Nice report by UK, something I'd like us to do a little more of. Good comments on schedule. Last year frankly we got saved by winning the Wisco game & fact they outperformed expectations, it was a feather in the cap game, a win that kept improving when they won the B10. Without that we were Up the Creek like Tim Matheson. We gave ourselves really just the 1 shot and thankfully we won it but imo that wasn't fair for a team with ncaa expectations. And we still had to go & win about 24 other games. Too risky, gotta give yourself a few more shots like SF said. And now we're going for best seed ever, gotta factor that in and schedule even better. Takes marquee wins. UK is great, never played them, historic program etc. Winnable game. UK on road is harder but I loved it as a buy game assuming we'd get some shots at neutral MTE games as part of separate tourney. Maybe we get 1 at this unknown MSG game but I'm skeptical it's a 2 game thing. Yes we have other games, hopefully 13 ooc not 11 if we stupidly go to 20 a10 games. But our staff does not get benefit of the doubt to fill these correctly based on past and recently the Lunardi bs.
Some games like CSU, Vandy, being on road will help the underlying numbers. The mid tier games are ok, but they don't move the needle. No doubt we deserved to be in this past season, but I don't think anyone says that without Wisco. UK, 2 dogs w fleas to get the road game, 1-2 likely regional dogs like normal, CSU, Vandy, ODU, CofC (I expect way down), that's only leaving maybe 4 games. Heck I still think BC is quite possible (it was a 3 game series) and we are enamored with playing the DC game at Mystics arena as a Xmas special (I actually dig it, I attended both and it's like having a personal secret game to watch), so now u r getting bare bones left to schedule. We'd need MSG to be 2 real quality games or 1 and have another one they're planning on.
The mid tier games r actually solid (if the top tier is in place), some low tier always expected but we should be trying to minimize that this year more than normal, the top tier is what we've lacked. The best way to get those is thru a strong 8 team MTE but we just watch fellow A10 teams pull off instead of us. The lack of that kind of MTE adds stress to schedule but that's where we are. It can be done tho no excuses. A matter of just adding a couple more good OOC games. Last year we were short too and they threw us Radford.
