Scheduling ideas

[SFspidur]

"Permanent" geographic pods are tempting, but it understandably generates concerns over competitive imbalance.

Average NETs for last season:

South (142): UR, VCU, Davidson, GW, Mason
West (156): SLU, Loyola, Dayton, Duquesne, Bona
North (204): UMass, URI, Fordham, La Salle, St. Joe's

 

[urmite]

I think VCU and Davidson should be protected home and home partners with Richmond. I don’t really care much about the other 2.

By George, I think you are on to something...

 

[SFspidur]

VMI game is indeed 11/6.

 

[Wood Hall]

Wow, three teams on that schedule I have never, ever heard of.

 

[SFspidur]

Wow, three teams on that schedule I have never, ever heard of.

TBD should be pretty good this year.

 

[Saint82]

Hoping somebody can help a fan from another school (Siena College). Rumors are that we will be playing you this year at your place.

Any knowledge of that - maybe the 11/18 TBD date?
I have relatives in that area and I would love to take a trip to see that game.

A little tidbit - your new guard Jordan King started as a walk-on for us and had a GREAT freshman year.

Thanks in advance....

 

[Section9.RowD]

Hoping somebody can help a fan from another school (Siena College). Rumors are that we will be playing you this year at your place.

Any knowledge of that - maybe the 11/18 TBD date?
I have relatives in that area and I would love to take a trip to see that game.

A little tidbit - your new guard Jordan King started as a walk-on for us and had a GREAT freshman year.

Thanks in advance....

Hope you are able to make it - SFspidur likely has our best read on our own non-conference schedule and the potential 11/18 game. Thx for the Jordan King review - we are glad he joined us.

 

[Saint82]

Thanks so much! I looked back here & see that it looks like it's part of that Sunshine Slam tournament!! I will be looking for that and hope to make it down!!!
And yes - we were sad to lose Jordan. He was a local kid who went under the radar in HS - no offers but certainly made the best of his chance!

 

[kneepadmckinney]

Looks like we are their trap game before Christendom.

 

[urmite]

Looks like we are their trap game before Christendom.

Well… a conflict with all of Christendom COULD be distracting…

 

[SFspidur]

Playing Florida in Sunrise!




For anyone who needs their memory jogged:

Richmond Downs No. 13 Ranked Florida - University of Richmond Athletics

Senior David Gonzalvez scored 16 points, including a key three-pointer with 1:34 left as Richmond defeated No. 13 ranked Florida in front of 13,258 fans at the BankAtlantic

richmondspiders.com

 

[wr70beh]

Playing Florida in Sunrise!

View embedded media

For anyone who needs their memory jogged:

Richmond Downs No. 13 Ranked Florida - University of Richmond Athletics

Senior David Gonzalvez scored 16 points, including a key three-pointer with 1:34 left as Richmond defeated No. 13 ranked Florida in front of 13,258 fans at the BankAtlantic

richmondspiders.com

Florida finished 74 in KenPom but 9-9 and 16-17.

 

[SFspidur]

The Hovde connection pays off.

 

[GKiller]

The Hovde connection pays off.

Really the whole staff...Carlin Hartman & Todd Golden too

 

[GKiller]

Playing Florida in Sunrise!

View embedded media

For anyone who needs their memory jogged:

Richmond Downs No. 13 Ranked Florida - University of Richmond Athletics

Senior David Gonzalvez scored 16 points, including a key three-pointer with 1:34 left as Richmond defeated No. 13 ranked Florida in front of 13,258 fans at the BankAtlantic

richmondspiders.com

Nice! return of the Orange Bowl and dudes in Orange sports coats. Was there in 09. Hardly any Spiders fans amongst those 13K+ fans that I recall. 13K seems high too, but I guess a bunch could have left after the first game of doubleheader. Ran into team at Ft Lauderdale airport next day - yeah they flew commercial but school was out. think they were a bit stunned to see Richmond fans. May have offered to buy Dan Geriot a hot dog. I was ahead of the times with NIL.

But I recommend for anyone interested. Of course winning really helped. But there is also the Seminole Hard Rock Casino nearby in Hollywood, FL. And this place, likely the best burger and burger venue I've been to, there on Ocean Dr in Hollywood too...

https://le-tub.com/

 

[SFspidur]

 

[GKiller]

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We should cease ever using Spidey or WebstUR or whatever we now call it in promotional materials

 

[SFspidur]

We have had worse versions in the past.

 

[spider23]

Have seen a few places where Florida's portall pull was well thought of. Seem like pretty high hopes this year.

The biggest winners of college basketball's transfer portal so far

The college basketball has taken on a whole new meeting in the new era featured around the transfer portal and NIL. As soon as teams were getting eliminated from their conference tournaments, before the NCAA Tournament even kicked off, players were entering the portal. Meaning, for coaching...

www.aarontorresonline.com

 

[plydogg]

We have had worse versions in the past.

The crowd is on their feet and you look to the sidelines and see this thing staring back at you. Talk about a home court advantage

 

[SFspidur]

Wichita State game is 11/29.

 

[Ferrum Spider]

We have had worse versions in the past.

I think I may be biased, but I prefer late 90s/early 2000s Spidey.

 

[GKiller]

Rothstein thinks going back down to 16 is best…

 

[VT4700]

Rothstein thinks going back down to 16 is best…

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He wants a 15 team league to play a 16 game IC schedule? So, you only play 2 teams twice? Ridiculous. With an 18 game schedule, every A-10 team can play 13 OOC games. That is 195 OOC games. If the top 5 A-10 teams only played 13 Q1 games out of a possible 65 last year, can you really blame an 18 game IC schedule for that? I have said 20 IC games makes more sense than 18 (that would still leave 165 OOC games), so I could not disagree more with him here.

 

[Eight Legger]

Generally, I think Rothstein is an annoying and obnoxious self-important boob. I see what he is getting at here (the league needs more opportunities to get good wins out of conference), but I’m not sure how you achieve that type of league schedule with 15 teams in the league. If we still had 10 or 12, it’s more doable.

 

[Spiders4ever]

Plus, you still need to find teams that are willing to play you.

 

[kneepadmckinney]

Plus, you still need to find teams that are willing to play you.

Agree. It doesn't matter if we have 4 conference games. If the Big 10 and Big 12 and ACC play 20 league games, there's only so much Quad 1 scheduling that can happen, and the big boys aren't really in the business of helping out the MWC, WCC, and A-10.

 

[RichmondNative]

Agree. It doesn't matter if we have 4 conference games. If the Big 10 and Big 12 and ACC play 20 league games, there's only so much Quad 1 scheduling that can happen, and the big boys aren't really in the business of helping out the MWC, WCC, and A-10.

Exactly. It is more likely that the Power Conferences insulate themselves even more so an increase in OOC games is going to do nothing. I suppose one could argue that the A10 should drop a few teams to strengthen its quality, but with all the “parity” in the league that may not be an easy decision. Plus, I still think it is more likely that a couple of the best teams get poached in the next round of realignment, so the A10 may want to hold on to whatever it can.

 

[brooklyn brownstone]

so how many Q1 games did the A10 as a whole play? He's cherrypicking the top 5 and pointing out that only 20% of their OOC games were Q1 (which doesn't seem an absurd % to me!) but if the rest of the league played a similar or better number, then it's fine. If there is steep dropoff, then scheduling needs to step up. I get that the A10 doesn't get in conference Q1 games when the top teams are not elite but that can be fixed.

As we've said for literally decades now, the OOC needs more WINNING across the board, and scheduling concerns go by the wayside. It's the OOC losing that has been anchoring the conference as a whole. Top teams can't lose 4 OOC games, that has to be only 1 or 2. Bottom teams can't be 4-9, they need to be 9-4. Boost the winning % of the conference as a whole and you can game the system like the BE does every year. I did the math a few years back and multiple BE teams had great OOC records against awful OOC schedules, but once conference play started and they got to play Villanova and one or two other elite teams, their SOS were suddenly top 60 after being 250 OOC.

 

[SFspidur]

The entire conference played 30 Q1 games. Of course, the biggest issue was we only won 3 of them, and two of them were conference games: Dayton and Bona over VCU on the road. The only OOC one was SLU at home over Memphis.

 

[spiderman]

if we as a conference won 3 of 30 Q1 games, then we are who we are.
scheduling isn't the issue. A10 teams need to be better.

 

[VT4700]

if we as a conference won 3 of 30 Q1 games, then we are who we are.
scheduling isn't the issue. A10 teams need to be better.

No doubt. That is beyond terrible.

 

[brooklyn brownstone]

so the bottom 10 teams played only 17 Q1 games, wow. And some of those were in conference vs VCU on the road? Awful.

Conference needs to step it up. If Martin at UMass and Archie at Rhody are being picked bottom end and they can't rebuild those programs, the recent coaching hires of retreads could turn into a total disaster. Grant as an in game coach is still suspect (incredible recruiter tho) and Davidson and Loyola have unproven coaches too.

 

[GKiller]

What Rothstein suggests isn’t really practical with the large conferences bc it lends itself to scheduling more league games. The A10 is no different than these super conferences that r bloated & geographically challenged. I’d rather be in a smaller conference with more OOC games. It would probably require the p6 conferences to be smaller too but that’s a lost cause presumably.

In theory I think he’s right a team from A10 makes the best case with OOC so u want more games not less. In practice hard to do with size of conferences & many going to 20 IC games. But I hope we hold the line at 18. We underperform historically in A10 we don’t want more of those games in a trending down league imo. I’m not always satisfied w strength of our OOC schedules I like them more difficult personally but we do a decent job there in comparison to rest of A10. Our big struggle seems to be getting into the stronger OOC tourneys where u get 3 neutral game shots at pretty good teams.

 

[SFspidur]

21 OOC Q1 games by order of finish:

VCU (2): at Memphis, vs St. Mary's (NCAA)
Dayton (2): vs. NC State, at Virginia Tech
Fordham (1): at Arkansas
SLU (4): Memphis, vs Maryland, at Auburn, at Iona
Mason (1): at Auburn
Duquesne (1): at Kentucky
GW (0)
Davidson (2): at Charleston, vs Purdue
Bona (0)
St. Joe's (1): vs Houston
La Salle (2): at Villanova, at Cincinnati
Richmond (1): at Charleston
UMass (1): vs North Texas
URI (1): vs Kansas State
Loyola (2): vs Boise State, vs Texas A&M

 

[spiderman]

if we went 1-20 in OOC Q1 games, seems the answer is to play less of them, not more!

 

[GKiller]

if we went 1-20 in OOC Q1 games, seems the answer is to play less of them, not more!

That's a 1 year abysmal performance but too small a sample size. Going 0-1 & saying no more Q1 doesn't make sense. It might be a viable strategy for some lower A10 teams, but I would never recommend it for us.

 

[SFspidur]

JOC with a scheduling footnote in Quinn Ireland article. Mentions we’re hosting Lafayette (awkward for Quinn?) and that we have two more games to fill, but he doesn't have the Queens game reported by Rocco or the Siena campus game for Sunshine Slam. So by my count we're now complete...just need a few dates.

11/8 VMI
11/11 Siena (Sunshine Slam campus game)
11/20 and 11/21 Sunshine Slam (two out of Colorado, UNLV, Florida St.)
11//25 Queens
11/29 at Wichita State
12/6 at Northern Iowa
12/9 vs. Florida (Sunrise)
12/16 Charlotte
12/21 Buffalo

TBD at Boston College
TBD W&M
TBD Lafayette

Spider Neal Quinn, with Irish roots, playing for Irish National Team

Neal Quinn is playing for the Irish National Team during July and early August competition in Europe, in a set of FIBA EuroBasket 2025 pre-qualifier games.

richmond.com

 

[Eight Legger]

Looks like a solid 6-7 record heading into conference play.

 

[Long Island Spiders]

JOC with a scheduling footnote in Quinn Ireland article. Mentions we’re hosting Lafayette (awkward for Quinn?) and that we have two more games to fill, but he doesn't have the Queens game reported by Rocco or the Siena campus game for Sunshine Slam. So by my count we're now complete...just need a few dates.

11/8 VMI
11/11 Siena (Sunshine Slam campus game)
11/20 and 11/21 Sunshine Slam (two out of Colorado, UNLV, Florida St.)
11//25 Queens
11/29 at Wichita State
12/6 at Northern Iowa
12/9 vs. Florida (Sunrise)
12/16 Charlotte
12/21 Buffalo

TBD at Boston College
TBD W&M
TBD Lafayette

Spider Neal Quinn, with Irish roots, playing for Irish National Team

Neal Quinn is playing for the Irish National Team during July and early August competition in Europe, in a set of FIBA EuroBasket 2025 pre-qualifier games.

richmond.com

I like this schedule so much more than last year!

When do we find out our 11/20 opponent?