https://x.com/JonRothstein/status/1925000025798533157

McNeese and Murray State both in the Cayman Islands tournament. 

I get that the A10 probably has the toughest scheduling situation of all conferences in the country, but man if we are planning on going for it next year it would be great to see a power conference school on the slate. There is probably no chance of this happening even as a true away game (let alone a home-and-home), which means that our only chance is during an MTE like last year. Unless TBD ends up being that opponent (which is very unlikely), this feels underwhelming. That doesn't mean I want to dismiss or not respect Murray State or McNeese, two very solid mid-major programs that will challenge GW, but it doesn't feel like much of a step up from last year's tournament (not to mention the streaming service being a definite step down).

McNeese got a couple of down transfers from the Big East in Garwey Dual (Providence/Seton Hall) and Larry Johnson (Creighton) but in general this squad is not at the same level as last year (I'm surprised Torvik likes them so much in his preseason rankings). Losing Will Wade to NC State plays a role in that. Murray also has a new coach coming in (Ryan Miller) and he's assembled quite a talented roster, but at the end of the day they will have to integrate like ten new transfers under a first year coach (also a bit surprised Torvik likes them so much, as his preseason rankings tends to favor team continuity).

Glad we are playing American at home. They lost a lot to graduation (minus Greg Jones) so hopefully we can reverse our terrible track record against them. ODU should be better, as they added some double figure scorers from other mid majors (they added Jared Turner from Northeastern and Jordan Battle from Coastal Carolina, along with Drew McKenna from Georgetown). Outside of the Trey Moss revenge game angle, W&M is kind of a meh game. They lost their two double figure scorers but their coach recruits skill so a hot shooting performance from the Tribe could derail things.

The one game I don't get from a basketball perspective is the Army one, although obviously it would provide an educational experience. GW is risking playing a likely bad team on the road in a year with aspirations. In another year maybe this would make sense but honestly outside of AU (with the local angle) I'm not sure why CC would ever consider playing any other Patriot League team on the road. All risk with no reward playing a Q4 game away from home unless we blow them out. We don't have the cushion of a power conference school to make up such a hit during conference play. You might as well challenge yourself if you're going on the road, even if it ends in a loss. Again, this isn't likely to be a high major, but some quality mid major out there should be realistic and I'm sure CC is trying.
 

Rothstein just announced Middle Tennessee as the fourth team. Another squad losing all their double figure scorers and figure to take a step back from last year. It's not an outright bad tournament, just a middling one overall.

I think most A10 teams are playing better competition in better tournaments, outside of La Salle (but they get the benefit of the Big Five Classic in Philadelphia). Duquesne's isn't great, but they at least get Villanova. It's unclear what tournament Fordham and GMU are in, but I guess the closest thing to our tournament is Rhody's. They get Bradley, Liberty, Princeton, Temple, Towson, UC San Diego, and Vermont in theirs.

This isn't the most up to date, but provides good info: https://www.bloggingthebracket.com/2025/4/8/24403878/2025-26-mens-college-basketball-exempt-multi-team-events-mte-thanksgiving-early-season-tournaments

We signed the contract for this tournament during last season, so I think that's some of the reason we are getting opponents with turnover in terms of the roster/coaching staff.  Maybe you shouldn't want to lock in an MTE as early as we did this year, but at the same time, you don't want to wait too long and end up in something even crappier either or no MTE at all.

I will say given Caputo's reputation around college basketball, I'm a bit surprised he hasn't been able to call in any favors to get us a game with a lower-level ACC school.  I am envious of Woj being able to get Bona into an event with UNC and Michigan State.



 

dmvpiranha wrote:

GWRising wrote:

The scheduling is not going to change much. Nobody is going to buy us because we are now potentially good enough to possibly beat them. The P4+ have no incentive to play us because we don't help them. Neutral court? LOL. At GW? LOL.

This is understood, and is why it needed to be done during the MTE (if possible) like last year's Kansas State. That is possible.

GWRising wrote:

It isn't for lack of trying. It is the system. It sucks but unless we get really good (like guaranteed top 50 good) or really bad (like below 200) the P4's are really hard to schedule. And if you are below 200 do you really want to play P4's?

The P4's are really hard to schedule, period. I would put really bad as below 300, because they aren't playing even a team in the 200s (or an A10 team in general). We are currently 58th in Torvik's preseason rankings (doesn't tell all, but we are at least predicted to be decent) and are struggling to get a high major team to play us. Who knows when we'll be predicted to be this good in the future, especially with Slim graduating. He's the best big we've had in like ten years.

GWRising wrote:

As for Army it's not all that curious. It's a return game so there was no discretion.

That is very curious (again strictly from a basketball perspective). Why schedule a home-and-home with Army to begin with? This is Radford from a couple years ago all over again. It sucks that it's this way, but Army is never going to be good enough to be worth playing on the road. That's just reality. It's all risk and no reward. We may not be able to make the same decisions on scheduling as bigger schools but still have the ability to pick and choose our home and homes against mid-majors a bit better. All I'm saying.
 

 In order to get home games, sometimes the ask is a return game instead of money or for less money. So you have to add that financial calculus into the mix. Playing at Army is a road game you should win so the risk/reward analysis may have been let's do this for the home game. Remember, acceptable scheduling dates are tough to come by as each school has its own exam periods, travel and other games. There is no central scheduling like a pro league. Scheduling is tough for so many reasons due to individual requirements. When you put everything into the mix, the pool of schools that we can play isn't as large as one would otherwise think.

dmvpiranha wrote:

How many A10 teams are doing home-and-homes with non-local schools that are sub-300? I know Fordham did one with Maine sometime back, but I can't think of many examples. I'm sure there will be some decent games on slate, but you have to be so intentional with each OOC game in the A10. If the assumption is that Army is a "road game that you should win" that's a not very well thought out risk/reward analysis from a NET perspective, especially after we lost to Radford at their place, American at their place, and struggled to put away a rebuilding ODU squad in Norfolk. I'm not discounting the number of factors at play in scheduling, but doing another Patriot League home-and-home when you already have AU just feels like a misstep/silly.

Sure, but I think what is missing in the analysis is we really aren't scheduling for NET because we really can't to the degree it will make a difference. I think what we and other A-10 teams are doing is attempting to schedule wins. Recent history has shown that unless you win the A-10 or have a phenomenal OOC (which is now damn near impossible) , we are fast becoming a one bid league and the emphasis is on making tournaments like the NIT or the Crown. Look at Dayton last year. Played UNC, UConn, Marquette, Iowa State, Cincinnati, UNLV, and Northwestern. Can't imagine GW ever coming up with that schedule. But what did it get them? They stumbled in conference and were left out.

So the OOC becomes less and less important for the A-10 except for NCAA seeding if you can become the A-10 tournament champion. I think the message now is win the league which is admittedly a narrow path because if you don't the OOC is largely irrelevant. This isn't your father's A-10 anymore unfortunately. The new reality sucks but we are basically a one-bid league with a long shot possibility of two bids at this point.

So bringing this back to GW, unless you believe that the OOC has some bearing on GW's chances for A-10 glory (I think it does but minimal as Dayton and others have shown recently) then to me it is becoming less and less a thing to worry about other than for the entertainment value of playing P4s or other strong teams and for NCAA seeding should you be the one. I would try where I could to schedule better teams but I wouldn't sell my soul to do so. 

To me when I saw 14 teams from one conference make the 2025 NCAA Tournament, I knew the NCAA tournament was largely gone for mid-major teams like GW except in the rare circumstance where we win the A-10.

A return may also be a Thank you since the non-GW ticket sales were huge for  game against West Point  last year.  With the Army- Navy football game in town, it was presumably a big revenue game for GW - maybe even rivaling the VCU game.

1.  Attendance was so putrid last season that the Hampton game outdrew both the Army and VCU games.  And the attendance for Hampton was 2,116.  Yuk.

2. I've done pretty close to a 180 on this.  Last season's OOC schedule was literally the worst or second worst in the country.  It was a schedule so bad that no postseason tournament should have been talking to GW without 3 or 4 additional wins on the season.  And yet, the Crown folks didn't seem to care, or were willing to overlook, how bad our schedule was.  We didn't deserve a postseason berth but nevertheless, we received one.  Yes, it results in a "college basketball doesn't really start until New Year's Eve" feeling, but maybe the answer is to load up on wins regardless of opponent quality.  Sure, the NCAA's would have snubbed us but as we saw, they snubbed everyone in the A10 except our automatic qualifier.  We are stuck in no man's land so maybe this is the way to go. 

3.  Leave it to Poog to correctly explain why playing at our military academies should be considered a privilege and not a burden.

Free Quebec wrote:

The biggest problem with Murray St and McNeeae St being opponents in the MTE, is that we really need quad 1 opportunities on neutral courts (or home, but that’s unlikely).

Last year, McNeese would have been Quad 2 and Murray St Quad 3. With McNeese expected to take a step back, there’s a good chance these are both Quad 3 games - so lots of risk, little upside.

Obviously we need to play the best teams we can, so if this was the best MTE we could get, so be it. But it’s not exciting and FloHoops doesn’t help.

  If we say we can't schedule power conference opponents as a given (not easy, but haven't other
A-10 teams done so), then the tournament is our best shot, as pointed out by FQ above.
So why are we forfeiting that opportunity? Go over the tournaments other A-10 teams are in, and most other A-10 teams are playing power conference teams/good mid-majors. At some point, we can post the list here.
   The super-patsy strategy may have been Ok for the Crown, so Boise State could have its own patsy (FYI,it's not their football team) and kick our butts, but doesn't help for the NIT.
   If we are going to forfeit our slim but possible (A-10 can return to multi-bid in spite of selection committee)
chance of getting to the NCAA tournament as an at-large, we should at least aim for the NIT.
    And stop putting lipstick on what at least so far is our annual OOC pig.
 

Long Suffering Fan wrote:

Assuming all the scheduling excuses are legit, the fact remains that 363 of the 364 D-1 teams had a stronger schedule than us (per Kenpom), and many of them face the same scheduling obstacles as we do. There are many quality mid majors a bus ride away. I had thought Liberty was a good suggestion. Same with JMU. These schools really would not give GW a home and home? The other thing I was thinking would be nice would be a resumption of a conference challenge with a comparably ranked conference.

AMEN