What I think is appropriate or not is besides the point. The point is you cannot legally prevent people from socializing with who they wish to. By the way, The basketball booster club leader has been supporting the program long before Coach Marlin arrived here. She is still friends with Jessie and Nancy Evans.
the military has a such a policy. enlisted officers can not socialize with non officer personnel. the booster club leader can be friends with whoever they wish thats true. but when it starts to affect retaining the coach that is an obvious crossing of lines. if we had standards in mbb people would be held to an appropriate level of behavior
I know we don't want to compare to compare, but the home schedules of most of these are not very good either. Look at the Home schedules for ODU, Marshall and JMU.
ODU--Maryland Eastern Shore, Virginia Weslyan, ECU, Norfolk State, William and Mary, Gardner Webb and George Mason
Marshall--Tennessee Tech, Choppin State, Chicago State, Moorhead State, Akron, Ohio, Toledo and Glenville State, they are also traveling to first year D-1 team Queen's College in Charlotte.
JMU--Valley Forge, Hampton, EKU, Galladeut and Long Island.
Georgia State--Coastal Georgia, Georgia Tech, Mercer, a tournament that includes EKU, UNC-Asheville and Texas A&M Commerce, UNC-Asheville, Belmont, Middle Georgia State, Rhode Island and Toccoa Falls.
Georgia Southern--Trinity Baptist, Oglethorpe, FGCU, Piedmont, Wofford, Morehead State and Campbell
Coastal--St. Mary's (MD), Methodist, South Dakota, UNC-Wilmington, Regent and College of Charleston.
App--Warren Wilson, NC Central, Campbell, Kennesaw State, SLU, Furman, Carlow and Regent.
ULM--Dallas Christian, Central Baptist, Champion Christian, Sam Houston, Lamar and Jacksonville.
USM--William Carey, Loyola (New Orleans), Mobile, Montana, Lamar and McNeese.
UL--Centenary, La Tech, Loyola (New Orleans), Samford and Louisiana Christian
With the exception of one or two game (ECU going to ODU and Georgia State getting crosstown rival Ga Tech to come). None of these games are what you would call game changers for the conference as a home schedule goes. And obviously we have not seen USA, Troy, Texas State and Arkansas State schedule as of yet, but I would be surprised if we see a whole bunch of shockers their either.
College Basketball is tough to schedule, I am not defending our coaching staff and/or administration, but getting anyone with a name to come to the Cajun Dome will continue to be hard. We are lucky to have a team like Tech that wants to do alternating home and homes with us. We really need to get Tulane to do the same. Working with schools like UNO and of the local Southland teams and La Tech and Tulane are going to be the best we are going to hope for. I would love if we could work with Houston, Rice and even Houston Baptist to get them to work with us to have some drivable home and home games but clearly that has not been an option for us, either because they want too much or we do in return or they just refuse to play us at the CD.
I don't like the 3 non D1 games either, but again I go back to we would have had USM this year which would have eliminated at least 1 non D1 game and we should have had SLU, but because of the teams coming back to the Southland they were forced to rework their deal.
Would we be complaining if our home schedule was Tech, USM, SLU Samford and one of these (Loyola/Centenary or Louisiana Christian). Now replace them on an ongoing basis with some of the names I said earlier.
Tulane, La Tech, Nw State, Nicholls, McNeese, UNO, Houston, Rice, HBU, SLU, Southern, Grambling, Jackson State, Alcorn State and Lamar should be on the table every year as options. I am not sure how we work with these schools to make it happen but it needs to happen. I would much rather play a home schedule that involves 5 of these teams then any of the non D1 teams and I have to believe most of them would want to work with us as well. Hell throw a bone to the SWAC teams and give them a home game, many of them don't play but 1 or 2 home games a year if they are lucky.
While the non conference home schedule is disappointing and I understand the viewpoint of those who call it a joke, that does not indicate the team itself cannot have success. We do have four starters back from the team that won three conference tournament games. We also have someone who showed in Puerto Rico the ability to challenge for league freshman of the year honors. I have no clue if we will see more of that conference tournament team or the group that was disappointing in the regular season. I don’t automatically assume things will be disappointing as that is not fair to the players who chose to be Ragin Cajuns. Settling on a consistent lineup/rotation early will be a hint we could be significantly improved.
Here is an idea to build on Dave’s point. Play a payday game at Houston and tie a game at Texas Southern or Prairie View to the trip. Have the SWAC school come here twice as part of deal. Could try same thing with Lamar. That would like have to be home and home but they may agree if we go there first. I have no clue if we have tried to negotiate such type deals.
I am interested to see the growth of guys like Kentrell Garnett, Isaiah Richards, Jalen Dalcourt, Michael Thomas and Joe Charles, coupled with the newcoming talent of Chancellor White, Kyran Ratliff and Themus Fulks. I think with the already strong play of Jordan Brown, Greg Williams and Kobe Julien (if healthy and clearly that is always a question mark), this team can be really good this year.
Yes, teams that have good non conference competition tend to do well during league and tournament play. In our case the road schedule may be challenging enough to help prepare us for league play. No way to know at this stage. I agree the non conference home schedule does little to help prepare us for conference play. On a more optimistic point, I recently learned that the two schools we will play in the “secret” scrimmages will challenge us and help prepare for the season. I don’t have the OK to elaborate more about that at this stage and don’t know when or where they will occur.
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