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Schedule Analysis – Oshkosh
I’ve got another schedule from a top program and this one isn’t playing the NPI game. This time, it’s UW-Oshkosh who saw what Juniata was doing and said hold my Gatorade. Here is a reminder on what I’m doing with this series.
This series attempts to look at schedules through an NCAA Power Index (NPI) viewfinder and evaluate them on an NPI basis. Ned has gifted me an Excel sheet that allows me to plug in the 2025 schedule of a team and see how it would do if they were playing the 2024 versions of their opponent. From this, I can see what their max NPI would theoretically be (with an undefeated season) and how their spread of opponents look when examining their NPIs. I can even play some what-if games with wins and losses. Remember, when looking at 2024 NPIs, that a win gives you a match NPI that is about 10 points higher while a loss will give you 80% less. If we assume the at-large bid cut-line will be around 59.5 NPI then this means any team above 50 NPI will be beneficial with a win. The Quality Win Bonus (QWB) is set to 55.5 in women’s volleyball so most of the opponents between 55 and 60 will also give you a QWB. In doing these simulations, just know that I do not feed in the results and alter team’s NPIs. Most importantly, 2024 NPIs will not equal that team’s NPI in 2025. If you want that information, someone will have to learn to look into the future.
Here is our table of the schedules analyzed so far in this series. I’m thinking “Loss a” isn’t something worth tracking but I haven’t taken it away, just yet.
(Loss n = Simulated losses against NCAA Tournament teams above the at-large cut-line.) (Loss a = Simulated losses that causes the team to use all of their 50+ NPI results.) (Max L = Maximum number of losses to their best opponents and stay above the at-large cut-line.)
Time to look at UW-Oshkosh who finished with the 8th best NPI last season at 67.14. They were the second at-large team to receive a bid after losing the Automatic Qualifier (AQ) to UW-Whitewater. Their 2025 schedule has 29 matches over 21 play dates (out of an allowed 22 dates).
Here is their spread of opponents across the NPI range:
60+…12 opponents
55-60…7 opponents
50-55…5 opponents
Less than 50…5 opponents
So, less matches against 55-60 and 50-55 with more matches against the low NPI teams than what Juniata had. That’s not good. Of course, they make up for it by having 12 matches against the elite, which is 4 more than Juniata, 9 more than ETBU and 10 more than Calvin. This is a monster of a schedule and we should see a new maximum NPI leader in a moment. Oshkosh is another team that is losing a number of outstanding players so playing this tough of a schedule in a conference where they are no lock for an AQ is…interesting. I’m thinking, from an NPI standpoint, that this schedule is too top heavy but it’s obvious that Oshkosh is not thinking about NPI with this one.
With this schedule, Oshkosh has 24 matches that will be useful in the NPI game. That’s one less than Juniata. Remember, no team wants to start using the wins against the low NPI teams because it will drag their NPI towards or below the at-large cut-line.
Assuming Oshkosh goes undefeated in 2025, their maximum NPI with this schedule is 79.61. That is the highest maximum so far besting Juniata by almost 4 points. Last year, that would have been the highest NPI by almost 2 points. One way to make people forget about three-peat Juniata is to best their NPI “record” by going undefeated.
Next, we’ll look at their “Loss n” number which is the result when we assign losses to every match where they play a team that was above the at-large cut-line last year. That would be 13 losses in this case, which would mean Oshkosh finishes at 16-13. Their NPI would be 57.81. Under this simulation, 14 of their wins would be used for this calculation and the Juniata loss would be discarded because it would have raised their NPI.
Just like with Juniata, figuring out “Loss a” is pointless because it’s supposed to look at what the number would be if we used all of the good NPI wins and excluded the low NPI opponents. Well, that’s what had to happen with “Loss n” so no more work needed with that.
Our next step is to start switching their simulated losses that would help the least to see how many overall losses Oshkosh could absorb. I’m guessing just two will do it. The first loss to switch is UW-Stevens Point and that brings the NPI up to 58.67. The second loss is to switch the UW-Eau Claire result and all of sudden, Oshkosh is looking good in the WIAC! This brings their NPI up to 59.60, which would have had them right below the cut-line by 0.0212 points. I worked as a surveyor one summer and we had a saying, “Close enough for dirt.” That meant the measurement was close enough for the stake that we were driving into the dirt and I think it works here when I’m using 2024 numbers and manipulating wins and losses. “Close enough for NPI.” That means that Oshkosh, in this simulation, can absorb 11 losses as long as they beat the other 18 teams on the schedule that are weaker. That’s 2 more losses than what Juniata can absorb. That is a ton of wiggle room. Last year, the team above the cut-line with the most losses was NYU at 12.
Let’s look at the table from the top and include Oshkosh.
We really have two different approaches here between what Calvin/ETBU are doing and what Juniata/Oshkosh are doing. I mentioned in the Juniata write-up that they had the luxury of always winning their conference’s AQ. There is no automatic winner in the very tough WIAC. That makes this approach all the more impressive. We see from this chart that Oshkosh has the chance of coming away with 19 Quality Win Bonuses. (A QWB is given when beating a team with an NPI of 55.5 or higher.) That’s insane. Looking at their low NPI opponents, only one of them (UW-La Crosse) is in conference so they did schedule four of those schools. What’s interesting is that three of them will occur in the first 10 days of the season. It’s possible they did this to allow a little break at the start but it’s probably more of just how the schedule fell. Looking at their Opponent NPI and it’s 0.582. Last season, the highest Opponent NPI was 0.585 (accomplished by both NYU and CMU). CMU finished with 11-losses and, as stated previously, NYU finished with 12-losses.
I normally finish with my thoughts and then some comments by the coach but Coach Jon Ellmann evidently has my emails forwarded to his trash folder or something. I know Ricky made him do that. So, you are stuck with more of me.
Like with the Juniata schedule and with their young team (like Juniata), I would be a little worried about overloading their young players with this tough schedule. It’s obvious that all of the things I worry about, however, are not a concern for Oshkosh. They are going with one of the toughest schedules in the division and their players better keep up. Playing in the tough WIAC, this schedule will help the team prepare for those matches. It will be interesting to see how many teams that don’t have a locked down AQ go with this tough of a schedule. Bottom line, it’s business as usual for the Titans and my guess is that it’s National Championship or bust. If that is your goal then I can have no complaints over this schedule. Still, what I don’t want to see is a good Oshkosh team not make the NCAA Tournament because they bit off more than they could chew (sort of like cheese curd).
That’s our fourth baseline in the system as we search for the perfect NPI schedule. We really have two pairs of schedules, so far, which is interesting. I’m hoping the next schedule will be something in between.
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