WBB: C.al @ Stanford: Close to sellout;; PAC-12 tough scheduling - Printable Version

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WBB: C.al @ Stanford: Close to sellout;; PAC-12 tough scheduling - M T - 01-13-2013

As of the night before, only 133 reserved tickets left (and an unknown number of GA tickets) for sale at the Stanford ticket site.  However,  I see the 239 tickets on Stubhub are not yet priced to sell ($38 and up).

I'm hoping that the game sells out.  Would having two consecutive sellouts be a first for Stanford WBB?
So, if you're sitting on the fence, get your tickets quickly and come cheer them on.  I'm ready to wipe a bad memory from that last home game.  How long has it been since the last consecutive losses at home? (It looks like it was 2001.)

Based on current ranking (but I expect Cal to drop out of the top 10 after losing two games in a row),
the PAC-12 has the 18 of the 20 toughest consecutive pairs of games in WBB.
(The other possibility would be in the Big East conference, but no team plays UConn & ND consecutively.)

The team facing the roughest consecutive pair of games in WBB would be Tennessee (who else), facing #1 Baylor & #4/5 Stanford.
Next would be Cal, having to face #4/5 Stanford twice in a week.  (Boo! Hiss!  Terrible scheduling.)
Next would be Baylor, who split with #4/5 Stanford and #6 Kentucky.
Next would be a number of other PAC-12 teams, some of which are TWICE having to face these two teams consecutively:
  Twice:  Oregon, OSU, UCLA, USC,  Utah, Colo. St. (Welcome to the PAC-12!)
  Once: Wash., Wash State, Az, ASU,
Then Stanford having to face #7 consecutively.

USC has to have the hardest 3-game (in just 5 days) and  4-game stretch in WBB, playing #4/5 Stanford on 2/15, #7 Cal on 2/17 , #14/15 UCLA on 2/19, and at #14/15 UCLA on 2/24.
#23 Colorado has an equivalently tough 3-game (all away) stretch in WBB, playing at #7 Cal on 1/25, at #4/5 Stanford on 1/27, and at #14/15 UCLA on 2/1.

I really don't like this scheduling where teams play consecutive home & away games against their biggest rival!  It puts too much weight on a pair of games that are consecutive.

• If someone twists an ankle the week before or in the first game, and is hampered for both games, that's single random event that makes a big difference to the two teams' rivalry.
  
• There's precious little time for the coaches to respond to what they see in the first game. 
  
• Once the pair is done, there's maybe nothing much else for teams to get excited about for the rest of the season. (In Stanford's case, we won't see Cal for two months, if at all.)
  
• As a fan, I sense less build-up to this game, because, hey, we just beat them at their house.  If we were playing them in 4 or 6 weeks, I'd have room for more doubt about the outcome, and feel there's more at stake.
  

Consider how this affects the rankings.  The 2-time winner will have no change because of this.  The 2-time loser falls more earlier in the season, but probably has a higher ranking going into the tourney.  If the teams split, they both fall early in the season and probably wind up about where they would have been anyway.  (Consider how you would think about rankings if ND had beaten UConn  (or if they split two games) twice a week ago, but didn't play them again.)
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http://rpiratings.com/womensrpi.php  (Jan 6  PM)

http://www.rpiratings.com/womrate.php (Jan 12 AM)

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