Might as well get this one rolling…

Source: Texas A&M will host Northwestern State as part of its 22-23 non-conference schedule.

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) April 13, 2022

Hell yeah a NET of 330. We're off to a roaring start.

They are going to need a few big games added. There are no top programs at that Myrtle Beach Tourney. Some decent teams, but not as good as last year's Maui Tourney in Vegas.

We know it will be hard to get a high quality home-and-home, so they will really need to schedule up on a couple of neutral site games at Houston/DFW. Probably will need a Tech, Baylor, UH.

Has the SEC/Big 12 Challenge concluded?

I bet Rothstein has to keep that hot source under wraps. Can't let big time leaks like that getting out.

We don't still have any home-and-home (ish) matchups oustanding right? We're done with TCU and Oregon State?

Only other thing we know for sure is we're in the Myrtle Beach Invitational on Nov. 17-20 with a murder's row of Boise State, Charlotte, Colorado, Loyola Chicago, Tulsa and UMass.

I think in 2019 they extended it for five or six more seasons, though that could change when the schools start moving around.

Would be nice to draw Baylor or Texas in that.

Agreeing to a tournament with no team from the ACC, BigTen or Big12 doesn't seem to make much sense.

: Texas A&M will host Louisiana-Monroe on November 7th in the season opener for both teams.

Also believe we might have to play at Tulane in that SEC/AAC challenge even though our home game was canceled this year. Maybe the league can get us out of that but I'm not sure. Should have a home game at Reed with Oregon State on the back end of a home and home. Maybe Buzz would like to buy us out of that game or delay it a few years until their a little better

We really need more mid-tier games than just absolute trash teams.

I'm under no delusions that we're suddenly going to start having great non-con slates, but playing these just awful teams is killing us.

We need some of these:

Net 50-100: SMU, North Texas, Tulane
100-150: Louisiana Tech, Abilene Christian, SFA, Texas State
150-200: Sam, Oral Roberts, UTEP, Tulsa, Arkansas St., Louisiana, Nichols, Texas Southern

Other than Maui and TCU, Abilene Christian ended up being our best non-con opponent last year by like 100 spots in the rankings. Little bit of bad luck there because Oregon State ended up being absolutely awful, but still. By Torvik's rankings we ended up playing six teams ranked worse than 250 and one that might as well have been an imaginary school.

I don't think you will see any big names on the schedule outside of the Big12/SEC Challenge.

Hopefully a good name gets added to the one spot available in that tournament we are playing. And then hopefully some of those teams end up having good NET ratings.

The mrytle beach tournament has one team as TBA Heard something yesterday that it likely would be a Sun Belt team That is not going to help

Yeah, we have to find a way to schedule more teams in the 150-225 range. All these games continuously against 300+ Southland teams don't make us better and they are abysmal for our metrics.

What's the source on ULM?
ULM - #276

D1 docket

Yup, said last year it was going to hurt us down the stretch.

We don't have to stop scheduling bad teams, but we have to stop scheduling absolute dog**** teams.

Several of us did. Pretty sure you can look up the schedule release thread from last year and I ran the numbers of how awful those teams were.

I'm still not sure how that schedule was even legal under the SEC's scheduling "mandate" but maybe with Covid they gave everyone a break.

Yeah I think my point is rather than hankering for these non-conf matchups that we all want to see but for whatever reason aren't realistic, concentrating on the smaller improvements is and was very much prudent.

So often what can make or break a certain aspect of the season are the little things -- things that aren't going to seem important on their own but in hindsight often are.

If when it came time to make a schedule we chose a couple of bad teams instead of a couple of dog**** teams then there's a very good chance we would have been dancing this year.

I don't even understand the strategy. These teams are so bad that what do you really learn? Last season we thought we learned Williams was going to be a key component to our success. Then we play teams with SEC athleticism, and we learn that was false hope. We just set ourselves up to delay figuring out rotations and offense/defense strategies that work best. But Buzz has been doing this a long time, so I'm sure he has his reasons.

At this point, wouldn't it be better to just go on the road and play better teams than play these dog **** games at home

Unbelievable. This is just moronic at this point.

Edit: I also brought this up in the NET tracker towards the end of the season, but at this point we have to have some sort of agreement or something in place with Northwestern St. On our schedule every freakin year

NET sheet from Selection Sunday morning for the comparison

Remember, if we aren't in the Big 12/SEC challenge this year, we'll have to get a game with the AAC. Tulane was that opponent this season (but got canceled).

So when is the SEC going to step in to ensure that everybody's non-conf RPI is 175 or better?

miller0926 said:

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Remember, if we aren't in the Big 12/SEC challenge this year, we'll have to get a game with the AAC. Tulane was that opponent this season (but got canceled).

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We tied for 5th in conference, pretty much doesn't that guarantee we'll be in the SEC/B12 challenge

I will say it's not worth freaking out over just one or two of these games. We're probably going to have 2-3 just flat out horrible teams, but so does everyone. It's when they make up most of your schedule or you don't offset them with rally good games that you run into problems.

The SEC/big 12 is set on a two year cycle. Has nothing to do with league standings. We were set up for a home and home with Tulane last year and the upcoming season. With the home game last year canceled maybe they don't have to send us to Tulane but that was the original setup.

By our standards, at Tulane would be a pretty tough non-conference game.

Quad 2 at least and with a little luck maybe Quad 1. Not a bad excuse for a fun weekend in New Orleans

gstu11 said:

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The SEC/big 12 is set on a two year cycle. Has nothing to do with league standings. We were set up for a home and home with Tulane last year and the upcoming season. With the home game last year canceled maybe they don't have to send us to Tulane but that was the original setup.

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you're absolutely right

https://www.secsports.com/article/31693096/2022-big-12-sec-challenge-matchups-set

Quote:

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Each of the 10 SEC teams that participate in the 2022 Challenge will be a part of the 2023 event.

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So we won't be part of it next year.

We have to fix this. Will we?

Method Man said:

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We have to fix this. Will we?

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how can you make teams come play at Reed. Only way to fix this is to be road dogs and have much fewer games at home. You think our rabid fanbase will put up with empty Reed in November and December?

It'd be nice to have at least one quality opponent that we could always count on. Like if we could sign a contract with Baylor to play until the end of time or something that would be nice.

I don't know exactly how the sausage is made, but if I had to guess I'd say the "dog****" teams cost us $XXX to get them to come play at Reed, while the "bad" teams cost a chunk more.

Our athletic department, seeing that attendance numbers / ticket sales aren't going to be impacted one iota whether it's Northwestern State coming to Reed or Northwestern School for the Blind coming to Reed, chooses the latter (cheaper).

And 9 times out of 10 it doesn't matter... Until it does.

We're also probably not willing to go home and home with decent-but-not-good teams (like an SMU), but maybe we should.

bobinator said:

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We're also probably not willing to go home and home with decent-but-not-good teams (like an SMU), but maybe we should.

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See I'm not so sure about that. Surely a team with a rather barren tournament history isn't thinking they are too good to go home and home with a SMU, Houston, etc...?

Would really love a deeper dive into what goes into it, because it honestly seems like either A) Not a whole lot of effort is put into it, or B) We're dealing with restrictions (financial or otherwise) that cause us to have a limited number of options.