Missouri, Florida Gulf Coast On NC State Basketball Schedule

Buried in this Andy Katz column about Mark Gottfried and the task ahead of him is some information about State's non-conference schedule next year. Missouri, Florida Gulf Coast, and Detroit will be coming to PNC Arena:

The Wolfpack dialed back the schedule a tad. NC State will play at Cincinnati in a home-and-home series. Gottfried signed up Missouri for a home-and-home that starts in Raleigh, and he drew Northwestern in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. He also added home games against Florida Gulf Coast and Detroit, two good names, but teams that lost key players, too.

Frank Haith is back, y'all! And he'll be bringing a team that lost three seniors as well as NBA Draft early-entrant Phil Pressey. And thank heavens for that. Pressey would have destroyed our inexperienced group of guards. I will have night terrors just thinking about this thing that will never happen. Detroit loses a few key seniors as well, but still, I'm not gonna complain about this type of scheduling. Both schools had solid KenPom rankings last year (Mizzou was 22nd), and despite their losses and whatever decline in performance comes with it, they aren't going to be those RPI dead-zone-type opponents.

Florida Gulf Coast, meanwhile, should be mostly intact. But that team does have a new head coach, so who knows how that'll change things. Would have been fun if Bobby Lutz had gotten that job.