Less cupcakes in Felton's future?
It looks like Felton may be on the verge of making progress in the scheduling area. At the Macon Bulldog Club meeting, Felton said:
"the upcoming non-conference schedule includes a visit from Wisconsin - which he called a Final Four contender - and he's hoping to land Arizona."Many Dawg fans (particularly this one) have been very critical of Felton's scheduling. While I fully realize that we didn't have the talent to beat Duke, Florida and UConn, we did have the talent to avoid scheduling sub-RPI 250 teams like Savannah State, Fordham and Eastern Kentucky.
And, as was reported on the Rivals hoops board by Groo, we were 5-2 vs. NIT teams last year. So we can play competitively with the mid-tier teams.
I like the possible addition of Wisconsin and 'Zona. It might a bit too ambitious but at this point I'd rather him sway too far in that direction that the way he's gone in the past. Interesting match-ups pre-season are a GREAT way to re-energize a fan base that where apathy has risen to its highest levels in the past 17 years that I've been following the program.
Felton points towards a better schedule
The rumors don't stop with Wisconsin and Arizona. MemphisDog over on the Rivals b-ball board does a better job than anyone of sniffing out the latest hoops scheduling rumors. The latest he's hearing UGA vs. Gonzaga in Athens this coming season. I try to keep the rumors to a minimum, but MemphisDog's track record is ridiculously good. Plus, the Gonzaga fans had been hinting at this for a while.
So if everything came together that would make a schedule that looked something like this:
Western Kentucky -- Home (Year 3 of the contract)
Clemson -- Away (Year 4 of the deal)
Georgia Tech -- Away
Gonzaga -- Home
Wisconsin -- Home
Arizona -- TBD
We'll post more if more gets leaked.
The good news. He'll be gone next year.
I'm in such a good mood about this that I'm going to let Felton's comment about scheduling tougher last year than the year before go.
pwd
5 comments:
Boy, you really are in a good mood, pwd.
I guess all anyone like me, who has been saying DF knows what he's doing can say is: this is tremendous news because DF knows what he's doing.
I have to confess though, that I wonder of we aren't getting ahead of ourselves, and might have been better off focusing on NIT teams than NCAA teams.
But, if he's right and we can pull it off, that would be great. Obviously he's putting a lot of stock in the two new big guys. If they can play, they can help a lot.
Alabama has played a fairly tough out of conference schedule the past several years in basketball and it's been great eventhough you're guaranteed a few losses here and there.
I was much happier to see us play the likes of NC State, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Temple, Oklahoma, Memphis, etc. than to just beat up on the likes of Birmingham Southern and Alabama State.
It helps with recruiting too. Kids definately want to play "name" teams as opposed to directional schools.
I'm sure Mark Gottfried got that idea from a 22 win season that went unrewarded while a 16 win UGA team with the nation's toughest schedule got to go dancing.
You and I were lock step in thinking on this Paul, both willing to let the "we scheduled much tougher" comment, something proven grossly false, go by the wayside because of the idea of a tougher slate on the way. Get that grouping to make for the "marquee" matchups, then fill the rest of the schedule out with solid mid majors and lower major teams (like Clemson, Iowa St, Oregon, Miami, St John's, Rutgers, et al), and I'll be happy.
Now, I would like to take this moment to remind those of my past persona as a complete "pessimist and Felton hater" by saying, I'd like to wait and see the Arizona matchup--or simply tougher overall schedule--materialize, and also I'd like to see a schedule completely lacking in the aforementioned rpi-250+ teams like Fordham, E Kentucky, and Sav St, then I'll rejoice.
Nice start, great news (even better the stuff from Memphis), but I'm hoping to see this "tougher" schedule actually come to fruition this winter.
Stick,
I think we might be overshooting it just as you said.
But what the hell. Let's see how good we really are so that we know what to fix.
Guys, we played Eastern Kentucky because they were part of the Paradise Jam Tournament. We didn't selectively schedule them.
SouthBark
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