As we reported a few minutes ago, the Basketball team released its schedule today. A quick look at some of the games of note and tidbits. (RPI info in the next post)
Tidbits:
- Non-Conference Home Games of Note -- Virginia Tech (Dec. 9th) and Missouri (Jan 3rd) are outstanding home games. If we don't advance to New York City in the pre-season NIT, we'll also likely get UAB and/or Davidson (Stephen Curry's Wildcats) in Athens as part of the 3rd and 4th round PNIT games.
- Pre-Season NIT - This is only Georgia's third appearance in this prestigious tourney. Our last run was in 1998. I think getting past Purdue in West Layfette will be TOUGH. But if they do make it past them, they could face teams like Arizona, Oklahoma, and/or Boston College. If that happens (which will be tough with our slated guard play), it's a schedule for the ages.
- Top 100 RPI Teams (OCC) - More details on this shortly, but I think VT, Missouri, UAB/Davidson, WKU, Georgia Tech, Purdue and Illinois are all strong candidates to finish the year with an RPI over 100, and I'd expect several of those teams to finish with an RPI north of 50. To play 7 teams with an RPI in the 100s non-conference is very uncommon.
Last year in the SEC, Tennessee and Vandy were the only teams to play seven RPI top 100 non-conference opponents. Most SEC schools only play about 4 non-conference teams with RPIs that high. When you look at the Top 10 overall strength of schedule teams in the country from last year, most of them only played 6-7 teams non-conference with RPIs north of 100. - PNIT 3rd and 4th Round Tickets -- I was told a few weeks ago that the PNIT games would be included in the Season Ticket package from UGA. If they go unused, season ticket holders will get a refund. If they are used, we should get at least one more interesting game at home.
- Missouri Game -- The Missouri home game is scheduled for Jan. 3rd at 4:00 pm. The good news is that there are no BCS Bowl games scheduled for that Saturday. The bad news is that Students won't be in town, and the Sugar Bowl is on Jan. 2nd. Solution: The football team will just need to play for the national title on Jan. 8th and free up everyone's schedule.
- Virginia Tech Game -- UGA vs. VT is scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 9th at 7:30 pm. FINALLY, a quality non-conference home game with students in town. Exams start on Dec. 12th, so the students should be able to make this one in quality numbers.
- Illinois Game -- Scheduled for Dec. 6th in Chicago, and the time is TBA. This is the same day as the SEC Title game. Hopefully, the TV Networks will work with us so that tip-off conflicts as little as possible with the event that ideally all UGA fans will be watching that day.
- No Friday Night Games Before Football Games -- In Felton's defense, there is only one home football game from Oct. 18th-Nov. 29th. And we couldn't book a home game for Nov. 28th because of the PNIT schedule. This was completely unavoidable.
- Three SEC Games on Football Recruiting Weekends -- We get Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi State in consecutive weekends for televised home games during the peak season for football recruiting.
- Weekend SEC Home Games -- We got 5 SEC weekend home games and only three Wednesday night match-ups. Usually, more weekend games boost attendance, revenue and home court advantage. On the downside, only one of those games is a true weekend night game (MSU), and two of them are noon starts. That's a little weird, but we have to take TV whenever we can get it.
- Georgia Tech Game -- The Tech road game is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 6th. It also doesn't conflict with any BCS Bowl Games. Not that Tech fans care, but it matters to UGA fans. Classes start in Athens two days later. I'm not sure when classes start at GT.
- Televised Games -- We already have eight SEC games games scheduled for TV. Hopefully, we can land a few more. Non-conference games against Missouri, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Virginia Tech and Purdue will all logically be televised as well.
PWD
6 comments:
Formatting got shot to hell on my RPI analysis post. I'll take some time to rebuild that. But I'll get it tonight.
Great analysis of a really good (probably too good, post Billy-Humphrey-era) schedule.
Memphisdog may be able to dig out some games from the abyss, but that is about the best analysis of a basketball schedule I've ever seen.
Great work Paul.
It is a pretty good schedule, and I think the best Felton has had. I still wish we'd get out those super bad teams (two Atlantic Sun bottom feeders with Kennesaw and SC-Upstate, Presbyterian is relatively new to D1 same as Upstate. In bottom feeder coaching news, TexA&M-CC is led by former Miami head coach Perry Clark, and Wofford just added Jay McAuley as an assistant.
Good scheduling job by Felton, but I don't like the matchup timing for the Mizzou game. However, anything is better than the poor scheduling for the Wisconsin game two years ago. We had more Wisconsin fans there at Stegeman because they were on their way to Capital One Bowl. I like the choice of Virginia Tech on the schedule so that Woodbury could play against a team from his home state, I'm surprised though that the game was scheduled as a home game. Felton has created an interesting tradition for his out of state players that I hope he keeps up.
Benjamin, Check out Paul's RPI analysis. We only have 2 sub 300 RPI's (based on a 4 yr avg) and only 3 in the 200's. We'll easily play 5-7 non-league games against top 100's.
This schedule is almost as good as it gets.
It's almost Harrickesque.
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