Louisiana Officially Opens Men's Basketball Practice

[VObserver]

He can call you a snowflake.

He can call me whatever he wants. I still won't believe the company line that we can't get good schools to come here.

[CajunRebel]

No, but we COULD negotiate home and home deals with better schools. Nothing you can say will make me believe that nobody good will do that.

Name one. Go ahead. Name a good school within driving distance that wants to do a home and home with us.

Keep in mind that of the 4 top RPI schools in our region (~5 hour radius,) we have 2 of them (UNO, La Tech) on our schedule. The third school is Houston who won't play us, and we are the fourth school.

All the other schools are garbage. All that's left is Rice, who is kinda decent but also won't play us, and all the other Southland and SWAC schools. That's it. Even LSU was 198.

This year we are playing Ole Miss, Iowa, Clemson, Wyoming/South Dakota St., and La Tech. This will be the best RPI OOC schedule we've had in decades.

[CajunRebel]

He can call you a snowflake.

No, I only call people snowflakes when they deserve it.

[Just1More]

No, I only call people snowflakes when they deserve it.

I melt you.

[VObserver]

Name one. Go ahead. Name a good school within driving distance that wants to do a home and home with us.

Keep in mind that of the 4 top RPI schools in our region (~5 hour radius,) we have 2 of them (UNO, La Tech) on our schedule. The third school is Houston who won't play us, and we are the fourth school.

All the other schools are garbage. All that's left is Rice, who is kinda decent but also won't play us, and all the other Southland and SWAC schools. That's it. Even LSU was 198.

This year we are playing Ole Miss, Iowa, Clemson, Wyoming/South Dakota St., and La Tech. This will be the best RPI OOC schedule we've had in decades.

Who says we have to stay within 5 hours? Of the road games you list only Tech is within 5 hours.

[CajunRebel]

Who says we have to stay within 5 hours? Of the road games you list only Tech is within 5 hours.

Right, we are getting paid to travel to Ole Miss and Clemson, and the rest are in a neutral site tournament like we try to play in every year. None of these are home/home. If you want good teams to come to Lafayette you have to find home/home games. Mid major teams rarely schedule home/home games with teams farther than a few hours away. It costs too much money and it makes kids miss too many classes.

So I’ll ask you again. Who would you schedule?

[VObserver]

Texas Southern is better than any team on our home schedule. Use a little imagination. Cut a deal with Tech and New Mexico State and UNM for a home and home arrangement where us and Tech go to New Mexico and play 2 and they come to Louisiana and play 2 the next year. Better yet, do both of those every year. All four schools benefit, and travel costs are cut nearly in half. I can think of many more ways to improve the home schedule. It just takes a little out of the box thinking and relationship building.

How about working a similar deal with Creighton and Northern Iowa?

[cajun_lannister]

Texas Southern is better than any team on our home schedule. Use a little imagination. Cut a deal with Tech and New Mexico State and UNM for a home and home arrangement where us and Tech go to New Mexico and play 2 and they come to Louisiana and play 2 the next year. Better yet, do both of those every year. All four schools benefit, and travel costs are cut nearly in half. I can think of many more ways to improve the home schedule. It just takes a little out of the box thinking and relationship building.

How about working a similar deal with Creighton and Northern Iowa?

Who makes the schedual .. Marlin or the AD

[zephyr]

Unfortunately, these days skepticism always tends to lead off expectations for most sports for me. The major questions are whether Marlin can actually coach his way to a conference title. We all talk about how his teams have underperformed at times over the years. I don't doubt that we have some serious talent. As great as it is to have that talent you have to be a good enough coach to manage it as well.

My biggest concerns are in the backcourt. We have either a lot of younger guys or guys who are new. The SBC alone is typically controlled by teams who have the best backcourts. Even with the backcourt we had last year we still had trouble defending the perimeter shot. I'm hoping that has improved. We also had trouble shooting the perimeter shot. I'm hoping that improves. Bartley started off like a beast but really cooled off as the season went on and we need him to be a more consistent player this season.

We also lacked front court depth last year and it would be nice to have someone who can change shots in the middle and be a little bit of a rim protector. We don't need a Mutombo in there but having someone who can be a force inside both offensively and defensively would be huge.

I want to win the SBC. That has to be the goal. Its only done with consistency and we've never been a model of consistency. Hope this year changes that model.

[ManAboutTown]

Who makes the schedual .. Marlin or the AD

Almost positive football is the only schedule that the AD is responsible for.

[Ragin4U]

Almost positive football is the only schedule that the AD is responsible for.

Curious as to why this is. Seems like having the AD involved would provide some continuity and maybe the ability to package some deals with football, baseball and basketball.

Wouldn't one of the deterrents to having a nice OOC home schedule be the lack of direct flights into Lafayette. Unless a team is coming from Houston, Dallas or Atlanta, it's 2 flights at least.
VO- I get what you're saying about LSU's ooc being better than ours but it's not THAT much better considering they are an SEC school with a basically unlimited budget.

[Hatch]

Texas Southern is better than any team on our home schedule. Use a little imagination. Cut a deal with Tech and New Mexico State and UNM for a home and home arrangement where us and Tech go to New Mexico and play 2 and they come to Louisiana and play 2 the next year. Better yet, do both of those every year. All four schools benefit, and travel costs are cut nearly in half. I can think of many more ways to improve the home schedule. It just takes a little out of the box thinking and relationship building.

How about working a similar deal with Creighton and Northern Iowa?

I like the idea but I think having a distant school fly in then have to bus 4 to 5 hours to Ruston is a hard sell. I still like the money game then home and home combo like we did with UCLA and Pepperdine a couple years back but try to get LSU involved. For instance our trip to Clemson this year, call up Furman and see if they want to play a game a few days later. Then next year Furman can fly into BR, collect a paycheck at the PMAC and bus over and return the home game with us 2 days later. Or just have a relationship to where someone in BR can call up and say hey we just scheduled Belmont for a money game, you want to play them too? Then the next season we could travel to Nashville to return the Belmont game and play a money game with Vandy in the same trip.