Univ of Illinois-Chicago will be announced next week, according to CBS Sports.
Decent pickup for the Valley
Wonder if the Valley will stay with the "play everybody" round-robin or will it go to 2 6-team divisions? With the issues with trying to schedule non-conference games for non-Power 5 schools, I could see the league going with 22 conference games.
Wonder if the Valley will stay with the "play everybody" round-robin or will it go to 2 6-team divisions? With the issues with trying to schedule non-conference games for non-Power 5 schools, I could see the league going with 22 conference games.
No divisions are needed. I bet they will most likely do 20 games, 9 home and homes, 2 singles. They can do that one of 2 ways. Rotate on which teams play each other on singles, or schedule to an "at large" advantage for the big teams by avoiding double round robins with the bottom (for example, this year scheduling Loyola only 1 game against Evansville and Indiana State to reduce 2 chances at a really bad loss).
I see a 22 game schedule for the women. The UIC addition also solves a scheduling conundrum for womens basketball and thier "travel partner" system. UIC now gets paired with Valpo and Belmont gets paired with Murray. This could also eliminate the one game week on the conference schedule when the travel partners have to play each other. They could do a home and home weekend and ultimately only add one week to the overall conference schedule.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
The Valley announced earlier that it will have a 20 game schedule(Big Ten does it that way with no divisions). That could change. I think the most sensible thing to do is 9 teams twice and two teams once. No Divisions. You can then schedule so that once every 9 years you play a given team once and the other years twice, or as mentioned above you can schedule those two games based on predicted top teams not having to play the bottom two teams twice. Thats not a sure thing of course but can help the upper teams with the net. 22 games would be a bad idea as that would really reduce the already difficult opportunity to play higher rated teams to improve your non conference schedule.
Good deal. The MVC should be a stronger basketball league. Hopefully UIC will improve their basketball program.
Murray may be the preseason favorite if some of their best players don't get poached by the big guys.
current NET rankings:
17 Loyola
30 Murray State
48 Belmont
69 Missouri St.
110 Drake
113 Bradley
114 UNI
144 SIU
173 Ill. St.
180 ISU
203 VALPO
279 UIC
325 Evansville
Valley added the best 2 possible schools out of the ones mentioned. They get the big market project in UIC with good athletics facilities and the basketball mid-major power in Murray State. Excited for the future.
