I totally agree. And my point for a few seasons now has been that even for the 250+ teams, there are options close to home. Between the Big West, Big Sky, and lower level MWC, there’s always someone to play as a tuneup. And those schools tend to bring a decent number of alums to the game as well as driving more SCU fan interest. Granted, games against UCSB aren’t gonna pack Leavey to the rafters, but one feels bad for everyone involved at the games against Alcorn State, including the SCU players who have an almost totally empty Leavey.
Santa Clara will host UC Irvine on November 27th. Looks like now I’ll be potentially watching 2 games that week. One in SoCal and one in the Bay. Go Broncos!
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Looks like our 15 game non-conference is fully solidified! New games include Stanford, Hawaii, Louisiana Tech, and Florida A&M at home. Looks to be a very exciting non conference schedule.
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The full schedule has been released. Stanford, Nevada, and Louisiana Tech will all visit the Leavey Center, and finally our one BYU matchup will be at home.
I like this schedule. What do you all think?
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Sorry @scocos8, didn’t see your post before posting!
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No worries at all! I didn’t see that our BYU matchup will be at home. That’s awesome! Honestly I’m pretty excited about this schedule as a whole. I’ll definitely be attending a few of these games both in the Bay and in SoCal. I think our roster has the potential to be extremely talented, so I’m hoping for strong results this season.
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Very solid schedule. LA Tech is legit with Kenneth Lofton Jr. That will not be a fun matchup in the post. Definitely less gimmes than prior years. Lots of games on this schedule that would qualify as tough league games…so will be good preparation.
Scocos8 -Agree, this is a good schedule. A little front loaded against the better teams (???), but this being the slender tendrils of August optimism, I’m hopeful and say bring it on. Always the caveat about injuries, but this is Herb’s best team since the one he inherited from KK(Jared, KJ, Kratch) Jalen and Vrancik may pop into that triad. (Where would SCU be without the imports of Dennison, Trasolini, and Vrancik). Anyway, already booked for the @Boise game. Stay at The Grove, lunch/dinner at the Basque area restaurants, and a light weight flak jacket to fend off the very supportive other Broncos fans.
This might be a season where three or four games above .500 is a good showing. Got to be better than .500 in conference…
Gonzaga at SCU on a Saturday (don’t think that’s happened in a decade) and Scu at Usf on a Saturday. Can’t complain with those two setups.
Solid schedule, should be somewhere middle of the pack nationally instead of 200-350 range as has been the norm under Sendek.
It’s unlikely to be a top 100 schedule with the absence of any Top 50 type teams (or near locks NCAA at large bids), the top predicted teams are Nevada, Stanford, Boise St. in the 60-70 range.
Also, unfortunately it appears the SoCal Challenge is not a standard 8 team (3 games) type format, instead a round-robin, random much-ups of some sort; hopefully we don’t get stuck playing 2 weak teams in that tourney, hoping to get at least 1 vs. TCU or Fresno St.
Doubt we’ll rack up 12 wins as we did in 2019 against that terribly weak schedule. But I’d be OK with 9 or 10 wins vs. this schedule as long we don’t lose to any of the weaklings (SJ St., Florida A&M, Cal Poly), have at least 1 win vs. a better than average team and show well against the better teams even if we lose.
Yeah, I tried to tell folks that didn’t look like a bracketed event. I’m guessing the matchups aren’t random.
I don’t know how anyone could complain about this schedule, but I’m sure I’ll find out.
The strength of the home schedule is pretty impressive. I expect the complaining and calls for heads to roll to start sometime during the Stanford game.
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Kenneth Loften Jr. is going to be a really fun matchup to watch. I’d imagine Bediako and Djuricic/Braun will have to matchup with him. Hopefully our guys can limit his buckets in the paint.
I haven’t seen him play, and didn’t realize how big he is… looks like a semi-solid 260-70 +lbs. Sort of a Paul Millsap type, with maybe more of an offensive presence. And there’s always that guy called Karl Malone who managed some success in the NBA. (great,great player, but a few inches taller and showed the world what true “beast mode” was.) If Loften develops like those two, La Tech found a very good one. I’m guessing from just a few pics that there might have been some concerns about his conditioning, but IDK, couldn’t find much on his recruitment outside of La Tech.
Prayers answered. I love the schedule. It’s not a Gonzaga-schedule to be sure. But it’s the right level of challenge for a team that ought to be more than its last few seasons have indicated.
I hope that the two SoCal games are against better competition. But with no SWAC teams in sight, I’m largely content regardless of who the Broncos draw in those two.
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Florida A&M is SWAC, but your point is still valid…a lot fewer low-end teams than recent years. 2019 non-con had ~10 teams sub-250 or D2 including many sub-300. This year’s schedule looks like maybe four sub-250ish teams (SJ St, Cal Poly, Florida A&M and probably 1 weak team in the SoCal Challenge)…hopefully schools like CS-Fullerton and Montana don’t tank and sink to sub-250 level.
Replacing SWAC, D2 and Denver, Idaho State types with Hawaii, LA Tech and hopefully Fresno St or TCU in the tourney is precisely what most here have been clamoring for during Sendek’s tenure…glad to see it finally happen.
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It looks really good to me. Nothing that is entirely unwinnable, but a lot of really solid challenges. 7 teams in the top 150, plus whatever comes from the “tournament”.
Apologies for the formatting, but I’m lazy.
T-Rank by opponent
|Tue. 9|Cal St. Fullerton - 220
|Fri. 12|Stanford||TBA|| - 68
|Tue. 16|Nevada||TBA|| - 64
|Fri. 19|Cal Poly||TBA|| - 288
|Mon. 22|vs. TBA @ San Juan Capistrano, Calif.||TBA||
||SoCal Challenge|
|Wed. 24|vs. TBA @ San Juan Capistrano, Calif.||TBA||
||SoCal Challenge|
|Sat. 27|UC Irvine||TBA|| - 104
|Tue. 30|Hawaii||TBA|| - 191
||
|DECEMBER|
|Sat. 4|Louisiana Tech||TBA|| - 106
|Tue. 7|Mount St. Mary’s||TBA|| - 227
|Sat. 11|at California||TBA|| - 116
|Tue. 14|at Boise State||TBA|| - 75
|Fri. 17|Florida A&M||TBA|| - 276
|Sun. 19|Montana||TBA|| - 150
|Tue. 21|at San José State| - 270
For comparison, Santa Clara is ranked 110.
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3 Good teams, 4 middle of the road equals, 6 cupcakes… and whatever the high school gym “tourney” brings. Certainly not amazing, but at least it’s a step in the right direction compared to Herb’s first 5 seasons
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I’m sure T-bomb will do this eventually but since we know most of the schedule now…
SCU has 104.3 adjusted offensive efficiency ADJOE, and 99.2 ADJDE. For +5.1 points per 100 possessions vs. the average team (which would be ranked #178). Say each game has 66.6 possessions (might be a bit low but it’s close, and easy math). That’s +3.4 points per game.
So a very crude Friday afternoon stab at point spreads and win prob (just giving a flat 3 points to the home team to make it easy).
Fullerton (-3.2/100) – SCU by 7 1/2 (3.4 - -1.1, +3) – win prob 78%
Stanford (+9.3) – PK – 50%
Nevada (+9.9) – PK – 50%
Cal Poly (-9) – SCU by 9 1/2 – 84%
UC Irvine (+5.9) – SCU by 3 1/2 – 62%
Hawaii (-1.3) – SCU by 5 – 67%
Louisiana Tech (+5.4) – SCU by 2 1/2 – 58%
Mount St. Mary’s (-3.7) – SCU by 9 – 83%
at California (+4.8) – Cal by 3 – 39%
at Boise State (+9.3) – Boise by 6 – 28%
Florida A&M (-6.7) – SCU by 10 1/2 – 85%
Montana (+1.8) – SCU by 5 – 67%
at San Jose State (-7.3) – SCU by 5 – 67%
So adding all of that up gets to expected wins of 8.18, which I would certainly round to 8 considering that is the only part of this I used a calculator for haha.
As much as it’s August, and who knows what happens before the season starts, 8-5 (or better) against those teams seems probable. Take care of the teams that are expected to be bad and there’s 6 W’s right there.
2-5 against the teams of similar caliber or better should seem probable as well (especially considering there isn’t a Michigan, Duke, North Carolina, UCLA etc. in the mix). It’s entirely possible that none of those 13 opponents make the NCAA tourney this season… at least none of them seem like a pre-season lock for an at-large.