FanPost

Use your anger constructively(?) - build a basketball schedule

Since NC State's 2018-19 schedule kept us out of the NCAA tournament - or, more accurately, was used as an excuse by people who had the power to keep us out of the NCAA tournament - it's time to move on. And by that, I mean talk about future basketball schedules.

We start with 20 ACC games from now on. We now play six of the 14 opponents twice, so there should be a little less year-to-year or team-to-team variance in schedules. That also means you now get two home games every three years for all non-rival teams. Future ACC schedules (Wake & U*NC home-and-home every year):

  • 2020 - H&H: Clem, Duke, GT, Mia; Home: FSU, Lou, ND, PItt; Away: BC, Syr, UVa, VT
  • 2021 - H&H: BC, Pitt, Syr, UVa; Home: Duke, GT, Mia, VT; Away: Clem, FSU, Lou, ND
  • 2022 - H&H: FSU, Lou, ND, VT; Home : BC, Clem, Syr, UVa; Away: Duke, GT, Mia, Pitt
  • Presumably this 3-year cycle will continue going forward.
Every year has a ACC/BIG challenge game that gives State a Power Conference opponent. Based on recent years locations, State is likely to be home ín odd-numbered Autumns (i.e., 2019-20 season and alternating years after that.) The Big 10 hosts last fall that are likely to be on the road this year are Michigan, Northwestern, Iowa, Maryland, Wisconsin, Penn State, and Ohio State. Presumably NC State won't be scheduled against Wisconsin for a second consecutive year, and I'd guess they won't do a repeat of the 2017 home game against Penn State.
If State is at home in the Challenge, they will probably be scheduling a Power Conference road game. These are usually scheduled as a home-and-home series spread over two seasons, possibly not consecutive season depending on each schools' scheduling needs. I'm not aware of any pending home or road games that State already has scheduled.
NC State tries to schedule four power conference opponents per year, and it is common that the last two will be at neutral sites, often through some kind of exempt event. These are the only way the teams can schedule the current limit of 31 games before the conference tournament. Here's a discussion of the various ways exempt events can work. The quick answer is almost any set of games can be rolled up and called an exempt event. But for NC State's purposes, there's pretty much two paths they can take.
One is an 8-team tournament at a neutral site, which generally has 4 power conference teams and 4 mid-majors, and is likely to result in an opening round game against a (usually decent quality but not great) mid-major, followed by two power games if the right teams win. The event then gets each team a fourth game by counting an home game against a non-major opponent as part of the event.
Or, as in 2018, there's a single neutral-site game against another Power Conference team that everyone knows about. And then three non-power teams play at the power conference opponent, and all four games are counted as part of the exempt event. Like the fourth game in the tournament of the previous paragraph, these things are generally not advertised as events. Fans of the big team just see them as part of the season ticket package.
So there will be an exempt event. It will probably have at least one and possibly as many as three low-quality home games. It will probably have at least one neutral site game against a quality or at least semi-quality opponent, and maybe two or three if it is a real tournament.
With only 11 non-conference games going forward, after accounting for the ACC/BIG, the power conference game, and the exempt event, there are only five games left to schedule.
  • If the event was a real tournament, probably all five of them are at home. State probably had one low-level home game in the event, and probably at least four of the remaining five games being pretty low level.
  • If the event only had one decent game, then there is a good chance State played three low-level home games as part of the event. It will probably look for another road/neutral game, and maybe look for one slightly better quality home game in the remaining part of the schedule. BUT - since the expanded ACC schedule essentially takes away one home game, I wonder if more teams might go the full-Boeheim route and just schedule every single discretionary game at home.
Now to the opinion part of this piece. I have no idea why we schedule bad teams from outside North Carolina and over 200 miles from campus. There are a LOT of Division I teams in NC/SC/VA, at every conceivable level. We've got two pretty good low-conference teams (Central & Campbell) within 25 miles. UNC-G and Davidson have been regular top-100 teams. Charlotte, ECU, and Appalachian play in decent conferences (though none of them did so very effectively this year.) And just straight-up eye test, a home game against a bad team from right down the road is a lot easier to explain away than a game against Maine or Maryland-Eastern Shore.
We should habitually schedule teams expected to be at the top of the Big South, and above average in the SoCon. We should try to get one game a year against an above-average team from an above-average conference - A-10 or Conference USA are geographically convenient examples. Do those three things and we'll have three top 200 games with a strong chance at least two get into Quadrant 3 or higher (<160 for home games.) Do that and we could schedule whatever nearby cupcake we want for the other two games.
The other thing I'd like to see is scheduling some in-state road games for Wolfpack fans that don't live near Raleigh. In years where our exempt event has more than one home game, we could probably afford to do this. We've played some road games in Greensboro in the past (I think mainly in years the ACC tournament was scheduled there.) Work a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 deal with Davidson, Charlotte, Greensboro, Appalachian, Wilmington or UNCA. A road game virtually guarantees a bump up in quadrant unless the opponent is horrible. We could play one of those every year, or at least in years where we don't have 3 neutral site games in a tournament.
That's my thoughts. Put your hopes and theories about upcoming schedules in the comments.