missouri at Howard) in there.

(*Note: I’m stretching the definition of “home game” to include the barnstorming games that some SEC games play around their home states. Alabama playing Kennesaw State in Huntsville isn’t technically a “home game,” but come on. Though I am counting Ole Miss playing Southern Miss in Biloxi in the tally, because yeah, that’s not really a home game for the Rebels. Mississippi State playing San Francisco in Tupelo, though? Yeah, aside from that being an actual thing that happened, that’s pretty much a home game. Also, Mississippi State lost that game.)

What’s actually going on is not that Vanderbilt has played a weak nonconference schedule, a claim that no serious person should be making, but that they’re not playing ball with Greg Sankey’s mission to go form a breakaway league. There’s been a rather obvious and insidious effort over the last couple of years — led by the SEC and Big Ten — to simply cut the mid-majors off. I’m not saying there’s an explicit directive to do this, but the clear pattern in SEC teams’ nonconference schedules has been to avoid playing non-power conference teams that might be a threat to actually win the game and especially to avoid doing that at their place. But it’s also taking the form of avoiding eight-team MTEs (four-team MTEs make it easier to avoid playing mid-majors, an unstated part of why a lot of coaches are done with Maui and Atlantis, and why ESPN bent to their will in turning the Charleston Classic into two four-team brackets instead of the cool eight-team bracket.) It’s not clear why exactly the NCAA bent the rules for the And1/Emirati/Paramount Skydance Circle Jerk, but they’ve been allowed to invite multiple teams from the same conference and this has allowed them to almost completely block out mid-majors from the event — which is probably more important to the draw for coaches than the fact that their players get five-figure NIL checks for showing up. Oh, yeah, and the other end of the directive is that the non-power conference portion of the schedule should be exclusively buy games against terrible teams.

Mark Byington isn’t playing ball, and the result is that Vanderbilt is ranked sixth in the NET and has more Quad 1 wins than anyone in the SEC, and also is being accused of having played no one. It’s true that if your knowledge of college basketball goes about 15 teams deep, well, Vanderbilt hasn’t played any of those teams. It’s also true that they have some impressive wins and, assuming this holds up in SEC play, will end up being something like a 2- or 3-seed in the NCAA Tournament. Cool.