Matt Brown piece on Miami scheduling efforts to debunk the “you didn’t schedule anyone”. Well it wasn’t for lack of trying.
https://x.com/bruce_weingart/status/2029518201738899754?s=46&t=F-WLIxbyYlhHo-puMzmVzw
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I do find it amusing that an article involving an open records request is mostly locked behind a paywall.
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Yep. Maybe someone on here has a free link. I don’t pay for it. I just get Matt Brown’s daily newsletter.
But we do know of at least Pitt, Marquette, and Wisconsin. So those are three quality teams alone we tried to schedule to no avail.
I bit the bullet and paid the $9.
No available response:
Pittsburgh
Wisconsin
Marquette
USC
Sacred Heart
Oregon
Ohio State
Mississippi State
Florida
Response(s) but no agreement:
Michigan State
UCLA
Boise State
Grand Canyon
Kansas (“We’ll need to look at next year”)
BYU
Utah
Illinois (“I need to get two high NET games 300+ before I would think about playing you.”)
Virginia Tech
Nebraska
Many of the emails indicated that the team was looking to pair a second game out west with the Air Force game.
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Yeah this is worth the $9 monthly subscription. Matt writes good stuff anyway.
The Illinois response is the smoking gun, proving that good mid-majors like us face an essentially impossible task in trying to build a schedule.
And while the haters might say “this isn’t EVERY p4 team,” who knows how many texts, phone calls, and in-person conversations at the Final 4, coaching conferences, etc… there would have been in addition to emails that could be captured by a FOIA.
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Regarding Illinois: Coach Holmes’ initial email stated “I know we don’t probably fit the NET profile for what you are looking for…” so I’m sure the initial posting referenced something related to quad 4 (or at least a similar wording) but the response from Illinois shows the problem better mid-majors face. You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place for not being crappy enough to be a gimme.
Jus for the heck of it… the current NET ranking for each team: (we’re sitting at 53 right now)
Florida 4
Illinois 5
Michigan State 11
Nebraska 12
Kansas 18
BYU 25
Wisconsin 32
Ohio State 34
UCLA 36
Virginia Tech 55
Boise State 58
USC 63
Grand Canyon 74
Oregon 106
Marquette 107
Mississippi State 108
Pittsburgh 109
Utah 128
Sacred Heart 295
I’m dying that Pitt played Hofstra instead of us that date, and lost. Maybe next time they will opt for the Quad 2 loss instead of Quad 4…
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Honestly maybe the most disappointing is not getting that Grand Canyon game scheduled. That’s the high level mid major game that needs to happen more often. I’m wondering if they are the team that backed out at the last minute that Travis mentioned on one of his pod appearances.
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I’d rather look forward and hope Miami can schedule better games in 2026-27; and consider schools from some of the better mid major conferences (Missouri Valley, American, Horizon, West Coast). Akron had Yale, Murray St, Tulane, Milwaukee this year, as well as Purdue. Nothing like Coles Bataan marches, of course, but good enough to have challenging games to test the team and boost the rankings.
Along the same vein, I saw these posts on X which are screenshots from WinAd, a system most schools use to find games. “Just schedule these guys…”
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Not only has our season been magical but we are also going to expose these fugazy high majors.
We are college basketball penicillin
Auburn? Why would such an elite basketball powerhouse feel the need to set such restrictions?
If Bruce Pearl had kept his big mouth shut, I would have understood this line of thinking because Auburn legitimately did play a death march OOC schedule.
But he didn’t, so fuck them.
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Bruce Pearl molests collies.
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Another random aside, I miss the days when that scheduling message board was publicly accessible. It was hilarious (“only returning 1 starter, multiple freshman will get time, we will probably suck, PLEASE BUY US”).
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Nowadays it would be:
“The entire roster may transfer. No clue who will be on the court in November!”
Funny thing how drastically different CFB and CBB scheduling operates. Football gets done 10+ years in some cases, basketball goes year to year.