Forum › Forum › Lehigh Sports › Lehigh Men’s Basketball › Scheduling: 2013-14 › Reply To: Scheduling: 2013-14
Just back to looking at Lehigh hoops after a hiatus. Good stuff from everyone, especially on recruiting. As usual, the schedule is a huge disappointment, especially the home slate. I have bitched about it for years, and this year seems no different. Bucknell can put together a schedule every year, as can a school like Princeton, but we are stuck with the garbage picked from a few bottom feeder conferences. I don’t understand this fascination with schools like St. Francis. No draw at home, and no interest to go out to Western PA to see them on the road. They have been horrible since the 70’s. I fall into the camp of play Big 5 schools (or even Drexel), and get rid of the Bryants, Quinnipiacs and Riders. Get us an A-10 game or better yet a Catholic 7 + game. Add a Seton Hall or better Ivies (Penn and Princeton), etc. At least Loyola and BU upgrade the schedule by default.
I would also like to see some guarantee games that are reasonable distances away. The VCU game last year was amazing, and Pitt is fine, but who is going to travel to Waco to see Baylor, or out to Iowa State? I know they usually treat them like homecomings, but I would love to see an ACC guarantee game (we once played Muggsy Bogues and Wake Forest). Maybe I have to wait for the SW homecoming vs. UNC, NC State, or Wake in probably 3 years.
The reason why padding the schedule makes absolutely no sense is we play in a ONE BID LEAGUE. We are not going to pad up the wins to 25 fluffs and get an at-large. Never going to happen. And, the NIT auto-bid requires us to win the conference, so playing 300+ RPI schools will never make any sense. You build a program by playing all-comers, at home and on the road.
