Sources have confirmed to The D1 Docket that SEC teams received a tentative 2021-22 conference schedule in early August. The same source confirmed to The D1 Docket the SEC schedule for Ole Miss. The mid-week games are still subject to change to satisfy television partners with the announcement of the full schedule expected by the end of August.
The mid-week games are still subject to change to satisfy television partners with the announcement of the full schedule expected by the end of August.
My favorite Duffle Bag of the year, the one from my very own Alma Mater. Charlotte is about to embark on a pivotal season. After taking a leap forward in year two of the Ron Sanchez era the 49ers hit a major hiccup in year three. The season started by dropping three out of the first four games, all at home, and all games that Charlotte led deep into the 2nd-half. Road wins at archrival Davidson and former A10 nemesis George Washington breathed some life into the season but it did not last long. Charlotte got back into the business of throwing games away in the 2nd-half against in games against Western Kentucky, Florida Atlantic and even, to the absolute horror of Niner Nation, Division II neighbor Belmont-Abbey. The season ended with a demoralizing 9-game losing streak, and the Niners were finally put out of their misery by UTSA in their first C-USA Tournament game since 2017.
The coming season will be a test for Ron Sanchez and the wrong results could see him on the hot seat.
So far Charlotte has 12-games in ink and is actively seeking a 13th, likely for opening night. As it is now Charlotte would open with a buy-game USC Upstate on November 12th and visit to Appalachian State on the 18th. Charlotte has dropped the ball completely the last two seasons against the Mountaineers, a program Charlotte has absolutely no business dropping consecutive games against. If Charlotte can not win in Boone it will give Coach Sanchez a lot of work to do to gain back support of fans.
Charlotte will compete in the 2021 Baha Mar Nassau Championship, opening the event with a game against Toledo. The Rockets may be the early favorites in this event, having spent the last few seasons near the top of the MAC without breaking through to the NCAA Tournament. If Charlotte can get a win against Toledo they could very will find victory in the next two games.
The first game back in the States will be the Hornets Nest Trophy game at home against Davidson. As unfulfilling as last season one, knowing that Charlotte has Davidson's number once again, like it should, provides a warm fuzzy feeling. The following game will be against George Washington which will be the Colonials first visit to Halton since 2012 when both teams were in the Atlantic 10.
Charlotte will then hit the road for a money game at Arkansas followed by closing out a series with Valparaiso.
Charlotte will close out the non-conference schedule with three games in the Queen City, first against Wake Forest uptown in a Hall of Fame quadruple header, followed by home buy-games against Maryland-Eastern Shore and Western Carolina.
Charlotte will not be hosting a return game against UNC Wilmington this season.
In all, this schedule gives Charlotte plenty of chances to test themselves and build-up confidence in their system before the always crucial C-USA season.
All it took was me spending a week at the beach for teams to finally start churning out some schedules. After seeing just 23 schedules through the first three-quarters of July a whopping 14 schedules dropped in the final week. A pleasant surprise is that the schedules are coming from a wide array of conferences, which is typical for late July but is untypical for the first 40 schedules. Releases are still miles behind average pace but it's about time things look to be picking up before it became "a story" much like the 2020 offseason.
One of the more interesting stories from this weeks releases is we see Charleston and Tulane engaging in an in-season home and home, a strategy talked about recently to alleviate the pressure to fill out a schedule with games at a lower cost. Very few surprises on the schedules released, aside from long travel trips, such as Winthrop to Washington State.
The SEC and AAC also released their 2021-22 opponent rotations this week, which is the only thing that happened involving those conferences this week. In other conference schedule news, both the CAA and Sun Belt released their schedules and with the release of UAB's schedule the puzzle of the C-USA schedule (the conference that refuses to release a composite schedule) is filled in just a tad bit more.
One big duffle bag of contracts was waiting for me upon my return from vacation, the games on Southern's schedule so far are typical for SWAC teams, many guarantee games of various rates. The season opener at Louisville has been in the public space for some time, and is a hold-over contract from last season. The Jaguars will spend a few December nights in Ohio to play Akron, Kent State and Dayton, the latter two in succession as part of a single trip prior to Christmas.
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 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.
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.
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:
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:
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 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.
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.
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.
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
In this transition week between June and July scheduling news is starting to pick up, not so much in the teams releasing schedules but in other news. This week the ACC/B1G Challenge match-ups were released, a few MTE schedules dropped and on top of that schedule hounds like the Docket and beat writers have a dug up a slew of games. Among all the noise, four teams were able to release their non-conference schedule.
Ole Miss got in on the game early by releasing their home schedule on Monday, but by the end of the week their complete schedule was released with the announcement of the Holiday Hoopsgiving event details. The Rebels will only have to leave Oxford for their trip to South Carolina for the Charleston Classic and their trip to Atlanta for the above mentioned event, will they will meet perennial SEC spoilers Western Kentucky. COVID delays means that Ole Miss' games against Memphis and Dayton will both be at home during the same season. The Rebels also drew a home game in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, hosting Kansas State at home in late January. The rest of the home slate is filled with guarantee games and the return game with Middle Tennessee from the Kermit Davis buy-out series.
Conference mates Iowa State and Kansas State both also joined the party this week as both teams look to crawl out of the Big 12's basement this season. The Cyclones will get baptized during the first week of the season when Oregon State visits Ames fresh off their Elite 8 run. Conference challenge games against Creighton and Missouri along with their rivalry game with Iowa will be Iowa State's shot to make a statement that last season is behind them. Getting a win against a NIT Tip-Off field of Memphis, Virginia Tech and Xavier will be a tough task but any success will be an indicator of improvement. Kansas State's road to an NCAA resume relies on knocking off Arkansas and or Illinois in front a Wildcat heavy crowd at the Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City, MO. Their remaining higher profile match-ups are all road games at Wichita State, Nebraska and Ole Miss. Both Iowa State and Kansas State fill out a large share of their schedule with buy-games, looking to keep their overall win-loss record strong going into conference play.
George Mason also released their schedule, which would not surprise regular readers as the bulk of George Mason's games have been nailed down for a few weeks. What the Patriots were waiting is the schedule for the Crossover Classic which was announced within their schedule. The Patriots open with Washington and close with the hosts, South Dakota State, sandwiched around their game with Nevada.
The biggest news this week, however, was the release of the ACC/B1G Challenge games, being the last to feature Coach K's Duke and the first since 2002 without Roy Williams. Duke drew a road game at Ohio State, being their first trip to Columbus since running into the Jared Sullinger buzz-saw in 2011. Juwan Howard will take Michigan into the Dean Dome for Hubert Davis' first go-round in the competition as North Carolina's head coach. Other big match-ups include Louisville at Michigan State, Wisconsin at Georgia Tech, Iowa at Virginia and Florida State at Purdue
It was a slow week for receiving contracts, with most responsive documents only including one or two games which have been tweeted out as received. But one bonafide duffle-bag did arrive.
The Leathernecks have a built a schedule filled with regional contemporaries, among the 8 games committed to this season 3 are part of home & homes with close opponents, while two more neighbors are being played as part of a round-robin MTE. Western Illinois opens up on the road at Nebraska and will also visit DePaul as part of their MTE. Also of note, while the original contract signed in 2019 with Miami-Ohio stipulated a December 4th game this season a contract which can be assumed to supersede that deal was signed last November which shifts this year's game date into the realm of uncertainty. A game at Central Michigan on December 5th puts the idea of playing that game on December 4th on very shaky ground.
It's almost July but finally their is a spark in teams releasing non conference schedules. Coming into this week there had been a stalemate with just two schedules this week but this week saw five new schedules released along with a lot of game reporting in the twitter-verse. Colorado, Purdue and Tennessee highlighted the releases complimented by Brown (it sure is nice to see an Ivy League team with games on the schedule again) and New Orleans.
Colorado's schedule didn't offer up much in terms of surprises, the biggest game to be revealed was with New Mexico. Aside from that every game was low-major and mid-major filler to compliment big games against Tennessee and Kansas.
Purdue's schedule hit in very much the same way, nothing headline-grabbing that wasn't already in the public domain. Although fans of the Sycamores will be salivating at the chance to get a win in Mackey Arena when Indiana State visits Purdue on the first Friday of the season.
Tennessee's schedule is no joke. The Vols released an 11-game non-conference schedule and Jon Rothstein reported a match-up later in the day with USC Upstate which has yet to have a date nailed down. Former assistant Desmond Oliver will bring East Tennessee State into Thompson-Boling Arena during the first weekend of the season. Aside from a handful of filler games, Tennessee is showing a lot of ambition with the likes of Texas Tech, Memphis, Villanova, Arizona and Texas all on their docket. Tennessee will also face one of Purdue or North Carolina in Connecticut during an MTE.
Brown has a schedule compiled of many games against their northeast contemporaries, complimented by buy games against North Carolina and Maryland. New Orleans released a schedule with few surprises, with The D1 Docket obtaining several contracts last week. The Privateers will hit the road for seven buy-games but also will host Central Arkansas, Presbyterian and VMI in an MTE.
Also revealed in New Orleans schedule is an ambitious move by the Southland to make-up for massive losses in the latest round of conference re-alignment. It would appear that all eight teams will meet-up in early January for a 12-game tournament. Details about seeding were not released, but one would assume that the Southland's best 2 teams would find their way to the finals creating a statistical feedback loop boosting both team's resumes for when it comes time to seed the NCAA Tournament.
Aside from solidifying the November 13th date for their home tilt with Georgia and the Hall of Fame Classic much of what Cincinnati has in the books is their filler games. This program took quite a dip in the last couple of seasons so I would not expect a very ambitious schedule as new Coach Wes Miller and his staff get their feet under them after leaving UNC Greensboro.
North Dakota have 10 games in the books with 9 dates set. The Fighting Hawks will extend their trip in the Miami Area following their MTE at Florida Atlantic with a game at FIU. North Dakota will also collect checks for playing guarantee games at Kansas State and Cal Baptist. A home & home was scheduled to begin at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi last season, a game which ended up not happening due to impact of COVID on scheduling. The obtained documents do not include any amendments which specify ultimately where this series will begin.
To no one's surprise at all Grambling has a slew of buy-games lined up already for the upcoming season. The biggest reveal from Grambling's contract is that the Tigers, along with Grand Canyon are two of the three participants in the MTE hosted by Texas Tech.
One of the teams that could be on the short
list to pull the trigger next is George Mason. The D1 Docket struck gold late last
week in its request for documents from George Mason turned up whopping 10
contracts were included in the responsive documents. This week the Patriots
were announced as participants in the 2021 Crossover Classic, raising their
total number of competitions to 13, the maximum allowed with an 18-game
conference schedule.
One of George Mason’s games, a home tilt
against Morgan State, was already uncovered in a request from the latter
institution. The details of the Crossover Classic are unclear, but if the event
is three games that would signify the George Mason has completed its
non-conference schedule. However, if the event is just two games, then the
Patriots would have one game left to fill, still an envious position at this
point of the offseason.
Aside from playing in a competitive
multi-team event Patriots fans have much to look forward too on the schedule.
Matchups against in-state contemporaries and former CAA rivals Old Dominion, in
Fairfax, and James Madison, at their new arena in Harrisonburg, will put
bragging rights on the line.
The Patriots are set to collect two
guarantee checks, first by crossing over DC to play at Maryland the second week
of the season, and a post-exam trip to Athens for a game against Tom Crean’s
Georgia Bulldogs.
The rest of George Mason’s schedule is
filled with home guarantee games, overwhelmingly with teams from the
Mid-Atlantic, with no opponent travelling from further way than Long Island.
The elephant in the room this offseason is news that the NCAA Tournament will expand from 68 teams to 76 teams starting in 2027. The NCAA To...
