I have seen several way too early polls that have FAU and Creighton ranked in top 15. This is great for LU as we need these type of games for resume building and recruiting. It would be great if we could Creighton in a regular series.


https://www.foxsports.com/stories/colle ... or-2023-24

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-baske ... l-rankings

Those are the two games I hope we are competitive in but have already mentally penciled in as losses. Would love to be wrong

Rest of the schedule is chock-full of winnable games

This is a great non con schedule. There was a lot of (deserved) griping post F4 run that we couldn't put together a strong non-con together. This is one of several strong schedules in a row. Let's win some. I think the only disappointing part is not playing Depaul or Northwestern.

I have great memories of being a student and watching Loyola beat Creighton in Gentile. A classic Milton Doyle game.

Interesting that there's only the game with Tulsa as a true road game. I feel like we probably wanted to get a paid P5 game but didn't get any takers. Maybe that's why we're playing **Goshen College** on a prime Saturday in the heart of the non-con. (Maybe they just wanted to make sure the Fall Finals period didn't have any major distractions).

I'd like to see us get a home/home arrangement with some basketball-first programs from the MAC, Mountain West, or C-USA. Add WCC to that list. Get that going for a four year stretch so we've got some basic fundamentals of the schedule settled each year.

Here's my critique... The schedule has two solid top 20 opportunities-- FAU and Creighton -- both at neutral sites. That's fantastic if we're really good, but the next best team we play in the non-con is the second team we play in KC, Colorado State or Boston College. Besides South Florida, every other team we play is a 200 or below KenPom team. Slip up once against any of those teams and we're knocked down to their level.

If we win out on the home non-con schedule (EIU, UIC, NO, Chi. St., Harv., Charl. Southern, Cent. Mich.), we're 7-0. If we go 0-2 against FAU and Creighton, we're 7-2. Now we've got the mid-level group... (at Tulsa, neutral BC or CSU, and USF). Gotta win 2 of 3 of those to have plausible at large opportunities, with a conference win needing to be a Q1.

Basically, we either need to upgrade the number of top 100 teams or switch out some of the sub 200 teams for 100-200 teams. Additionally, beating "name" teams regardless of their KenPom or RPI is going to help you..... If Syracuse, Louisville, or Minnesota is having a bad year and you beat them, you still beat Syracuse, Louisville, or Minnesota, which helps to overcome a general mid-major bias.

Isn't this basically what the Mountain West teams did last year? Pound a bunch of weak teams and soar in the NET?

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I think this is how you beat NET as a conference. Everyone plays a bunch of bad teams to increase their efficiency numbers and then hopefully a few teams grab some signature wins to make them even higher. Get into conference season with everyone holding top half NET rankings and let conference play decide who is actually better.

This is essentially what the power conferences do. Everyone goes into conference play with inflated records/metrics so that no lose is a "bad loss" and every win is a "quality win" when everyone plays each other.

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