Last year we had the inexplicable loss at home to CMU - not having that (assuming we avoid a similar type of loss) would put Michigan a step ahead of last year’s nonconf resume.
Step ahead of last year is still not in the tournament before the BTT. Certainly not enough to go from the bubble to a 6 seed with 2 wins (one of which might not even be valuable depending on how the bracket works out).
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Just brutal. Warde Manuel is absolutely asleep at the wheel! The crowd at Crisler is trash (season ticket holder here) but its in no small part b/c the AD treats us like gar-bage! (also this year’s football non-con schedule is trash as well. who cares about the NCAA tourney or CFB Playoff if the regular season is boring?!)
Warde doesn’t make the basketball schedule, FWIW.
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Coaches are very involved in the scheduling of non-conference games.
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He doesn’t make it, but he has influence over the AD, revenue, brand, fan support, etc.
The problem is that the home court/field experience and value is low on the list of priorities. TV money, donors, making the playoffs, etc are what matters. Scheduling good home games and improving the fan experience doesn’t matter for those priorities.
Optimizing NCAA Tournament profile should be the non-conference scheduling goal for CBB. Not sure I’d call it the playoffs 
Michigan actually did a pretty good job of it this year with tough buy games.
I get that the lack of home games (and increase in neutral site games) is frustrating to fans but between the conference schedule going to 20 games, the loss of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, and the general trends of the sport to play more neutral games, it is going to be tough to have crazy non-conference schedules.
Just to put the numbers into perspective a bit… Michigan plays 11 non-conference games. Two of those are on the road (one by league contract, one by existing contract coming due), 3 are the in the Bahamas and one is against a high-major team in Charlotte.
That’s probably 6 high major games, all away from home. Penciling in another high-major game at home is really hard to do (and would probably be detrimental to the team).
Dylan being picky again. I said playoffs as a generic term to cover football and basketball.
This is about hoops, though. From what I understand, athletic departments are generally more involved in football non-conference scheduling.
College basketball coaches make their schedules. You can provide feedback in a job review, or contract bonuses for not scheduling shitty teams, but part of the job of a basketball head coach is to make the schedule.
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And from what I’ve heard, almost all of the non-big name games are actually facilitated by the DOBOs.
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Correct, that’s a huge part of their jobs. There are also services that can help match people up, suggest smart scheduling, etc.
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Hearing Michigan will most likely be playing Northwood for their exhibition. not official yet
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There ya go:
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Long way til December but it does feel like Oregon has been the king of lingering injuries in CBB lately.
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