July 16th Update

 ESPN Event Line-Ups News and More

Where Are All of The Games?

As the calendar rolls over to mid-July the schedule hounds are still waiting for pace to pick up as this week the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th teams released their 2021-22 non-conference schedules. A quick look back reveals that this total is falling more and more behind the pace of recent history. An average of 62 teams would have had a schedule out based off date from the previous decade while the 2021 offseason has produced less than 1/3rd of that amount.

What's going holding everything up? 

GUARANTEE GAMES

2020 reeked havoc on university budgets and that havoc has trickled down into the scheduling of college basketball games. Fewer and fewer teams down the pyramid are looking to write guarantee checks this season while more and more are looking to collect them. This is creating a huge imbalance in supply and demand leading to a stalemate in the search for games. If teams are going to fill their schedules then coaches will have to start getting creative. But what are some creative options for these coaches?

In-Season Home & Homes

In any given year the only in-season home-and-homes to be seen on the entire Docket are between the triangle of New Mexico, New Mexico State and UTEP. With all 3 teams isolated geographically and that they are all in separate conferences makes it very tempting for the trio to fill their schedules up with games against each other.

This season, however, more and more teams are deciding to play in-season home & homes. It's a zero sum move, costing neither team additional money outside of travel expenses. 

Back-to-Backing

This idea seems less likely as it requires the cooperation of the game buyer but if circumstances are right it could work well for both buyer and seller. In this scenario a buying team would host an opponent for games on back-to-back nights. Deals like this could be agreed to for less than the cost of two separate buy games and would also reduce travel expenses. But buying teams would not agree to this deal with any old opponent, any strength of schedule anchors would get a "hard pass" and even still there is the old adage of it being harder to beat a team twice.

Piggybacking

This is an old trick. Get a guarantee game to pay for your flight to an area flush with competition and extend your trip to play a few more road games on the same trip. This could even be combined with an in-season home & home to get more bang for your buck.

For a hypothetical example:

• NC Central and Lipscomb could agree to an in-season home & home
• NC Central agrees to buy-game at Vanderbilt with travel expenses included, and plays at Lipscomb during the same trip
• Lipscomb agrees to a buy-game at Duke with travel expenses included, and plays at NC Central during the same trip.

ESPN Event Brackets Released

Yesterday was one of the most pivotal days of the offseason as ESPN released most of it's event brackets. It was only "most" because someone at ESPN forgot to ask for their participants for their tentative schedules and, according to reports from Jon Rothstein, pitted Old Dominion and East Carolina against each other in the opening round of the Charleston Classic without realizing the two teams had already agreed to begin a home-and-home this season. While it's not terribly uncommon for teams to play in events with other teams already on their schedule (especially in ye olde days of non-bracketed games) but any potential match-ups are usually confined to the third round of the event with about a 12.5% chance of happening.

You can view all the match-ups here, but some of my favorite opening round games and potential match-ups are as follows:

Memphis vs Virginia Tech (NIT Season Tip-Off in Brooklyn, NY)

One of the best first round-up games pitting the defending post-season NIT Champs against an at-large NCAA team. The Tigers ended up 31st in KenPom in spite of missing the NCAA Tournament, this will not be an opportunity they want to slip by.

North Texas vs Kansas (ESPN Events Invitational in Kissimmee, FL)

North Texas escaped C-USA and was able to knock-off Purdue in the NCAA Tournament and will be up to the challenge against the Jayhawks. Kansas' last game against a C-USA team didn't go as planned, getting pushed to the bring by UTEP in Allen Fieldhouse this past March. The Jayhawks trailed the entire game until the final minutes in which they scored the final, and deciding five points, of the game.

BYU vs Liberty (Potential Diamond Head Classic Final in Honolulu, HI)

This game would be fun for lots of reasons outside of basketball on top of both programs aiming to be Top 50 teams this season. Crack open a cold beer to enjoy this one, something supporters of either program will NOT be doing.

Contract Duffle Bag

After an initial wave the influx of contracts has slowed down, but follow-ups requests will be sent out in early August to catch any games that have been signed in July. 

USC Upstate

The Spartans have a schedule comprised mostly of buy games at this point. They will open the season with trips to South Carolina and Charlotte and will also visit East Tennessee State and Furman before the end of November. They will make a trip to Winston-Salem to face Wake Forest just before exams and also still have a date to nail down with Tennessee, a game postponed from the 2020-21 season.

Cal State Fullerton

On top of contracts, The D1 Docket was lucky enough to obtain a nearly completed schedule for Cal State Fullerton, including their Big West Schedule. The most notable news being that the Titans will head to Flagstaff to participant in an MTE at Northern Arizona along with UT Rio Grande Valley