The Holy Land of Hoops

Hey Everyone,

Just thought I'd check to see what you all think of this year's league schedule? As of now, CU has played 9 conference games and has not played Marquette or Xavier yet while already having played G'Town and SH twice. They will have played 11/18 conference games before they play Xavier the first time, and 12 conf games before they see Marquette for the first time. I think this is not good. I know other teams are in a similar position, and I understand that it's impossible for a league to always organize everyone's schedules such that everyone plays all conference opponents in the first half of the conf schedule and then plays everyone again in the second half. I get it, but again, we'll have played almost 2/3 of our schedule before we see two opponents for the first time.

Granted, with the double round robin format, you get to see everyone both home and away, regardless of the order in which you see everyone. I just don't like how it's turned out this year.

Thoughts?

I agree, I thought that was strange and don't like it, but I'm sure it's tough to get it to be perfect.

The unfortunate fact is that a large number of the league's members have their schedules determined in part by outside actors.

Four of the league's 10 teams share a gym with an NBA team for at least part of the conference season (Georgetown, Marquette, St. John's, Villanova). Four teams also share a gym with an NHL team for at least part of the conference season (Georgetown, Seton Hall, St. John's, Villanova). This doesn't even get into the other venue conflicts due to college/minor league hockey that DePaul, Creighton, and Providence have.

In addition, games are also impacted by concert schedules in these arenas. (MU's rescheduled game against St. John's was moved to Carnesecca because Springsteen had the Garden on that Sunday).

Only Butler and Xavier have total control over their venue.

Compare to the ACC, where only one school has to worry about scheduling conflicts with the NBA or NHL (NC State).

The schedule can't be perfect so to me this is definitely a non issue. I don't really care about when two teams play, but there should probably be at least 3 other conference games in between. If a team played the same opponent in game 8 as they do in game 11 that would be more of a problem to me than a team playing the same opponent in game 1 as they do in game 7.