Men's Basketball Schedule Look Ahead

So, let's look ahead at the men's basketball schedule.

As has been the trend, BG is playing a very soft pre-season schedule.  In the first Huger years, BG played a schedule ranked in the 180s and last year was in the low 200s.

Kenpom predicts BG will go 16-14.  Let's see how it breaks down.

First, BG plays 2 non-D1 games....Tiffin and Findlay.  Findlay is marked as a win but that team is capable of beating us.  Anyway, that's 2.

BG plays one legit power program in St. John's, in New York.  BG also plays @VCU, an A-10 program that is typically good but is picked to finish in the middle of the conference.

So that's 4.  There's 18 MAC games.

Let's look at the remaining 8.

Based on kenpom early rankings, the best team among those remaining 8 that BG will face is Hartford, #197, on the road. 

The others?

Hampton 240
Drexel 293
Cleveland State 300
Green Bay 257
Western Carolina 322
TN-Martin 278
North Carolina Central 290

There are 353 teams playing D1 basketball.

That's doesn't mean they are all awful.  North Carolina Central is expected to finish 2nd in the MEAC.  (They have an all-MEAC C who transferred away from Kent).

Anyway, it is very possible BG enters MAC play 9-3 or 8-4.  Anything else is a big sign of trouble.  Even with that record, it will be worth the time of BG fans to manage expectations based on the quality of the opposition.

You'd like to see BG end up over .500 in MAC play, if we're going to show progress this year. 

At home, BG plays the 5 East games plus Ball State, WMU, Toledo and CMU.  Essentially, that means that with cross-over home games, Ball State and Toledo, and Buffalo,  (3 of the top 4 teams in the MAC) will play at the Stroh.

So let's say BG goes 6-3 at home.  Honestly, given our past track record, 5 wins is more likely, but let's say BG goes 6-3.  If we get geared up for Toledo, than 6 is way more likely.

Away are the East games, plus WMU, EMU, CMU and NIU.  You're going to need to win four of those to get to 10 wins.

Just to play that out, you might see it being Akron, NIU, WMU and CMU.  Or Miami.

If BG can do that they'd end the regular season at 19-11.  From what we have seen to date, that seems like a less than 50% probability to me.  Kenpom has us 16-14 and 8-10.  As always at this time of year, I get some orange colored glasses on and I can see us being better than I expect.  Having said that, I've been consistently disappointed.  We have never really commanded the home floor and have precious few big wins to show for it.

We need to break out of that.  It can be done.  Whether we have the pieces here to do it remains to be seen.