In fairness, the schedule in those couple good years was stronger than it has been in a while. Granted, not great, but at least there was some excitement. Some highlights:

2005-2006 (19-11): Evansville, Bradley, UNI, San Diego, Purdue, UC Irvine
2006-2007 (21-10): Princeton, tOSU, San Diego, SLU, Purdue, UNI, Bradley, UC Irvine

I'll take those names every day over the likes of Campbell, Tennessee Tech, Portland St, SIU-e

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Cigarboy sucks!

Oh no; those names were great. I meant the last couple of seasons of the Whitesell era where we were around .500 by beating Rockhurst, Alabama St., Texas Pan-American, St. Ambrose, St. Francis, and Eastern Illinois.

I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about the years we were good.

Those other years were, most certainly, bad.

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Cigarboy sucks!

In 2011, we played non-con games against DePaul, Indiana State (a tournament team that year), Kansas State, Western Michigan, and San Francisco. All of them except DePaul played in a postseason tournament. We were 3-2 in those games.

In 2010, we played Kansas State, San Francisco, Western Michigan and Bradley. All of them were above .500 except San Francisco, who finished .500 in the West Coast Conference. We were 3-1 in those games.

In 2009, we played Georgia, Purdue, St. John's, Western Michigan, and Holy Cross. We were 3-2 in those games.

Each one of those schedules was much better than what we had this year, when the BEST school we had on our schedule from a W/L or RPI standpoint was UW-Milwaukee at 19-13, RPI 145 (and they were predicted to finish last in the HL in the preseason poll). It doesn't matter to the RPI or SOS if we play a Non DI school-- it doesn't count!!! Every other school in the MVC except Bradley played at least one Non D-1 game this year (Indiana State and Evansville played two).

Beyond the fact that we didn't play a single high-profile team on our schedule and played too many schools with RPIs worse than 300 (four of them), we lost six games on the non-conference schedule against teams with RPIs worse than 208. It's not possible to predict one or two or three years out what RPI other teams will have, but it was pretty clear that loading up the schedule with UC Davis, SIUE, Campbell, Tennessee Tech, Tulane and Portland State (and much worse than that--- all but one of them away from home) wasn't going to be good for us.

I totally agree with the fact that our non-con schedule was garbage this year and that it is a string of bad luck that the couple of teams we did get from decent conferences (MSU and Tulane) had really poor seasons.

But it was kind of an open secret that during his last couple of years, Whitesell made sure to add a couple of softer games so he could pad his win-loss record in an attempt to not be fired. The New York Times did an expose on him a month after he lost his job and how incredulous he was at being fired despite a winning record his last season. If next year is more of the same, PM might get the boot. He is currently 32-61 at Loyola; a losing season only makes his record look uglier.

Sorry about that! Toward the end of halftime we were herded down to the other Loyola section behind the bench.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Impossible to predict? Yes. But you can make educated guesses that can be a benefit. I've heard Marshall talk about this very thing because we know scheduling schools from BcS conferences can be difficult. He and his staff I believe have an ever evolving spreadsheet of teams and their RPIs over a set number of years. They find schools with positive trend lines and then research their rosters and make sure that they're not losing a bunch of key players or their coach. If coaching stability is there and they're not losing their best players, we look into scheduling those teams. You have to find teams that you think will win a lot of their games when the conference season begins. Their wins help even if it's against less than stellar competition.

Of course, nothing is certain, but it can help alleviate playing a bunch of sub 300 teams. We ended up with 1 sub 300 team this year and that was a part of our MTE in KC where they gave us a home game with Tennessee State. The next worse team on our OOC schedule was Oral Roberts who currently sits at 172 and is just below .500 which I think surprises everyone.

Teams in the area in conferences typically rated below us worth possibly checking into would be Toledo, Belmont, Ohio, Akron, Eastern Kentucky, Western Kentucky, Murray State, Miami (OH). I haven't done a lot of research on these guys lately but they seem to at least provide solid or good RPI games. I'm sure there are more. I left off Horizon schools because you're much more familiar with them than I am and some of them would be solid too. And I just picked some regional types as I don't know where your recruiting base really is.

Then there's always the sort of mid to even low level BcS schools. No matter how bad they are, their RPIs will be inflated beacuse of their conference. The only BcS level schools below 200 right now are Rutgers, TCU and Virginia Tech. And Rutgers just barely misses the cut. Some of these lower level schools could probably be talked into playing in Chicago as well so you'd get that which would probably help attendance and the lower to mid level teams are beatable. And even if you lose, it's not killer as it's still in the top 200 and most likely 150. And if you win, even better. We had Alabama this year and I believe they're under .500 and have disappointed but are still barely outside of the RPI 100. All it really takes is a little creativity and it can be done.

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The Roundhouse

Unfortunately for us, another one of those sub-200 BCS teams that you didn't mention was our one BCS opponent this year, Mississippi State. Their RPI is currently 248, despite being in the SEC. We were visitors to their place on the back end of a home-and-home, went to overtime because of two missed free throws with :28 left in regulation, and lost in OT 65-64.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we're done with Mississippi State, Tennessee Tech, Fordham, and Northern Illinois. I'm not sure if Tulane and Campbell were part of home-and-home agreements. Milwaukee was part of a replacement deal for the one Bradley owed us from the 2012 Bracket Buster. Creighton still owes us a game at home from the 2010 Bracket Buster-- maybe they'll make good on it during the rebuilding year following McDermott's departure.

I'd like to see us play St. Louis again-- it would be nice for Christian Thomas in his senior year, and they'll be losing their top five players (Jett, Loe, Evans, McCall, and Barnett) to graduation this year making an upset against a solid A-10 team possible. Wichita, SIU, Valpo, and ISUb played them this year, so why not us?

St. Louis would be a great thing as would Creighton returning that game.

The only game that I know of that's certain is at UIC.

I wouldn't be surprised if we played NIU again.

Maybe next year will be the year that Northwestern plays us?

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MBB Scholarship Chart

-We're done with Mississippi State, Tennessee Tech, and Fordham. MSU would've been a good team to have on the schedule next season as I think they'll be much more competitive next year. That said, I was glad we got them on a really off year cause the win at our place was a nice night.

-I think we might have signed a four year contract with NIU (like we did with UIC), but I'm not positive.

-I have no idea if Tulane & Campbell were home-and-homes, but I assume so because I don't think our stock is so low to have a guarantee at quite frankly another mid-major (Tulane) or so high where we could command a single guarantee against another mid-to-low major (Campbell).

-Creighton has been planning on returning their game with us next season.

-We also have a trip to Kent St. for a bracket-buster return game. I don't know if we'll return it next season but it's on the horizon.

So our schedule:
1.) Creighton
2.) Tulane?
3.) @ Campbell?
4.) @ NIU?
5.) @ UIC
6.) @ Kent St.?
7.) MTE (hopefully @ our place but doubtful)
8.) MTE (hopefully @ our place but doubtful)
9.) MTE (hopefully @ our place but doubtful)
10.)
11.)
12.)