uniftw wrote:Is scheduling hard? I mean, it's not that it's easy. However, when WSU and CU were in the MVC they didn't have issues scheduling. UNI doesn't have issues scheduling.
My guess is that it's schools not willing to actually really schedule up. More of a "See, we are trying but we can't get a top 30 school to come to us so we are just going to give up".
I'd say scheduling is pretty difficult at least imo.
What's difficult is getting return games against Power Conference/Big East & good A10 schools (even AAC schools). Many of the P5/BE schools would rather just buy home games and lower their risk of having to play TRUE away games in another schools arena, especially when the mid-major school is projected to be pretty good. Look at what NC State just did to Loyola. They took the 1st home game and the Keats took the cowards way out by not playing on the road.
I know at least with Valpo we've struggle to get Power 5/Big East & even good A10 schools to play us at our arena. We got Rhode Island to do a Home-&-Home and we beat them last year. We've been able to get plenty of good road games Kentucky, Oregon, Oregon St, Purdue, Northwestern, etc over the years, but the series are are much more difficult to land especially when your team is projected to be pretty good.
I even know certain MVC schools that refused H-&-H series with Valpo the 6-7 years... not going to name names but its tough and there is a bit of a Conference pecking order. The Big East has more leverage then the A10 and good A10 teams have more leverage then MVC teams and the MVC has more leverage then the Horizon.
I am very impressed specifically with how UNI has been able to schedule. Jacobson has definitely establish some nice relationships among coaching circles which have helped them.
