It’s even more odd to say when we haven’t played Carolina Duke or Nova once in Moon’s 21 years. Dude we never played them anyway. But other a10 teams have & r playing them.
2025-2026 Non Conference Schedule
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It’s even more odd to say when we haven’t played Carolina Duke or Nova once in Moon’s 21 years. Dude we never played them anyway. But other a10 teams have & r playing them.
Nope. They r not trying for enough true road p5 games. Fact. When we can’t secure good home or neutral ones that is the only way to do it. We’ll probably have 1 token one. But we should have 4 true road vs p5. Load up. It would be a lot better than getting into the dumbass H&H with mid & low majors that don’t help us & most likely just give us an L on the road anyway.
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Not that it is a giant improvement, but pretty sure he has ties to Princeton and Air Force.
Must have burned some bridges.
Must have burned some bridges.
It’s not complete. I think we’ll end up with a token 1 p5. But weeks ago I said get ready for the cupcake home games we’d yet to announce & then here comes Citadel and Southern VA.
Philly Bob complimenting the schedule and in same breath saying it’s not a ncaa schedule & u could go 13-0 and not be in ncaa conversation. Hello McFly. Think McFly.
Genuine excitement of what we could be & who’d we play when moved to A10. Now to this. Sensible boring regional CAA no upside.
So right now this is our tentative non-conference schedule:
Southern VA (D3)
William & Mary
ODU
So Illinois
Citadel
VMI
@ ECU
@ Elon
@ Belmont
Neutral (2/3): Furman, Illinois State, Charlotte
That is 11/13 games. This schedule is officially really bad no matter what the last 2 games are. Very disappointing to go 2 years in a row with a terrible schedule.
Southern VA (D3)
William & Mary
ODU
So Illinois
Citadel
VMI
@ ECU
@ Elon
@ Belmont
Neutral (2/3): Furman, Illinois State, Charlotte
That is 11/13 games. This schedule is officially really bad no matter what the last 2 games are. Very disappointing to go 2 years in a row with a terrible schedule.
I feel like in the past the primary scheduling duty gets rotated among assistants. Especially in today's environment you need the HC knocking on doors, exploiting contacts and friends to wrangle games. Moon just doesn't seem willing to do it. Or if he does not very strong at it.
Can D’Entremont put in a good word for us with W&L? Maybe they, VMI, and SVU can share a bus and make a weekend out of it.
Haven't visited here for awhile but all I can say is YIKES! Have to see how OOC plays out (assuming 2 more opponents) but wondering how low it will be ranked. They will save on jet fuel.
And again if anybody remembers quite ahile back was told Mooney indeed goes to Final Four festivities when I questioned that. Well even disregard that, but after 20+ years coaching there are no connections to pick up the phone and get a few games? Unfathomable + sad!
Haha. it is the NCAA Evaluation Tool but never heard anyone not call it "NET" either.
Maybe Moon pronounces the NIT as "knit". he does the opposite. NET is N-E-T and the N.I.T is knit. we r scheduling for the mid major KNIT anyway - if all those power schools don't collude and stay in!
Yep, another not to be named mid major I follow laments the difficulty in scheduling, but does advise that he has to hound his coaching friends to get games, and make calls. And he is 65. Culture of comfort says you get extensions and time, so if another down year - NEXT season after we will be all in.
It's not just majors we aren't getting. Why can't we get good mid majors? We can't get a game with MVC teams like Drake ( 56 NET last year), Bradley (80), or UNI (93)? No chance at any Mountain West teams? Or some of the better top 100 NET teams last year from other conferences like Liberty, High Point, or Lipscomb?
we thought we could be decent last year. Mooney didn't think so. he scheduled weakly ... and we still lost.
we think we could be decent this year. from the schedule ... it looks like Mooney isn't so confident.
of maybe he's sick of reading about his 55% winning percentage and is trying to push it to 56%.
we think we could be decent this year. from the schedule ... it looks like Mooney isn't so confident.
of maybe he's sick of reading about his 55% winning percentage and is trying to push it to 56%.
I don't get it. he has the best job security in the country. he literally got another extension to put him out 5 years. when he had 3 left already & was coming off a losing season followed by a season tanked by 3 straight losses incl blowout loss in NIT.
in reality he has no reason to schedule weak. especially when we tend to drop those easier OOC games anyway. Take hard games that everyone likes, which actually offer odds to win close enough to the middling ones, but give you so much better upside.
honestly I feel the school and staff care more about the longevity and legacy of Mooney than they do elevating the program. so I guess try to get to 17 wins and everyone nationally thinks u r a coaching savant. idk it's bizarre.
At this point, it does look intentional and there is no good reason to justify it. Doesn't matter how good or bad we might be. Our schedule is inexcusable for the 2nd year in a row. I have never been this disappointed in our basketball.program.
Pretty disappointing for sure. There are enough leagues roughly at our level (MWC, MVC, Ivy, WCC, American, SoCon) that you'd think the coaching staffs from those 64 teams plus our 14 would just start a group chat and figure out some games. It looks like we figured out exactly two from that group (Elon and ECU).
If intentional, which may be the case now, why do you think we went on such an extreme to the other end? I get not wanting to necessarily schedule the hardest one possible, but surely there’s got to be a medium between a very strong schedule and the schedule we have now.
Assume it still exists, there used to be a website available to Coaches. They need a game or were offering a game and dates available.
It is absolutely intentional. Mooney knows when we're not good, and he schedules for wins.
Many coaches (especially mid-majors) do it to some degree, scheduling extra tough in years where you think you have a good shot at an at-large to try to get some more resume-boosting wins, and backing off a bit for down years, but for a program at the level we claim to be at, there needs to be a floor significantly higher than we're seeing right now.
If we're gonna go 3–8 against a crappy OOC schedule like we did last year, might as well get some better games on the schedule. Going 2–9 or 1–10 ain't that much different, and maybe we surprise everyone and turn out better than expected!
Many coaches (especially mid-majors) do it to some degree, scheduling extra tough in years where you think you have a good shot at an at-large to try to get some more resume-boosting wins, and backing off a bit for down years, but for a program at the level we claim to be at, there needs to be a floor significantly higher than we're seeing right now.
If we're gonna go 3–8 against a crappy OOC schedule like we did last year, might as well get some better games on the schedule. Going 2–9 or 1–10 ain't that much different, and maybe we surprise everyone and turn out better than expected!
You forgot VMI and The Citadel, teams that finished 7th and and 10th (last) in the SoCon. The SoCon was pretty good last year and any of the top 6 teams ( NETs from 115 to 148) would have been good games (some likely Q2 if away), but we go with teams that finished with NETs of 298 and 362. It's beyond pathetic. And, of course the 2 teams you mentioned finished T9 and 6th in their conferences. Unreal.
What message does it send to your team? Scheule hard, I believe in you, schedule weak, I don't thnk we're going to be very good.
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Agree 100%..it sends a terrible message, and, also, I would think every player would rather play a good team than a garbage one.
What message does it send to the loyal fans? The home non conference schedule is arguably worse than last season unless you’re an alum of Southern Illinois!
No respect whatsoever for season ticket holders outside of the A-10 home games.
All of this from a historic flagship program that seems to have run into a ditch.
Rather than hear Coach Mooney complain about how hard it is to schedule again, I’d like to hear what we are doing differently to overcome the challenge like most of our A-10 peers have.
Go Spiders!
What’s very concerning about this new “scheduling philosophy” we have, is what’s preventing it from becoming an every year thing now? With NIL/transfer portal now I anticipate we will be having at least 3 new transfers a year. So are we going to schedule timidly because we don’t have confidence in our players and team? I know we’ve had discussions and disagreements on how hard to schedule OOC, but this is an extreme in the opposite direction. Not good.
It was still arguably the most interesting/anticipated game of the season. I care about that stuff.
Now you are asking the right questions. The track record shows this tendency although many disputed the trend when it was mentioned last year.
As @mojo-spider pointed out, it is slap in the face to the season ticket holders as well and I will be getting off that train this season. Yes I still plan on coming to some games, but I want to see at least decent mid-major games. If I was interested in DIII, I would go to Randolph Macon games right down the road.
Go Spiders!
