Polyfro wrote:Old MVC Days wrote:Schedule won't hurt our NCAAT chances. We have some quality away from home games. Just sucks for season ticket holders basically.
Spot on, IMHO. It's basically the same schedule philosophy they had last year -- roughly 1/3 Top 100 opponents (Gonzaga/2 CBE teams/Northwestern), 1/3 teams between 100-200 in the computer rankings (UNL, Yale, UT-Arlington, North Dakota), and 1/3 cupcakes (USC-U, SIU-E, MD-ES, Alcorn) -- it's just that all the "marquee" games are away from Omaha, other than the Skers, so it seems a lot worse.
If they take care of business this is a schedule that sets them up just fine for March. Sucks for those of us who pay a ton of money for season tix and get two months of sub-par games before Big East play, but it won't hurt the team much at all.
I know that the excuse now to schedule the non-conference the way they do is because they have the Big East conference now and that will make up for most things, but honestly the home non-conference schedule hasn't necessarily been helped because they have the Big East vs. the MVC. Going up and down the non-conference slates for the past 10 years, hard to find a game outside of the Oklahoma H/H, which was billed as a series we got because of the Big East, and the Nebraska every other year that had home games against the top conferences or even top mids at the time that wasn't part of some special event. For a school that doesn't have football, the home non-conference games are scheduled like they were a football school. Cal & Airzona St series were OK, but they didn't turn out to be in the top 25 the seasons at the CLink.
That being said, I love the road and neutral games on the slate. The only bad part is that out of all of those, only one of those will be back at the CLink (Gonzaga).
I hope the final game they hit out of the park since it hasn't been announced yet. If it is another D2 game, I'll definitely consider where I spend my money in going to future Creighton games after this season. If power schools are still saying no to a H/H I may sort of still understand, but if the effort isn't being done to get those series set up with the AD on the selection committee the past few years and Creighton hosting the CWS with all of those connections, it is kind of disappointing that the "Big East" caliber team that is being built year after year now isn't being respected to get great series in place. Gonzaga is a step in the right direction, but, I'm greedy and want more. Maybe it needs to be like football where non-conference schedules are set up 10-20 years in advance so no one knows how good the team will really be and then all of a sudden a great series is set to go.