Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is RTC’s Big 12 correspondent and occasional contributor.
During the off season for college basketball, about the only real exciting thing to look forward to is speculation on the schedule for next year–like will a large conference team go on the road to play at a smaller team home court or will teams be playing RPI killers that will hurt them come Selection Sunday? College basketball scheduling is a little different than college football scheduling in that it is almost an up to the last minute thing to develop a schedule. Most college football fans have a pretty good idea who is on the schedule up to four years or more in advance. Most college basketball fans have to wait until a month or two before the current season to find out that season’s schedule. This probably is more exciting for a small college fan to speculate and wait for, but nonetheless interesting.
Being a fan of the Creighton Bluejays, I was perusing some schedules that have been posted on CollegeHoopsNet.com to see if there were any teams having Creighton on the schedule that we as fans did not know were there yet. But as I looked a little closer, there was a schedule developing that caught my eye—Mississippi Valley State.
The AD or coach or whoever does the scheduling for the Delta Devils must either dislike the basketball program as a whole or just want to throw the team on the floor because they know they are getting a lot of guaranteed money. Check out this schedule so far for their month of November:
· November 17th–@Oklahoma in the first round of the Preseason NIT
· November 18th–@Oklahoma to play either James Madison or Davidson in winner or loser round of Preseason NIT
· November 20th–@Montana
· November 22nd–@Arkansas State
· November 23rd–@Washington State
Are you serious? I know SWAC teams are notorious for lining up all of these guaranteed games at schools to help fund other sports and things at their schools, but this makes no sense and you are creating a team that will definitely be tired. Going from Mississippi to Oklahoma, then three days later go to Missoula, Montana, back towards home to Jonesburg, Arkansas and then back the other way again to Pullman, Washington in the next three days. Now mapping out it would made a heck of a lot of sense to actually go to Missoula, take the bus ride to Pullman and then fly back to Jonesburg. But, to cover both coasts back and forth over a couple day period and logging over 6000 miles doesn’t really make sense to me. Doesn’t that destroy your profit margin? That is absolutely ridiculous. BTW, the Delta Devils come into Omaha to play the Jays on December 2nd. They should be a tired team.
I am also excited to mention that I am taking the challenge of a conference correspondent with Rush the Court this winter. Though I am a Creighton fan and would love to cover the Valley, I am right smack in the middle (well sort of) of Big 12 territory. This season should be an intriguing one as we have several questions to answer. Can Kansas reload and vie for a championship repeat? Will Texas finally answer the hype machine and be in contention for a run in March to the Final Four? Will Pat Knight be able to step out of his dad’s shadow to lead Texas Tech to the tourney? And will Doc “Slingblade” Sadler be able to get Nebraska to the NCAA and notch that first tournament win in program history? This will be a fun year and an exciting time to be a college basketball fan.