2008-09 Men's Basketball Schedule Released

[NashvilleBilliken]

I have listened to RM many times and heard him talk about the schedule. His biggest complaint last year was not so much the teams on it as the fact that he hated the dates assigned to the teams. He said there were too many games too close to each other and then there were some with too much time in between them. He also was not crazy about that he had so many slots to fill in the schedule - in other words Brad had not firmed enough games up by that time. I have also heard him talk about improving the teams on the schedule but he never said that he could do that immediately - that is a long term goal of his. Once again, people hear what they wish for not necessarily what is actually being said and I think that is the case with this schedule right now.

Yes, people apparently do hear what they want. I think you are in the same category. Improving the schedule is a long term goal? In all honesty, if you laid out all the goals for Rick and this program, you would put "Improve Schedule" under long term? I find that very hard to believe.

Long term goals are repeat NCAA appearances, continued improvement in win/loss record, increase fan base, increase student support, increase revenue. These are all goals that require extensive planning, campaigning and implementation. Improving the schedule does not come under the "long term goal" category. Improving the schedule is a relatively easy (compared to our other goals) thing to accomplish. This seems to be a lose lose situation for SLU.

I'm not looking for 15 UNC's (as somebody posted), but a marquee game or two (no BC does not fall under that category...anybody who thinks that is selling our program short), maybe an actual DIVISION ONE team to open up our brand new $80 mil arena, and less than 3 buy games would be an excellent start.

[Box and Won]

I really can not remember any true marque games we have had since Romar left.

Under Brad we played Arizona and Gonzaga.

[Taj79]

Here's the OOC schedule for my local team the Maryland Terrapins. Is this good?

Northwood (exhibition), Bucknell, Youngstown State, Vermont, Michigan, George Washington, Delaware State, American, Bryant, Elon, Charlotte, and Morgan State.

American and Morgan State are their versions of SEMO and UMKC. They must figure GeeDub is in a down year --- when GeeDub was good a few years back, the Twerps had nothing to do with them. You don't see UMBC or Towson on this schedule at all. Delaware State is a HBCU school -- why not Maryland Eastern Shore to keep it all in state? Bucknell will probably be a good bet in their conference, my old high school buddy Pat Flannery will coach it as such there but he's as bad as Fang Mitchell and Coppin State when it comes to "have bag will travel for huge payday/on-the-job training" for his teams. It seems to work. Bryant? Elon? The Penguins? Vermont is old news and their run is pretty much over up there.

They also have two other games, one with Michigan State and one with with winner of Gonzaga versus Oklahoma State. The Michgan State game is of course part of the ACC/Big Ten Classic and the other two are a part of the Thanksgiving Holiday tounament rash. I think this one is the BB&T Classic.

Of these games, ONLY Michigan State is a true away game. ONLY ONE GAME in their entire OCC schduel is away from home! The BB&T is usually held at the Phone Booth (Verizon Center) in downtown DC, a short metro ride from Maryland College Park campus. Away? I thnk not. And the George Washington game is currently listed as TBA. Wanna bet its also moved to the Verizon Center? No way an "elite program" like the Twerps goes into a 5K venue like the Smith Center and plays. Even it they did, well, it'd be another metro ride road trip about four or five stops more past the Verizon Center.

So with a whole bunch of programs willing to come to your place, take the money and the whipping and run, what motivates a team like that, facing the prospects of a murderous ACC schedule, to decide going to a pit of a mid- or high-major school is the right thing to do? So the big boys will come providing you cotton to their desires, or you get a whole bunch of crap willing to take the beating and the money for a combination of OJT and program sustaining cash.

Will someone program somewhere break this trend? I am sure the answer is yes. But it will be the exception rather than the rule. The big boys don't want the little engines that could to succeed. It comes at their expense to include missing out on the March cash cow slaughter. The best years this program had were the years we got Cincy, Louisville, DePaul, Marquette, charlotte and Dayton in each year. The trade (forced of course) to the A10 not only made the A10 too big for that kind of home and home, but it also degraded the quality of opponents generally allowed or required to come to our place. the chances of a Cincy or a Louisville or a Memphis coming to town ranked in the top five are a lot stronger than anyone in the A10 coming to that lofty perch. Heck, even if an A10 team gets into the top 25, as Dayton, Rhode Island and Xavier all did last year, the best they seem to be is in the 11 to 17 range during hte rgular season. And when the loss cmes, the drop is fast and furious.

This is the burden and cross programs must bear. I suspect it won't get much better over time and if we do start winning, it will get even tougher.

I'd trade consistent winning for the occasional marquee anytime. But that's me.

[bonwich]

I really can not remember any true marque games we have had since Romar left.

That's likely because Marque graduated in 2003. Don't feel bad, though -- we've got ourselves a Marquis schedule this year. The Marquis de Sade would be proud of it.

[cheeseman]

Under Brad we played Arizona and Gonzaga.

I already mentioned Gonzaga - as far as AZ was concerned, that was a return game that Romar had set up.

[3star_recruit]

Yes, people apparently do hear what they want. I think you are in the same category. Improving the schedule is a long term goal? In all honesty, if you laid out all the goals for Rick and this program, you would put "Improve Schedule" under long term? I find that very hard to believe.

Score 20 in a game. Check

Lose by 40 to Kent St. Check.

Lose by St. Bonaventure by 20 on senior day. Check.

Zero recruiting buzz in the fall recruiting period. Check.

UMSL to open the regular season. Check.

Last place ACC team as the marquee game on the home schedule. Check.

Some regulars still seeing glass as half full. Check.

If someone had predicted this stuff before the hire, the most pessimistic Billiken fan would have called you a lunatic. But there is an explanation for all this. A hole in the space time continuum has transported us all to Bizarro World.

[cheeseman]

Yes, people apparently do hear what they want. I think you are in the same category. Improving the schedule is a long term goal? In all honesty, if you laid out all the goals for Rick and this program, you would put "Improve Schedule" under long term? I find that very hard to believe.

Long term goals are repeat NCAA appearances, continued improvement in win/loss record, increase fan base, increase student support, increase revenue. These are all goals that require extensive planning, campaigning and implementation. Improving the schedule does not come under the "long term goal" category. Improving the schedule is a relatively easy (compared to our other goals) thing to accomplish. This seems to be a lose lose situation for SLU.

I'm not looking for 15 UNC's (as somebody posted), but a marquee game or two (no BC does not fall under that category...anybody who thinks that is selling our program short), maybe an actual DIVISION ONE team to open up our brand new $80 mil arena, and less than 3 buy games would be an excellent start.

When RM set up the practice scrimmage with Memphis he said that he hoped he could eventually talk them into playing us for real using these scrimmages as a springboard - yes that is a long term view to scheduling. Yes, scheduling is a long term issue - many game contracts are signed 2-4 years in advance of when they are played. In college football, they schedule 7 or more years in advance.

[moytoy12]

As Roy said and others have reiterated, I don't think most of us are expecting to have 15 UNCs on the schedule. But why not some 100-150 RPI teams?

Also, Taj, Maryland has the luxury of playing a lot of big dogs during conference play. They can afford to schedule softly.

Opening up the Chai with UMSL is like having your first kiss with your sister.

For the record, I don't have any sisters.

[billiken_roy]

Roy, please refresh your memory - outside of the Gonzaga game and the UNC game which had nothing to do with us and everything to do with fulfilling a promise to Tyler Hansbrough to play close to his home one time - I really can not remember any true marque games we have had since Romar left. I am not sure we screwed the SMS series up at all, I was never a fan of playing SIU and SMS in the same year anyway so that is just your opinion and holds no more water than mine. Iowa was no powerhouse when we played them and were not much different than Neb. All the others you name were games played 4 or more years ago when they were just middle to the lower part of their conf. teams. Any of the CUSA games you mentioned are not fair since they had to play us since we were in their conf. - you can ***** about the A10 not being as good as the CUSA was but CUSA as we knew no longer exists nor did they allow us to stay when it split up. As I said, I listened very closely to what RM said and he never promised immediate top flight non-conf. games. He always said that he was working on improving the schedule but it was not an easy thing to do. Now if 3 years from now we are seeing the same type of non-conf schedule then I would agree that he has not met his goal.

iowa ended the 2005-2006 season (last time we played iowa) with a 7 rpi and was second in the big ten. cant get much better than that.

soderberg played arizona home and away. west virginia home and away. kansas state home and away. butler home and away. milwaukee-wisconsin home and away, hawaii home and away, gonzaga home and away, iowa home and away, mississippi home and away,

again (this will be the third time in this thread i have said it) i am not as much about the marquee national games absense (even though one would think we could get one of them) as i am about the 5 233+ rpi games being there. if we are going to play to that level, at least play the more regional teams as box suggests. however, i would much rather see the likes of houston, loyola, missouri state, etc.

as to defending rickma, i just find it hard to believe that soderberg could get the better games each year and rickma cant. no way. rickma has to have far better connections and associations than a middling brad. this schedule was intentional. and while we can all theorize it is to accomodate the freshmen, it sure doesnt do much for the fact we all paid substantially more for seats this year. there has to be some middle ground. if not, the boosters are being taken advantage of unfairly imo. it would be my guess slu will not be able to get away with this again without some slap back.

[billiken_roy]

Here's the OOC schedule for my local team the Maryland Terrapins. Is this good?

Northwood (exhibition), Bucknell, Youngstown State, Vermont, Michigan, George Washington, Delaware State, American, Bryant, Elon, Charlotte, and Morgan State.

They also have two other games, one with Michigan State and one with with winner of Gonzaga versus Oklahoma State. The Michgan State game is of course part of the ACC/Big Ten Classic and the other two are a part of the Thanksgiving Holiday tounament rash. I think this one is the BB&T Classic.

taj, it would be much easier to swallow the ooc home schedule if we knew we were getting the acc for the second half of the year. that was my point on bringing up the c-usa teams in an earlier post. if we had the likes of louisville, marquette, cincy, charlotte, memphis and depaul visiting later, it makes all those buy games easier to swallow.

[OrlandoStewart]

iowa ended the 2005-2006 season (last time we played iowa) with a 7 rpi and was second in the big ten. cant get much better than that.

soderberg played arizona home and away. west virginia home and away. kansas state home and away. butler home and away. milwaukee-wisconsin home and away, hawaii home and away, gonzaga home and away, iowa home and away, mississippi home and away,

again (this will be the third time in this thread i have said it) i am not as much about the marquee national games absense (even though one would think we could get one of them) as i am about the 5 233+ rpi games being there. if we are going to play to that level, at least play the more regional teams as box suggests. however, i would much rather see the likes of houston, loyola, missouri state, etc.

as to defending rickma, i just find it hard to believe that soderberg could get the better games each year and rickma cant. no way. rickma has to have far better connections and associations than a middling brad. this schedule was intentional. and while we can all theorize it is to accomodate the freshmen, it sure doesnt do much for the fact we all paid substantially more for seats this year. there has to be some middle ground. if not, the boosters are being taken advantage of unfairly imo. it would be my guess slu will not be able to get away with this again without some slap back.

You guys are the voice. I would send a email to Chris May or call him or just do not give to the program anymore until they do something about the schedule.

[billiken_roy]

I already mentioned Gonzaga - as far as AZ was concerned, that was a return game that Romar had set up.

nope that is wrong. soderberg got that game. he and an arizona asst were buds. that was not a romar set up. i am positive on that.

[cheeseman]

nope that is wrong. soderberg got that game. he and an arizona asst were buds. that was not a romar set up. i am positive on that.

Perhaps I was wrong about the year I know it was 5 seasons ago and I assumed that Romar had set up the game as he had the Washington and UCLA games.

[Cowboy]

-let's play the games and see how this shakes out as to the quality of the schedule for what rick wants it to be

-i do feel bad for tommy and kevin as this is their senior year and rick feels like he needs to go this route

-taj and cheese and maybe a couple others come to mind as to having what i consider an appropriate view of the situation

-i guess we are going to be asked to participate in a slap back email campaign to cm or rick or Fr B about this, but again i will pass

-and i am a booster and do not feel like i am being taken advantage of, but if someone does you can vote with your wallet

[billiken_roy]

You guys are the voice. I would send a email to Chris May or call him or just do not give to the program anymore until they do something about the schedule.

may (or rickma) doesnt publish his e-mail addy on the slu directory at slubillikens.com.

[Pistol]

iowa ended the 2005-2006 season (last time we played iowa) with a 7 rpi and was second in the big ten. cant get much better than that.

soderberg played arizona home and away. west virginia home and away. kansas state home and away. butler home and away. milwaukee-wisconsin home and away, hawaii home and away, gonzaga home and away, iowa home and away, mississippi home and away,

again (this will be the third time in this thread i have said it) i am not as much about the marquee national games absense (even though one would think we could get one of them) as i am about the 5 233+ rpi games being there. if we are going to play to that level, at least play the more regional teams as box suggests. however, i would much rather see the likes of houston, loyola, missouri state, etc.

as to defending rickma, i just find it hard to believe that soderberg could get the better games each year and rickma cant. no way. rickma has to have far better connections and associations than a middling brad. this schedule was intentional. and while we can all theorize it is to accomodate the freshmen, it sure doesnt do much for the fact we all paid substantially more for seats this year. there has to be some middle ground. if not, the boosters are being taken advantage of unfairly imo. it would be my guess slu will not be able to get away with this again without some slap back.

You make a lot of excellent points here. I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to play teams above 225 in the RPI. We can replace these, like I said before and most would agree with, with more regional buy games (SEMO, UMKC, soon SIUE, etc.) because those schools have both better RPIs and some local interest, as well as games against consistently good teams in small conferences and any teams from BCS conferences. Kent State and UMBC don't bother me on this schedule, but there's no reason to play Samford, Savannah State, NC A&T, Liberty, or USC-Upstate (and no, I wouldn't have taken a spot in that poor man's early-season tournament just to play DePaul).

Brad did a good job of making sure there was at least one big-time game on the home schedule. He also did a good job filling out the schedule with teams from BCS conferences like Ole Miss, K-State, WVU, Iowa, and UNC and the programs from non-BCS conferences that are always tough like Butler, SIUC, Gonzaga, Hawaii, and Pacific. Scheduling is one area where I was in agreement on Brad ("Playing a tough schedule makes a tougher team") and was rarely disappointed with our schedules while he was here, even if I would have made a few minor changes. Majerus still should have him beat in every other department, though.

There's no doubt in my mind this is how Majerus wanted the schedule. We have a young, inexperienced team under a coach who is obviously taking his time building a program. I think he wanted a lot of home games and a lot of weak opponents, and that's what we got. He claimed last year that we'll play a soft schedule this year but that down the road he wants a loaded schedule and will use his countless connections to do it- we'll see if he stands by his word, but so far he hasn't lied.

Before conference play, we only play 3 road games and two neutral site games. The games are all in streaks, too, so I think he wanted long stretches of being at home, getting comfortable, and learning. From a fan's perspective, this is my least favorite SLU schedule of all time (since I started following basketball in the Clagget-Waldman-Highmark days). From Rick's perspective, I hope this is part of a master plan and is not going to happen anymore.

[Box and Won]

may (or rickma) doesnt publish his e-mail addy on the slu directory at slubillikens.com.

Cheryl's was [email protected]. If you know their middle initials, that's the format.

[kshoe]

I am not saying this a great schedule, but is it really THAT much worse than last year's schedule?... Boston College, Detroit, SIU, Kent State and NC A&T are the same as last year.

Pitt & Mo State were quality opponents from last year... while we do not play a team as good as Pitt, we have two teams from BCS conferences DePaul and Nebraska in their place

A team like Maryland Baltimore County is equal to IUPUI (last year, teams with RPI in the 70-90 range).

One of our opponents was Houston Baptist - not sure if they were Division I, not much different from UMSL

Sam Houston from last year - replaced with perhaps Creighton... I woould consider this a slight improvement

Furman, Pacific, Long Beach, Loyola from last year replaced with Savannah, Samford, Liberty, SC State... this is where there is a downgrade, although as it played out, none of those teams from last year turned out to be any good. Loyola and Pacific were big dissappointments.

If we are still playing a schedule like this in two years, I will be disappointed, but it may not be a bad idea for this young team this year.

Ace, you make a good point. Essentially, what SLU did was replace home and homes wih Pacific and Loyola for buy games. It sucks but unfortunately it fits with the economic realities of the new arena.

As we all know, season tickets cost $450 which has always implied $25 a ticket. That means we need 18 home games (including exhibitions). Because we did the Memphis scrimmage rther than an exhibition game we need 17 home games rather than the normal 16 that we have played in the past. Every fewer home game implies $250,000 less in revenue ($25 a ticket x 10,000 seats) unadjusted for a lack of sell-outs and concession sales

17 of 30 games at home leads to

9 of 14 non-conference games at home:

Since the only way to get to 30 games is to play an exempt tourney you either need to host one or play is something like this Vegas tourney. I'm a little surprised we didn't host a tourney but once you pull out the Vegas tourney we are down to 7 of 10 games need to be home games.

6 of those can be home and homes (SIU, Nebraska, Kent St. BC, Detroit and normally Missouri St.). Since Missouri St. punked out on us and most BCS teams require you start a series at their place we were shoved into another buy game.

The good news is once we stop this scrimmage with Memphis we can sell an extra exhibition ticket and therefore increase the home and home series by 2. Once Missouri St. gets in line that will be another. The 7 buy games we are playing this year will return to the normal 4 and things will be back to normal. Or at least I hope that is how it goes down.

[kwyjibo]

Does somebody at SLU have a secret love in Kingston, RI? This is the second Valentine's day there in 3 years!

[davidnark]

Everyone keeps complaining that we had a much stronger schedule the last 7 years, but in reality how did it help us? We have made the NCAA tournament exactly ZERO times during this stretch. Meanwhile, the last Billiken coach who liked to schedule soft--Spoon--led his team to the NCAAs 3 times in a 5-year stretch. Perhaps the sofer non-conference schedule will help build confidence and pay greater dividends over the course of the season. Getting beat by North Carolina, Gonzaga, or Iowa may have sold tickets, but maybe it is time to re-focus on racking up some wins.

[ACE]

Ace, you make a good point. Essentially, what SLU did was replace home and homes wih Pacific and Loyola for buy games. It sucks but unfortunately it fits with the economic realities of the new arena.

As we all know, season tickets cost $450 which has always implied $25 a ticket. That means we need 18 home games (including exhibitions). Because we did the Memphis scrimmage rther than an exhibition game we need 17 home games rather than the normal 16 that we have played in the past. Every fewer home game implies $250,000 less in revenue ($25 a ticket x 10,000 seats) unadjusted for a lack of sell-outs and concession sales

17 of 30 games at home leads to

9 of 14 non-conference games at home:

Since the only way to get to 30 games is to play an exempt tourney you either need to host one or play is something like this Vegas tourney. I'm a little surprised we didn't host a tourney but once you pull out the Vegas tourney we are down to 7 of 10 games need to be home games.

6 of those can be home and homes (SIU, Nebraska, Kent St. BC, Detroit and normally Missouri St.). Since Missouri St. punked out on us and most BCS teams require you start a series at their place we were shoved into another buy game.

The good news is once we stop this scrimmage with Memphis we can sell an extra exhibition ticket and therefore increase the home and home series by 2. Once Missouri St. gets in line that will be another. The 7 buy games we are playing this year will return to the normal 4 and things will be back to normal. Or at least I hope that is how it goes down.

Some people are complaing about what is our marquee nonconference home game this year? What was it last year? SIU? I'm not sure this is much worse than prior years. The UNC thing a couple years ago was a nice fluke with Hansborough.

[billiken_roy]

Everyone keeps complaining that we had a much stronger schedule the last 7 years, but in reality how did it help us? We have made the NCAA tournament exactly ZERO times during this stretch. Meanwhile, the last Billiken coach who liked to schedule soft--Spoon--led his team to the NCAAs 3 times in a 5-year stretch. Perhaps the sofer non-conference schedule will help build confidence and pay greater dividends over the course of the season. Getting beat by North Carolina, Gonzaga, or Iowa may have sold tickets, but maybe it is time to re-focus on racking up some wins.

david again, you cant make that comparison simply because of the strength of cusa vs the a-10. if we had those cusa teams of yesteryear coming in january/february i would be fine.

Ace, the difference is the midmajors vs the absolute bottom feeders we are flooded with this year. switch out 3 of the 6 buy games with 100-150 rpi teams and that too would be a little easier to take.

[moytoy12]

Ace, the difference is the midmajors vs the absolute bottom feeders we are flooded with this year. switch out 3 of the 6 buy games with 100-150 rpi teams and that too would be a little easier to take.

Agree 100% with Roy here. My complaint is with the bottom feeders. We couldn''t get 100-150 RPI teams to play? And I don't think there is that big of an on-the-court difference between a 140 RPI team and a 240 RPI, at least not big enough to justify the "easing our freshmen into NCAA basketball" argument.

I still have faith in RM, but he is trending down in my book.

[Pistol]

I hate to plug another team on here, but Xavier has a fantastic schedule this year (side note: they've pretty much become the model program for SLU in every way possible, and I hope the two AD's have a very open line of communication). They have Auburn, Cincinnati, Duke (in NJ), Butler, Virginia, and LSU (in the middle of the conference season, similar to what they did with Tennessee last season).

The "buy" games are IPFW, Toledo, Miami-OH, Ohio, and Robert Morris- none of which will bury the RPI, and 3 of which play in the very competitive MAC (XU playing 3 MAC teams is similar to what we could be doing with the Valley- SIU, Creighton, and MSU every year).

On top of that, they're in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off the weekend before Thanksgiving, taking on Mizzou in the first round and the winner of Fairfield-Virginia Tech if they beat the Tigers. The other half of the bracket has Memphis, USC, Chattanooga, and Seton Hall. That's a tad bit tougher than this car dealership-sponsored dog and pony show we've got in Vegas.

This is exactly the type of schedule I would want SLU to put together in the future- a strong early-season tournament, no RPI destroyers, 3 teams from a geographically-close conference, the big state school rival, a minimum of 6 BCS-conference schools (likely 8), and enough road games to construct a tournament-ready team. My one minor complaint is that there isn't much of a marquee game at home- Butler is probably the closest- but they have enough neutral sites and national TV games to mitigate that a little.

http://goxavier.cstv.com/auto_pdf/p_hotos/...-08-09-Schedule

[moytoy12]

The "buy" games are IPFW, Toledo, Miami-OH, Ohio, and Robert Morris- none of which will bury the RPI, and 3 of which play in the very competitive MAC (XU playing 3 MAC teams is similar to what we could be doing with the Valley- SIU, Creighton, and MSU every year).

To further Roy's point, why couldn't we get games with schools like this instead of the RPI dogs we scheduled?