How much $ does it take to buy a quality home game?

[CrazyCajun]

My list of schools who will not play us is info I received from various
staff members in different conversations. Mike Murphy is the main source and I believe him. If you do not feel free to give him a call and question him further.

And he has no reasoning? Like, they won't play us because ______. Something just doesn't add up. Is it just the money or do they actually refuse to play us no matter what?

[ManAboutTown]

Who are some of the recognizable names that you believe would accept 100 grand to come here? Maybe there is one that would draw well enough to offset the cost of that payment. Remember most schools in the major conferences do not go on the road to mid majors as a matter of policy. Still there may be some others willing to do it as you stated. I was surprised to hear Murray State was not willing to play home and home. Would a school like that draw well enough to warrant a100 grand payment ?

Without doing a ton of research on the matter, I'd go after teams like Evansville, N Iowa, Siena, Houston, SMU, Southern Miss, Middle, Marshall, College of Charleston, Duquesne, Seton Hall, All of the Jesuit schools, UCF, Fla Gulf Coast, South Florida, Texas Tech, Pacific, St. Mary's, Belmont, Iona, Wichita St, Tulsa, San Diego St, Nevada to name a few.

[ManAboutTown]

And he has no reasoning? Like, they won't play us because ______. Something just doesn't add up. Is it just the money or do they actually refuse to play us no matter what?

This is what I want to know. Why don't people want to play us? If it makes sense for both schools, there is more to the story..

[Cajunsmike]

And he has no reasoning? Like, they won't play us because ______. Something just doesn't add up. Is it just the money or do they actually refuse to play us no matter what?

They do not want to play us because they believe a loss will negatively impact them in recruiting. Remember we are talking about home and home here. We may need to go out of the area for home and home as those schools won't worry as much about that. That increases travel costs however. We have played two schools from Pittsburgh and one from Detroit in the recent past in home and home deals for example.

[CrazyCajun]

They do not want to play us because they believe a loss will negatively impact them in recruiting. Remember we are talking about home and home here. We may need to go out of the area for home and home as those schools won't worry as much about that. That increases travel costs however. We have played two schools from Pittsburgh and one from Detroit in the recent past in home and home deals for example.

I'm not as concerned about increasing attendance as much as I am about watching us play teams that I could put a team together and beat on an afternoon at Bourgois hall. I hope this year was a total anomaly but this home schedule was absolutely horrible. Accomplished nothing, those teams aren't even slightly competitive..they obviously didn't help prepare us for the road competition. I'm ok with a warmup game, I was even ok with a tuneup after the long break but an almost an entire home OOC schedule equivalent to high school teams does nothing to make us better. If we are truly only playing for March then we should schedule as tough as possible.

[CajunEXPRESS]

I'll never be on board with non 1A games in the regular season. Sometimes you have to get out of the money box. Folks we're talking one more money game. Use that money to help buy a decent 1A game. Problem solved.

[BirdofParadise]

There is a difference in playing home and home and bringing in a guarantee. And, to an extent I think that fact is being clouded here based on some of the comments I see.

First of all, UL isn't going to pay $100k to buy anyone. UCLA and Kansas don't pay that kind of money.

The teams you CAN get to come to the Dome for a GUARANTEE are probably limited to the SWAC, SLC and maybe Atlantic Sun and MEAC. No one else is coming for a guarantee.

In order to play home and home non conference as we are doing with Tech, McNeese and next year, Pepperdine,

1. Someone has to agree to play you non conference home and home.
2. The dates need to work out (more on that in a minute)
3. You have do come to an agreement when the series will start...home or road. (The possibility of playing twice in the same season exists, but doesn't happen often.) And, obviously, both coaches are trying to balance their home and away schedule..
4. Because of budget, it's preferable the home and home be against a team that you can bus to (this has changed in the last few years because of (more) budget cuts.) That's not in stone.
5. In a perfect world, your home plus neutral site games is greater than or equal to your pure road games. (Balancing the schedule.)

Now, let me address the date situation and we really don't talk about this a lot.

UL is the only school in the Sun Belt and the only one in Louisiana that I can think of that doesn't have total control over their playing dates. Because the Cajundome is a multi=purpose facility, there are only so many dates available. Those dates have to be turned into the Dome well ahead of time and once they are, there's no changing them because the Dome is going to schedule other events. That makes matching up dates with potential opponents even harder and makes it harder to get home games in non conference. Of course, we all know what happened last year with the unavailability of the Cajundome for the CIT.

All of that goes into scheduling.

Most teams will play home and home if they believe they have a reasonable chance of winning at your place. Marlin does have a reputation of being a good coach and that does, in part, make it tougher. Schools in leagues considered better than the Sun Belt really don't want to take a loss against a Sun Belt School, especially in the power six (I add the Big East).

Teams not wanting to play us at the Cajundome isn't new. Jessie had a helluva time trying to get non conference home games as well.

Marty's philosophy was he would play anyone who was willing to return the visit. Most of those series started on the road. Of course, Marty was able to buy games back then as well.

[CajunRebel]

Hopefully BOP can come in with the real stats here, but it seems like every OOC team we've played this year had insanely good home records over the past few years. Like 30-1 type records. In fact, it seems like damn near every basketball team you look at has insanely good home records. Yes, those teams were all really good. And yes, playing at home has always been a huge advantage in college basketball. But I promise all these teams didn't get those records by scheduling great, competitive basketball teams.

These weak OOC Home schedules are obviously a huge problem in college basketball. It doesn't surprise me at all that no one wants to play us home/home. I know Marlin hasn't achieved a lot of the goals we wanted to see, but on average, Coach Marlin puts good teams on the court. Teams that would be a threat to any decent mid major program. It seems like in 2015 coaches are going out of their way to avoid that sort of matchup.

[BirdofParadise]

Hopefully BOP can come in with the real stats here, but it seems like every OOC team we've played this year had insanely good home records over the past few years. Like 30-1 type records. In fact, it seems like damn near every basketball team you look at has insanely good home records. Yes, those teams were all really good. And yes, playing at home has always been a huge advantage in college basketball. But I promise all these teams didn't get those records by scheduling great, competitive basketball teams.

These weak OOC Home schedules are obviously a huge problem in college basketball. It doesn't surprise me at all that no one wants to play us home/home. I know Marlin hasn't achieved a lot of the goals we wanted to see, but on average, Coach Marlin puts good teams on the court. Teams that would be a threat to any decent mid major program. It seems like in 2015 coaches are going out of their way to avoid that sort of matchup.

I don't know what happened last week, but until then, our non conference road opponents were 54-5 combined at home this year.

[CajunRebel]

I don't know what happened last week, but until then, our non conference road opponents were 54-5 combined at home this year.

Thanks.