Quote: The second go-round in PL play (games 10-18) beings tomorrow for all members of the Patriot League with matchups against teams not faced in Game 1 / Round 1. Odd, but maybe it was like that last year, I just don’t recall. Anyway, we play Boston U. when one would have thought it would be Colgate – our Game 1 opponent back on December 31st. Instead, all teams will play their initial or Game 1 opponent in Game 18 to close out the year on February 28. So be it!
Yes, it was also like that last year – and there is a reason. When the league had 8 teams, there was always a break between halves, which meant that whatever teams you played on Wednesdays in the first half you would also automatically play on Wednesdays the second half. Same with Saturdays. For Lehigh and Lafayette, who are the two most central teams in the league, it is not a big deal. But for schools on the periphery such as Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross, and Boston U, it is a big deal. The PL has always tried to schedule so that the really long bus rides would be on Saturdays. For example, Bucknell’s 6-hour bus ride (longer with a stop) to Worcester has always been for a Saturday game – and vice versa for Holy Cross – so that teams aren’t getting home at 4 or 5 AM on a Thursday, facing class a few hours later.
However, with the ten game schedule, league games now start on Wednesday and teams now play two games a week every week with no off-Wednesday in the middle. With an odd number of league opponents, if the second half of the schedule was exactly the same as the first half, then every Saturday first-half game would be a Wednesday second-half game and vice-versa. Also, since the first half has five Wednesday games and four Saturday games – as opposed to the second half which has five Saturdays and four Wednesdays – there has to be one swing game that is on a Wednesday the first go-round and then a Saturday the second go-round. The league found the simplest thing was to simply schedule that swing game as the first game of the PL season (a Wednesday) and then as the 18th and final game (a Saturday). That leaves all of the other matchups on the same night of the week in the first half and the second half – which is the fairest thing to do.
The swing game matchups are all ones where travel is not a huge issue: Bucknell-American, Colgate-Lehigh, Boston U-Holy Cross, Lafayette-Army, and Loyola-Navy.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by
Bison137.
