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2024–25 schedule

I’m not sure the 35th toughest OOC helps, I’m not sure the 235th helps.

I’ll also be interested in how all the A10 OOC schedules rank on NYE…
 
I don't really agree that it's beyond our control. There r varied factors but scheduling is a core part of the job. Working out contracts goes on all the time. That's not a new thing. Every year there are games that almost happended. & most of us r in business. We all know when someone is wishy washy on not signing the deal. Ok it's not easy. and that's what we'll hear. But other similar teams r getting these games. We hear we are "one of the top basketball programs in the nation". should be easier. we hear it's only bottom 150 NET getting P5 road games. not true. We hear of other teams riding a scheduling high off good season. maybe we just f'd up badly this year. But stinks feeling like u have to almost run the table based on our schedule.

Idk if complaceny seeped into scheduling per se or not. I can admit it's possible we just did a poor job. But I do feel like there is a don't rock the boat mentality with Mooney. 1 NCAA going on 14 years I think it's well known. Frankly the 1 year he was truly under pressure he ultimately produced. Gilly went bonkers but whatever it counts. I think if u look at when he's gotten any extension the very next year we didn't do very well. So I don't dismiss complacency either. With all the job security he's had and how our traditional scheduling philosphy hasn't produced enough - I know I know JUST WIN MORE - well that doesn't work either, I think we'd go all out some year at least once. Tho it's been clear for a while it was not this season either.
What I was referencing was beyond our control, is other teams wanting to follow through on the contract. I am sure there is an etiquette to approaching these things but ultimately it takes two to tango and we can’t force others to schedule us if they don’t want to. I know your comment about us running out of fax paper was facetious, but do you think our scheduling staff was sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day the past few months? Unfortunately plans that we thought were set, fell through. Like sman says above, this schedule needs to be an aberration. Please tell me if you disagree, but our prior schedules have been pretty solid for our program. One bad schedule in the last 10-15 years is going to happen, especially now with NET and larger conferences scheduling more conference games. Let’s make sure this is the exception and not the norm. I don’t see how this poor schedule is related to the notion of complacency with our on court performance. Again, other than this year, I believe our OOC schedule has been pretty good regardless on whether we came off a good or not so good year.

To your last point “I know I know JUST WIN MORE - well that doesn't work either, I think we'd go all out some year at least once”.

What would you say about our schedule in 2019-2020 when we played Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, Auburn, Alabama, Boston College or 2009-2010 where we played Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, Wake Forest or 2010-2011 where we played Purdue, Arizona State, Georgia Tech, Seton Hall, Wake Forest. I would definitely say those years we tried to go all out. Also on years we didn’t go all out we still tried to play against at least 2 power teams. Things didn’t go our way this year, but back to my original statement, which is our staff ought to get the benefit of the doubt this year given a decade plus long history of solid scheduling.
 
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looking back, our schedules are almost always pretty good. that hasn't led to a lot of tournaments.
this year's schedule will be light. maybe that's by design.

maybe the staff reads this board and sees us complain about the 57% winning percentage. "you want a better winning percentage ... ok we'll play an easier schedule".

and maybe it'll work. maybe we'll put up a gaudy record and generate some enthusiasm. maybe come conference time we'll have lines out to the parking lot of the RC.

Lot of maybes. maybe that non D1 game will be the most exciting game of the year with back & forth crazy plays that get Top 10 of the week highligts on espn.

believe me I'll be rooting for the gaudy record.

I don't feel like our schedules are challenging enough. Some have been pretty good. But overall we should adjust the approach imo. so we disagree but no need to rehash we know where I stand there. But where I do agree with u and where we all agree (i think)....it hasn't led to a lot of tournaments. Fact. Which is another reason to go really challenging with our history showing it's the only way that works!

Also, fwiw Mooney et al has always said they want a challenging OOC, how challenging is certainly up for a debate. But sure it could be by design. That would just be a terrible mistake if true. Based on the radio reports by Legger that's not the reasoning. And the "I need to put up a great record to keep the media & fanbase wolves at bay" is just not close to reality. It doesn't exist with UR and Moon has the best job security in the country for our results anyway.
 
I don't want t clog up the thread with a bunch of high major ooc schedules, but there are a ton that are just playing a great MTE, a coupld against other HMs, and a bunch of low majors.

if that's what the NET is telling teams to do, then I'm with 4700. let's increase the A10 to 20 games.
 
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What would you say about our schedule in 2019-2020 when we played Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, Auburn, Alabama, Boston College or 2009-2010 where we played Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, Wake Forest or 2010-2011 where we played Purdue, Arizona State, Georgia Tech, Seton Hall, Wake Forest.

lol those are the schedules of ours I've been promoting (u took from a prior post of mine I'm sure) and a lot of ppl like u have said no it's too many, we need those H&H mid major games and extra home cupcake regardless. yeah, those are good. There is a step above them tho, where u can go all out. So in 20 years I think u could try the "all out" way at least once. But I'd take those older ones for sure.
 
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lol those are the schedules of ours I've been promoting (u took from a prior post of mine I'm sure) and a lot of ppl like u have said no it's too many, we need those H&H mid major games and extra home cupcake regardless. yeah, those are good. There is a step above them tho, where u can go all out. So in 20 years I think u could try the "all out" way at least once. But I'd take those older ones for sure.
Yes and whether I think they were the best schedule for us or not, or whether we could/should still go “all out” even more than that are different discussions. I am simply trying to articulate that we have had a lot of very strong schedules over the years and when you made comments like “When u regularly give out unnecessary contract extensions like free candy u can get a lack of urgency or motivation” or “Maybe we r still using fax machines for our contracts & we r staring at the fax all day. Oh no guys we’re out of paper” or “24 year job security, Queally with more time on his hands now using NIL to get us recruits, you’d think actually reasons to go after it with hard national type schedule. Nope” makes it seem like we did not make an effort nor motivated to care about our OOC schedule this year (please correct me if I’m wrong). At the end of the day, I think several things didn’t go our way and we ended up with a less than optimal schedule, due to a variety of factors, several of which were beyond our control. It’s disappointing but hopefully - given our history - an aberration.
 
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Yes and whether I think they were the best schedule for us or not, or whether we could/should still go “all out” even more than that are different discussions. I am simply trying to articulate that we have had a lot of very strong schedules over the years and when you made comments like “When u regularly give out unnecessary contract extensions like free candy u can get a lack of urgency or motivation” or “Maybe we r still using fax machines for our contracts & we r staring at the fax all day. Oh no guys we’re out of paper” or “24 year job security, Queally with more time on his hands now using NIL to get us recruits, you’d think actually reasons to go after it with hard national type schedule. Nope” makes it seem like we did not make an effort nor care about our OOC schedule this year (please correct me if I’m wrong). At the end of the day, I think several things didn’t go our way and we ended up with a less than optimal schedule, due to a variety of factors, several of which were beyond our control. It’s disappointing but hopefully - given our history - an aberration.

If u go back & read I said "they can accept a schedule like this" re: complacency and in fact said idk if it seeped into the actual scheduling. So yes u r wrong.

I know u think we have very strong schedules. I answered spiderman above...I think more challenging is better, occasionally we do, but not nearly enough imo. And that has been the crux of this thread amongst some of us.

Richmond's NET OOC SOS was 179 last season. Is that "very good" to you?

Thank you for appreciating my facsimile joke.
 
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If u go back & read I said "they can accept a schedule like this" re: complacency and in fact said idk if it seeped into the actual scheduling. So yes u r wrong.
I’m genuinely curious, what more would you like our scheduling staff to do when a team won’t schedule us? From the sounds of it, 2 teams (likely top teams) didn’t finish the contract when the ball was in their court. Suppose Auburn was one of the teams who didn’t follow through with the contract on their end. How could we help change that and how do you know we didn’t try?

Richmond's NET OOC SOS was 179 last season. Is that "very good" to you?
If I had to rank our schedules the past 15 years, last years would like be around average. I have said and still maintain that if we beat Boston College, Wichita State, & Northern Iowa we would be in the thick of the bubble conversation. I don’t think our schedule itself is what kept us from an at-large, it was the lack of results that kept us out. 8-5 isn’t going to cut it for an at-large.
 
putting all trust and faith in those 2 games when they remain unconfirmed and being reactive in not pushing on other options if those teams don’t commit on our timeline just seems like a basic level plan failure. Per the language someone posted here, Hardt sure did make it sound like we were just waiting and got stood up.

I’d give the benefit of the doubt if it was one game but by our AD’s comments this is more than one instance. Yeah we prob got screwed but it’s not like the rest of the known schedule is gangbusters or that we had low level P5 games already in hand. Or high level non P5 games even. We have nothing of note.

Also, lastly, this is their job(s). If Moon and the gang need the Glengarry leads, they should remember the other prizes.
 
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The bigger problem with playing a schedule of losers is that we have proven time and again that we will lose to one or two of them, and that will crush our season.
 
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Also, lastly, this is their job(s). If Moon and the gang need the Glengarry leads, they should remember the other prizes.
we're not even gettng the steak knives.
our best game right now is @ projected #128 Charlotte and our 2nd best is home against projected #190 Belmont.
 
we're not even gettng the steak knives.
our best game right now is @ projected #128 Charlotte and our 2nd best is home against projected #190 Belmont.
Southern Illinois and Louisiana Tech will hopefully be in that Charlotte range and here's hoping we get at least one of them.

But yeah...whoopee.
 
I’m genuinely curious, what more would you like our scheduling staff to do when a team won’t schedule us? From the sounds of it, 2 teams (likely top teams) didn’t finish the contract when the ball was in their court. Suppose Auburn was one of the teams who didn’t follow through with the contract on their end. How could we help change that and how do you know we didn’t try?

That's a great question for Mooney. I wish we had someone who would ask him and not just on a cursory level. Moon is the highest paid UR employee that's for him to figure out not me. But I'll indulge...

1. be willing to take many more road buy games. we aren't- that's a philosophy thing again. If u r only targeting 1 or 2 road buy or neutral u can get screwed easier when those 1 or 2 don't work out. If u r shooting for 4 or 5 of those games, maybe u don't end up here.

2. better MTE connections. Can't rely on Gazelle Group. They don't even have the best ones, yet those are the best ones we can ever get. Gazelle is run by Mooney's agent.

3. take less guaranteed $ on road than other teams. $ talks. And a school like Richmond can afford it more than most.

4. be willing to take less home games. simiilar to #1. Philosophy thing. I believe u even said 6 home OOC was the absolute floor. if u have to go to 5 go to 5. if we upset a red sweater (god bless em!) who misses out on Coppin St or John Tyler CC, they will be ok.

5. this one isn't a suggestion. but maybe it's just propaganda. Clearly there is some fake news going on with the Zoom collective calls. UR80s was told we were playing Auburn. It wasn't true. If we are, I will retract. I think u r relatively young (2017). I love UR but they are 100% not above misdirection & propaganda. Maybe they are saying they were great games and it was the other team's fault so it reflects less poorly on them. Maybe it wasn't very close at all. These maybes are all for spiderman!
 
Also, lastly, this is their job(s). If Moon and the gang need the Glengarry leads, they should remember the other prizes.
we're not even gettng the steak knives.
our best game right now is @ projected #128 Charlotte and our 2nd best is home against projected #190 Belmont.

These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They're for closers. I'd wish you all good luck, but you wouldn't know what to do with it if you got it.
 
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Another contributing factor to our MTE issue may be that Gazelle doesn't seem to do as many of the traditional MTEs anymore...several of them have become smaller 4-team events or even just a single showcase game, and they run some of the one-off MTEs hosted by a single P5 team. And when you can only participate in the same event once every four years, we're limited with them.

I think the only neutral site 8-team, 3-game event is the new Boardwalk Battle, but that's a bunch of mid-majors with La Salle getting the A-10 spot this year.

Sunshine Slam, Empire Classic, and Baha Mar Bahamas Championship were all out as options for us since we participated in those over the past three years.
 
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That's a great question for Mooney. I wish we had someone who would ask him and not just on a cursory level. Moon is the highest paid UR employee that's for him to figure out not me. But I'll indulge...

1. be willing to take many more road buy games. we aren't- that's a philosophy thing again. If u r only targeting 1 or 2 road buy or neutral u can get screwed easier when those 1 or 2 don't work out. If u r shooting for 4 or 5 of those games, maybe u don't end up here.

2. better MTE connections. Can't rely on Gazelle Group. They don't even have the best ones, yet those are the best ones we can ever get. Gazelle is run by Mooney's agent.

3. take less guaranteed $ on road than other teams. $ talks. And a school like Richmond can afford it more than most.

4. be willing to take less home games. simiilar to #1. Philosophy thing. I believe u even said 6 home OOC was the absolute floor. if u have to go to 5 go to 5. if we upset a red sweater (god bless em!) who misses out on Coppin St or John Tyler CC, they will be ok.

5. this one isn't a suggestion. but maybe it's just propaganda. Clearly there is some fake news going on with the Zoom collective calls. UR80s was told we were playing Auburn. It wasn't true. If we are, I will retract. I think u r relatively young (2017). I love UR but they are 100% not above misdirection & propaganda. Maybe they are saying they were great games and it was the other team's fault so it reflects less poorly on them. Maybe it wasn't very close at all. These maybes are all for spiderman!
I think you certainly bring up several good points on things we can do to position ourselves in the best way to get the best games possible. For instance, I agree and would love to have more MTE connections because the more connections we have the more opportunities we can be involved with. Certainly we should be reflective and look at what went wrong this year from a scheduling perspective and what are the things we can try to adapt and change (maybe it is take less guaranteed money or take more road games).

Still, everything you mention are the things we can do within our control. The way I see it, when we schedule games against other teams, 50% is within our control and the other 50% is not. This is not disagreeing with you on your points that you enumerated, but highlighting the 50% of the proverbial pie is out of our hands. At the end of the day we can try and do everything right and there may still be reasons things fall through. It is not for lack of trying to negotiate or compromise on our end. There are 350+ other teams all trying to negotiate/compromise with each other too.

Unless someone from the athletic department will openly share this, which I doubt they will (and don't necessarily think they have to) or if anyone has inside information here, then we'll never know. For instance if it turns out, hypothetically, that Auburn wanted to give us $80K buy-out and we wanted $100K then yes, I would say we shouldn't have been so strict with our negotiations and we would be more at fault.

What I do know and believe is that we have had solid schedules the past 15 years that have ranged from good to very good (maybe not "all out" by your definition). This is the first year I won't be satisfied with the schedule. If we have a miss of 1 out of 15 years, that's going to happen, and we should give our staff more of the benefit of the doubt is all I'm saying because they have shown an established history of pretty solid scheduling. If this however becomes a new pattern, then of course I will reassess my position.
 
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Bottom line is you have to get it done. This is where the head coach and AD have to use their contacts, relationships, and gravitas find a way. Didn't seem to happen here.
This is the baffling thing to me. Mooney has spent two decades in this job. EVERY OTHER COACH speaks glowingly of him, likes him, respects him, etc etc. We hear it all the time. Yet NONE of them will play him?? None?? What is that? It just doesn't add up at all.
 
EL, the problem with "other coaches" speaking highly of his is that is pretty much almost universal among the coach to coach network. I mean a few like Pitino may make a negative comment about their brethren from time to time, but for the most part it is all positive. Heck, I'm betting you could find nice comments about Jared Grasso from other coaches out there.

I haven't been following SDSU as closely lately, but I can recall when SDSU would grab a big game OOO, Dutcher was involved and spoke to the conversations and relationships with other head coaches to get it done.

It seems we leave this to assistants? I think Gipe is great and could probably chase down a bunch of leads, but the head man has to finish the deal.
 
EL, the problem with "other coaches" speaking highly of his is that is pretty much almost universal among the coach to coach network. I mean a few like Pitino may make a negative comment about their brethren from time to time, but for the most part it is all positive. Heck, I'm betting you could find nice comments about Jared Grasso from other coaches out there.

I haven't been following SDSU as closely lately, but I can recall when SDSU would grab a big game OOO, Dutcher was involved and spoke to the conversations and relationships with other head coaches to get it done.

It seems we leave this to assistants? I think Gipe is great and could probably chase down a bunch of leads, but the head man has to finish the deal.
Why use SDSU as an example of a head coach being involved and us as an example of one not being involved? The last 5 years, SDSU played 9 MTE games against power teams and 8 other OOC games against power teams, and we have played 7 MTE games against power teams and 9 other OOC games against power teams. I think both teams pretty much always schedule very well, and this year is clearly an aberration for us. So, it is wrong to act like this is a yearly issue that is somehow on the head coach.
 
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This is the baffling thing to me. Mooney has spent two decades in this job. EVERY OTHER COACH speaks glowingly of him, likes him, respects him, etc etc. We hear it all the time. Yet NONE of them will play him?? None?? What is that? It just doesn't add up at all.
Really. I would think they would be lining up based on the highly likely based on historical percentage they would win.
 
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If I'm UR, I'm releasing the schedule today. Friday afternoon release, long Labor Day weekend for people to do other things than to see and complain about our pathetic schedule. Friday afternoon bad news dump, incoming???
 
If I'm UR, I'm releasing the schedule today. Friday afternoon release, long Labor Day weekend for people to do other things than to see and complain about our pathetic schedule. Friday afternoon bad news dump, incoming???
This would be the obvious time to release it, probably around 4:05 PM today. With multiple misspellings. Let's see if they can get this right. PQ would be well served to use some of the money he is putting to NIL into a quality control person in the AD (focused on hoops).
 
97, I feel like you're trying to steal my credit for the Friday before Labor Day schedule dump idea (I posted it on August 16, post #482, which you even liked!) Admittedly it was a joke when I posted it, but here we are, sans schedule.

It's to the point of SF having to qualify our potential 2nd best opponent by using the word "hoping" twice in the context that we hope (#1) they both get to a NET 125 range and we hope (#2) that we also get to play them. Nothing like having to pile multiple contingents and variables upon that. We're really squinting here today.

I'm still hopeful there will be a couple decent games. Kool-aid for lunch.
 
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Hey Brooklyn, 97 might have stole it, but it is super obvious none the less. My guess is someone on staff read the board, and they gave it to a staffer to do. Said staffer took the afternoon off and hanging out on the James River.
 
when does the A10 release the in-conference schedule?
those are games we can look forward to.
 
Hey Brooklyn, 97 might have stole it, but it is super obvious none the less. My guess is someone on staff read the board, and they gave it to a staffer to do. Said staffer took the afternoon off and hanging out on the James River.
The printer ran out of ink today, so no schedule can be released at this time.

*credit to GKiller for the original fax machine/paper joke, from which this one is derived.
 
Almost certainly a Q4 game, but they'll hopefully be closer to 200 NET than 300+! 🫠😬
 
Hey Brooklyn, 97 might have stole it, but it is super obvious none the less. My guess is someone on staff read the board, and they gave it to a staffer to do. Said staffer took the afternoon off and hanging out on the James River.
They aren't doing it now because they've read the board. Maybe over the weekend like during the middle of the UVA game would be a good time.
 
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