It looks like Depaul/Illinois are playing as part of a Big East/Big 10 challenge. Probably the only way Illinois would agree to it.

In the short term at least, there's reason to alter scheduling strategy. With Wichita in the league, the best bet for a tournament bid was at-large. Now, the best bet is to win the league tournament and we may have a reasonable shot at that for the next few years. Season record does not matter. So I would fill out the schedule with some tough games to prepare the team for conference play and especially the tournament. They would have to be road games (or 2 for 1 if we're lucky), but you don't have to go far to find excellent competition and few teams at this juncture would be afraid to schedule us. In the worst case you end up with two or three road losses to top 50 teams instead of victories over Rockhurst, Indiana Northwest, and Eureka. Best case, you win one of those games. Or two! Either way, the experience gives you a better chance in the tournament.

I think Scream is probably right. Without WSU, we've got as good a chance to pull out of the pack and win the conference as anyone. But since we're going to be-- I believe-- at least one of the top 3 in the league, it makes sense to get a resume together so you can draft behind another team if they put a great season together. Not having that extra quality win was what made ISUr one of the first teams out in 2017. Missouri State also has a long history of having kick-ass RPI numbers and getting snubbed for not having any quality wins out of conference.

If Alize Johnson turns into an NBA first round pick and Missouri State goes 27-5 and beats Loyola in the final at Arch Madness with an RPI of 31, and Loyola is 1-2 against Missouri State (giving us one Top 50 win), I want to also have a quality non-con win (NC State, Boise State, or another) to go with that in case we have also have an RPI in the Top 45. You don't want to have what ISUr experienced this year-- having a top 30 RPI and getting snubbed because your best win out of conference was at home to #87 New Mexico, and your best RPI road win was against #158 Northern Iowa.

I would look at taking a check to play at mid or low level P5 schools in hopes of sneaking a surprise win. If we lose at Minnesota, Penn State, Kansas State, Texas Tech, or Nebraska, we're not really going to be dinged too much for it. If we win, hey-- we beat a P5 team on the road. These are games that skew perception, so they don't hurt the RPI, but if you can pull off a win they change how you're viewed on a gut level. Last season, Texas-Arlington (RPI 40-- take a look at their scheduling), Vermont, Cal State San Bernardino, Akron, East Tennessee State, and Princeton were all Top 60 in the RPI. But I guarantee you, wins against Mississippi State, Texas, St. John's, and Oklahoma (all between 148-162 in RPI) meant a lot more to the committee. Lower risk, higher reward.

Great example, JCT. Tx-Arlington had 3 road games against top 28 RPI teams, and won probably the most difficult one. They played Arkansas very close. Those 3 games are really impressive. But so is the win over Texas on the road and the overall 6-3 road record. It's also quite possible that opening with a decent (RPI 103) team and three tough road games helped them to win close road games with Fordham, Bradley, and LMU, not to mention beating St. Mary's. The 1-3 record to start the season was worth it. It's important to note that their success was also due to taking care of business by beating lower ranked teams, even if they weren't necessarily favored on the road. The Ramblers have had difficulty with that. UTA's reward was a great RPI that I'd love to see us achieve but my point was that with the MVC being weaker now, a good RPI is probably not going to get us a bid. We should play a schedule similar to this (we could have some of these games - RPI 100-200 - at home and eliminate the non-D 1 games). That would get us the best preparation for the conference, make a statement of self-confidence, possibly bring home some quality wins, and help recruiting.

UTA Non-Conference Schedule
Venue/RPI
H/ 103 Texas Southern 23-12 W 89 - 82
@/ 25 Minnesota 24-10 L 67 - 84
@/ 88 Florida Gulf Coast 23-8 L 72 - 85
@/ 28 Arkansas 26-10 L 67 - 71
H/ xx Non Div I - St. Francis (IL) W 88 - 67
H/ xx Mount Saint Mary's 20-16 W 80 - 71
@/ 215 Fordham 12-19 W 67 - 63
@/ 156 Texas 11-22 W 72 - 61
@/ 338 North Texas 6-22 W 77 - 61
H/ xx Non Div I - Texas-Dallas W 99 - 49
@/ 17 Saint Mary's 29-5 W 65 - 51
@/ 219 Bradley 12-20 W 56 - 51
@/ 159 Loyola-Marymount 14-15 W 80 - 77

Sadly, I think it's just not in the cards, even if we succeed, to get an at-large bid any time in the near future. I agree that we need to have a solid schedule with some good teams, but to me, a strong schedule only gives us a better shot at getting an NIT bid in lieu of a CBI/CIT should we do well but not win the conference.

Honestly, I think we should shoot for the stars this year, and I'm praying that we can get hot right around Saint Louis time, but I would be completely satisfied with the season if we were able to even make the NIT and have a good showing. It's been so long since we've had any type of sustained, legitimate success, my only aspirations every year now are that we just keep doing better than the year before.

The dates were released for the MVC-Mountain West Challenge, and we play at Boise State on Tuesday, November 28. That's just three days after the finale of the Savannah Invitational in Georgia.

One of the teams in the Savannah Invitational is UNCW, who has already announced their non-con schedule, and they're playing a Division III team to open the season as part of the Savannah MTE. So that will probably be what we end up doing. I found it funny that in the UNCW release about their non-con schedule from May 25, they remarked about how difficult it was getting a schedule done "this late in the season" when it's more than a month earlier than I can ever recall seeing our non-con schedule).

And we can eliminate UCLA, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Miami, UMass, and LaSalle, who also have also released their non-con schedules.

So we know three dates now:

Nov 24 vs. UNCW or Kent State in Savannah
Nov 25 vs. UNCW or Kent State in Savannah
Nov 28 at Boise State

A Northwestern fan site story about getting more local rivalries on their schedule. They like what we've been doing lately....

http://www.btpowerhouse.com/2017/6/12/1 ... uling-2017

I do like and agree with the article! But that being said, Gianna Marshall (author) is probably one of Loyola's bigger supporters as far as writers go, which makes sense because she just graduated from LUC about 4 weeks ago

Hey, Gianna could be like most Loyola alumns and not give two shits about basketball

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Just listened to Porter on ESPN 1000 with Jonathan Hood and he said that NC State is probably going to buy out the contract and not come to Gentile.