I would love to see Iowa State to play in Maui Invitational and/or CBE classic.
I went out to Maui last year. It's a blast. The arena seats like 2500 so you can see and hear everything from every seat. You see all the players hanging out on the beach all week. And it's early in the season, and it's Hawaii, so even if your team loses, you get over it, grab a fruity rum drink and head to the beach. If ISU is ever involved - C'mon, Jamie, show us what you're worth - I'd recommend everyone here to go.
Screw Allen Fieldhouse...The Lahaina Civic Center is the best place to watch a college basketball game.
Try "Strength of Schedule"--which is also why we need to schedule better than this.i just don't see any programs of significance ever wanting to schedule us - there's nothing in it for them. no tv, no recruiting footprint, no "credit" if they win. every high major coach knows his fans will crush him for losing to iowa state.
i bet john belein is "thrilled" bringing his michigan team to hilton to face us with 4+ players from michigan and fred/corn recruiting all over his home state.
Comparing last year's non-conference schedule to this year's, using KenPom's pythag rankings from last season, it is clear that this season's schedule is worse, unless many teams on this year's schedule are a lot better than last year.
View attachment 15619
A big reason for this, as you can see, is that we went incredibly cheap for the guarantee games this season, inviting some of the worst teams available in the country to play at Hilton, which will do nothing but drag our SOS down from the back-end, even if the top-end games are more-or-less equal.
There's three games - perhaps four if Iowa is good; I think we all have our doubts - on the non-conference schedule that can help us with the selection committee, the two Vegas games and against BYU, all played within eight days at the end of November. Any other non-conference game won't have a positive effect for the selection committee. So how are we preparing for that crucial three-game non-conference stretch? By playing Southern, Alabama A&M, Campbell, and North Carolina A&T at home.
If we really want to invest in our basketball program, we can't continue to go this cheap with non-conference scheduling.
Can you really call it a tournament when even if you lose to a team in the preliminary game, you still advance to semis. That happened when Gonzaga lost to SD State two years ago in a "tournament".the reason we are "preparing" against weak competition before the vegas games is because those teams are in the tournament - we have to play them, that's how those tourneys work.
So how does scheduling work for basketball? I always assumed that it was like football: you plan your games a few years in advance. Jason King makes it sound like you plan your schedule at the beginning of each season, or at least on a much shorter time frame.