So 3 games in 7 days,,,back to back road games...Made me think
1. How brutal the MVC season is.....NU in the B10 has 3 4 day breaks and a full week in February....they have their share of 2 games in 4 day sets...but the B10 opens the season before Christmas and their season goes a week longer....two more games. Should the MVC try and get two games in before January.?
2.We are into the meat of our season...how well do you think the bench is prepared to play meaningful minutes ?

The bench has been getting pretty meaningful minutes in spurts all year, especially compared to most of the rest of the conference teams. I think our depth is going to pay big dividends the further we get into conference season and St Louis.

This is a hard one. I think that there are benefits to getting in early games in theory, but it's hard to pull off in practice.

Because Arch Madness is the week before most conference tournaments, the conference schedule needs to start the last week in December to get all 18 conference games in. This year the first game was December 30. You can't start the week before that because it would cut into the players' Christmas break. And you don't want to play conference games the week before Christmas either because of Finals. Also you don't want to start conference games too early in the season before teams have time to gel, and you need to leave Thanksgiving time alone for MTEs. This leaves a very small window.

If you want to provide a break in the conference schedule, I think the best solution might be to play the first conference game the 2nd weekend in December and remove a mid-week game in the middle of the conference season to give teams a full week break.

I still don't think coaches and ADs go for it because that limits flexibility on non-conference scheduling and means that 5 Valley teams need to go on the road, possibly trading a weekend home game for a less profitable weeknight game.

Conferences like the ACC and Big(14) are playing one or two conference games the first week of December. That does two things, of course: (1) loosens up scheduling after the first of the year; and (2) eliminates games they would potentially schedule schools from conferences like the MVC.

I believe half of the teams play back to back away games on Sunday and Wednesday. So far, teams are 1-7 in those games.

- Drake lost at SIU on Sunday, 1/19, and won at Evansville on Wednesday, 1/22.
- Missouri State lost at Drake on Sunday, 1/26, and lost at UNI yesterday.
- We lost at UNI Sunday, and at SIU yesterday.
- Evansville lost at Valpo Sunday and at ISUr last night.
- Indiana State plays at Evansville on Sunday, 2/23 and at SIU on Wednesday 2/26.

I don't know how these teams travel. It's possible that Drake and Missouri State both stayed on the road between games. Even our vaunted charter flights couldn't save us.

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