Big East schedule set at 13 games

[GarySJ]

Re: mirror teams... it's clear that this decision was made to preserve existing Big East rivalries. The traditional Big East schools, who've been together since 1980 and played each other every year before that, will continue to have home-and-away every year.

I would guess that the schools coming over from C-USA would be mostly paired with each other, since they have rivalries with each other and few rivalries with historical BE teams. So I expect Marquette-DePaul-Cincy-UofL to be each others' annual opponents for the most part.

So where does that leave USF. Since we have pretty much nothing in the way of rivalries with existing BE teams, I think we'll probably be randomly paired with other teams who don't have obvious rivals. So we could get some oddball collection like Marquette, Rutgers, and Georgetown.

I'd like USF's basketball tradition, such as it is, to get some consideration though. With that in mind, we really need to be paired with Louisville. We weren't much of a hoops rival to them, but they sure were to us. The UofL game at the Sun Dome was THE Bulls event of the year for a long time, as I'm sure many of you know.

I'll be very disappointed if UofL isn't one of our annual rivals. Beyond that I don't really care who the other two are. Cincy, Marquette, or Pittsburgh would be nice but I'll take whoever they give us.

[Jim Johnson]

schedule could look like this:

Away:  Pitt, ND, Rutgers, Cincy, L'ville, Seton Hall, Providence

home:  WVA, Marq, Dep, Vill, St John, Providence, Georgetown, Pitt, Rutgers

No Conn and No Cuse

Are you sure you're sober?

a) 9 home and 7 away games...

only two "home-and-home" teams (Pitt & Rutgers)

they don't say there is going to be alternating teams that you don't play.  I hope that is the case... but if they don't make a rule for it... who knows.  We never played Tulane in football.

Also, we would have played Tulane next year if we didn't switch to the Big East.  Remember, the C-USA schedule was every two years six of the teams would switch with two teams that we would play every year.  We also never played Houston as a C-USA conference game (our game was pre-CUSA).

[Velcro]

Jim... i meant to make it 8 and 8, we can toss St Johns in the away row,

i must have pasted a name in the wrong row.  Tequila... eh, ahem, i mean water... will do that to you.

[Jim Johnson]

Jim... i meant to make it 8 and 8, we can toss St Johns in the away row,

i must have pasted a name in the wrong row.  Tequila... eh, ahem, i mean water... will do that to you.

Yeah, I understand...  That's why I set sail with the Captain.

So, let's try it this way:

Away:  Pitt, ND, Rutgers, Cincy, L'ville, Seton Hall, Providence, St. John's

Home:  WVA, Marq, Dep, Vill, Providence, Georgetown, Pitt, Rutgers

VG's Mirrors: Pitt, Providence, Rutgers.

[Omniscientbull]

79Bull - Conferences and coaches like to limit their conference play so they can have a nice OCC schedule.  In some cases its because you need to pad some wins, in some cases it's because you are a national program and you want to keep your name across the country, in some cases its because a school wants to have a strong SOS.

I remember the ACC basketball coaches throwing a fit over expansion because they didn't want to reduce their OCC games.

[smazza]

we will have a tough schedule no matter how you cut it

[79 Bull]

79Bull - Conferences and coaches like to limit their conference play so they can have a nice OCC schedule.  In some cases its because you need to pad some wins, in some cases it's because you are a national program and you want to keep your name across the country, in some cases its because a school wants to have a strong SOS.

I remember the ACC basketball coaches throwing a fit over expansion because they didn't want to reduce their OCC games.

Thanks for the explanation, maybe I don't understand this stuff, but...

Looking at the BE schedules this year it looks like 95% of the OOC teams are east of the Mississippi, so I am not sure how much national recognition some teams are getting unless it is a big name opponent on national TV, but playing the top 2/3 of the BE accomplishes that.

Very few of the OOC games appear to help SOS, most of these teams would hurt your SOS.  I guess the main reason for this resistance is to pad the schedule with wins.

I just don't understand how you can't accomplish the same thing with 9 games instead of 11.

I guess in the end I really don't care, but I thought it would be good for every team to see how you stack up against each BE team every year.

[GarySJ]

I remember the ACC basketball coaches throwing a fit over expansion because they didn't want to reduce their OCC games.

I also think quality of conference games is an issue. If you're, say, N.C. State, and the conference expands by 3 teams without adding any conference games, you've all of a sudden got fewer dates with Duke, North Carolina, and Wake Forest. They've been replaced by thrilling home dates with Virginia Tech, Miami, and Boston Coll.... oops, I fell asleep just thinking about it.

I think this is what's driving the Big East's "3 mirror teams" plan. They want a compromise between not playing too many conference games, and preserving existing rivalries. So they unbalanced the schedule a bit, to let UConn-Syracuse (for example) continue to be an annual home-and-home event.

In fact, the Big East divides pretty nicely into four 4-team groups:

Cincinnati/DePaul/Louisville/Marquette

Notre Dame/Pittsburgh/USF/West Virginia

Syracuse/UConn/Providence/St. John's

Villanova/Georgetown/Rutgers/Seton Hall

[Guest HowieP1]

Big East Scheduling Format Set

A Tribune staff, wire report

Published: Nov 12, 2004

TAMPA - For South Florida's men's basketball team to qualify for the Big East Conference Tournament next season, the Bulls must finish among the league's top 12 teams.

The bottom four teams will not advance to the league tournament held at New York City's Madison Square Garden. USF, Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette and DePaul leave Conference USA for the 16- team Big East basketball conference in the 2005-06 season.

The conference schedule will consist of 16 games - 10 games against different opponents plus six ``mirror'' games - home-and-home contests against three ``mirror'' opponents. Each school will play 13 of the league's other schools, but miss two schools each season.

The ``mirror'' opponents can change each season, said league sources, who attended the Big East athletic directors and presidents meeting Tuesday in Philadelphia.

On Thursday, USF signed 6- foot-2 point guard Chris Howard, who won state titles as a junior and senior at Friendly High School in Fort Washington, Md.

Howard averaged 17.9 points as a senior. This year he's attending Florida Prep Academy in Lake Suzy, but is not playing basketball.

Tonight at 7, the Bulls host Saint Leo in an exhibition game. Senior center Brandon Brigman will not play after suffering a right orbital fracture last week.

If surgery is not required, Brigman could return next week.

Brett McMurphy

http://bulls.tbo.com/bulls/MGB2U7UVF1E.html

[bulls96go]

let the games begin