Why exactly is this one game a big deal? Ohio State, Dayton, Cincinnati - three of the premier basketball programs in our state in the past schedule one of these games sometimes as well? What about one damn game puts Ohio in a place of non-leadership and down to EMU or NIU?

And if you're concerned about the 2017-18 season's RPI because of this one game, you're not paying attention to the five games already on the schedule (that have been talked about at the beginning of this thread) that should be solid RPI/SOS games.

Our annual men's basketball budget is $1 million dollars higher than both EMU and NIU. That's the obvious part.

The ugly underbelly is a lot uglier than that. It doesn't leave me feeling lucky, it leaves me feeling disgusted. Our NCAA Tournament wins are literally subsidizing their budgets. The intent of revenue sharing within the MAC was to provide funds for teams to increase home games with the ultimate goal of improving individual school's OOC RPI which would ultimately raise the entire conference's RPI. It was a nice theory, but you've got leeches like EMU and NIU who get around scheduling legitimate D-1 opponents by filling their home schedules with lower division opponents. The MAC "formula" needs to be reworked to prevent the scum of the conference from taking advantage of the system.

A not super surprising article, but I can see Ohio having similar scheduling difficulties as UTA every now and again.

http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/college/baseball/arti...

One game doesn't impact our overall schedule. And let's remember our RPI is basically irrelevant. It makes fans happy but at the end of the year only one game matters - the MAC championship game. To me the value of a strong OOC schedule is it prepares the team for a long MAC season and Cleveland. One "bad" game against a lower level doesn't change that.

Of course P5 football fans are being trained to say the same thing about playing us.

Yeah, pretty sure Fuss was 'the guy' for most scheduling the last handful of years. Will be interesting to see who it is now, and what they can do.

But the reality is unless a team has an incredible season (e.g. 27-3) and loses in the MAC finals we are a 1 bid league - and even in that case a second bid is not assured. Having one game against NW Ohio would not change that. Agree if the MAC overall had a stronger RPI (better OOC) the situation may change ( in that the criteria for an incredible season may be lowered - e.g. 25-5).

Agree with the idea that RPI should matter. And yes, one game is a big deal. It wasn't that long ago that Ohio went on road to Oklahoma, UMass, Belmont & Memphis in one season. Oh...and they had Richmond, Oakland, UNCW, Winthrop & St Bonnie at home. That team didnt schedule Urbana or ODU...and they successfully had 10 home non-conference games.

That was 4 years ago...not 44.

Ohio schedules haven't really been as good and in a lot of cases worse since then.

They finished with an RPI of 76 that year. The schedule in 2014 was better (RPI 85) and in 2016 (RPI was 86)

Last year...RPI was 117. Not too impressive for a 2-seed that won 20 games...oops, 19 cause Urbana didn't count.

To say the MAC will never get an at-large team is so short sighted. Name me one MAC team since 2000 that was jobbed on an at-large bid? Yeah...that is what I thought.

Those good Akron teams or a few UB teams that failed to win MAC tourney didn't get an at-large because their resume was laughable. Good teams in the MAC need to beef up their schedule if they ever want to return to the at-large conversation.

But based on this thread, it seems a lot of folks are totally okay with playing bad schedules and just waiting for three nights in Cleveland to determine the one-bid league's rep.

That will never change unless scheduling changes.

So go ahead and throw the dead horse comments at me...I don't care.

You keep enjoying relatively meaningless basketball for 4 months a season and keep beating that "MAC will always be a one-bid league".

They will be as long as they continue to schedule the way they do. Even a 27-3 Ohio team that loses MAC title game and barely received a Top 25 vote all season won't earn at-large bid when their best win is at Iona.

So yeah....keep playing Marietta. Because it obviously doesn't matter.

+1

Draw a 300 mile or so circle around Athens and try like hell to get some of those P6 schools on the schedule.

OSU, UC, X, UD, Butler, IU, Purdue, UK, UofL, Pitt, WVU, PSU, Tennessee, UVA, VT, UM, MSU are a handful of "regional" teams I'd love to throw on speed dial.

What that takes is playing more road games, and it doesn't seem that more road games are likely anytime soon. Getting any of those schools to consistently come to Athens is pretty damn tough, or they'd already be bringing them to Athens.

WKU, Marshall, even Murray State, Belmont, etc. are better than A-Sun, Sunbelt schools no one has an interest in. Still, even those require an interest from the other team to schedule home and home's.

It was actually 2013-14 that the scheduling mandate came down.

Food for thought. IUPUI just left the Summit for the Horizon. Further, in leaving the Summit IUPUI was released from all of its Summit games for this coming year (2017-18). Now all of those Summit schools (Denver, Omaha, IPFW, Western Illinois, Oral Roberts, South Dakota, South Dakota State and North Dakota State) are all looking to fill a 2 game hole in each of their schedules. So, try to get a home/away with any or some of those teams for this year and next.

Arkley says we go back to Marshall this year. It's the third of a four-game series. I also didn't know that Iona was a four-game series.

Interesting that the Marshall 4 games was Home, away, away, home. I like the 4 games with Iona.

With Charleston, and assuming we see them play one of Iona, Marshall, WKU by December 1st, we're going to have a really good idea of what OUr team has for the conference season. Strong, strong start to the schedule.