An Inside Look at St. Bonaventure’s Non-Conference Scheduling

Jack Milko

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ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. – Although we are still four months away from the beginning of the season, the non-conference schedule for the St. Bonaventure Bonnies is shaping up nicely.
Even though an official schedule has yet to be released, numerous games have been announced.
The Bonnies will kick the 2022-23 season off by hosting St. Francis (PA) on Monday, Nov. 7.
“We really wanted to get a home opener,” said Matt Pappano, who is the Director of Operations for the men’s basketball team at St. Bonaventure. “We feel that those games are very important. I know those guys over at St. Francis pretty well. We have played them a couple of times in the past and we are excited to play them again.”
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Mark Schmidt, who is now entering his 16th season as the head coach at St. Bonaventure, has coached against St. Francis (PA) three times. The Bonnies have prevailed in all three of...

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Some aspects of this OOC are extremely encouraging, but others, in the bigger picture of the program, are deeply disappointing.

Raising the program to the level of headlining an MTE with Notre Dame is a very good thing. It shows the progress Bona has made.

Having said that (David), IT IS FUCKING ASININE THAT WE CONTINUE PLAYING THREE MAAC PROGRAMS IN STRAIGHT UP HOME-AND-HOME SERIES!!!!!!! We have grown the program tremendously over the past decade, yet this type of complacent approach to scheduling in the modern era of college athletics is stunning. Dayton no longer plays at Miami (OH), which is its ancient rival. It does not play at Wright State. As a program, they outgrew those road games. Neutral site? Fine. We'll play our "road game" downtown at Key Bank Center. Other than that? Nope. It's Reilly Center or nothing. It isn't 1969. The playing field isn't level. Other programs do it to us, and it's time we began to act like a winning program.

Oh, and by doing it like this, the FUCKED imbalance of our annual H/H rivalry series continues. Playing three of those four on the road is entirely unacceptable. Citing those games as "fun" is childish. Is it fun that we've lost 7 of 9 in Koessler? Is that fucking fun?!?!? Those games are tough. The metrics don't show it, though. To them, it's just a shitty Q3 (at best) road game.

Also, two games in Buffalo this season means we have none scheduled there for 2023-2024. If we already aren't playing Niagara again, then this is your opportunity to bring back the 2/2 balance to the annual rivalries. Skip Canisius for one season and you're back on track. Just make sure the road games against those two are at Key Bank... or don't play at all. They bring us NOTHING more than programs like Colgate, Cornell, Binghamton, St. Francis PA, Bucknell, and Cleveland State can't.

I am PISSED OFF!

Works Cited
David, Larry. "Seinfeld". Curb Your Enthusiasm, created by Larry David, Season 7, Episode 10, HBO, 2009.
 
I thought similar things when I read about continuing to go to Canisius and Niagara. Its stupid and I hope Matt P thinks better of it before next season. Probably not since we already are going to Canisius this year. That really sucks.
 
I'd rather not play Canisius or Niagara and definitely not in a home and home series, but I really dont care about the nonconference schedule this year. With a bunch of new faces we know its going to take time for the lineup to come together. We likely wont be worrying about NET or RPI or KP come March so schedule whomever keep the old heads happy for one more year. Once we know more about this group and they have played some games together then we can worry about putting together a tough schedule. Its not like football where your schedule is 90-100% made years in advance.
 
I think I agree, jive. If this were last year I'd be pissed, too. This year, not so much. I do agree with Bill on the unbalanced WNY schedule, though. I know covid screwed things up and I know that there are a lot of complications in scheduling, but they've got to take care of this.
 
Would offering up my hot, tight, creamy, rich, hearty, robust asshole (see avatar) help settle this matter?

Pissah!

Aloha!
 
I think I agree, jive. If this were last year I'd be pissed, too. This year, not so much. I do agree with Bill on the unbalanced WNY schedule, though. I know covid screwed things up and I know that there are a lot of complications in scheduling, but they've got to take care of this.
This season is worst to play a ton of crap road OOC games.

Not just for our sake but the A10, too.

With a rebuilding team this year, we should be playing a SHIT schedule. Roll into conference play with an 11-2 or 10-3 record after play MAYBE one road game at Nova or Maryland, etc.

We will probably end up 7-6 or something like that going into conference and be a land mine to some team that has at large hopes.

As always, the A10 is three conferences in one. VCU, Dayton, SLU, Richmond and URI all seem to go all on in schedules most years.

Joes, Davidson, Bona and I guess GW/Mason only go after it when they have a good team.

The rest of the conference (Bona a lot of times) puts together such an unfavorable OOC slate that it kills the rest of the conference.
 
I dont love this schedule, but I would rather this than a schedule that allows us to go 11-2 with this team. Such a schedule would basically mean playing Md Eastern Shore in 9 different versions. That's not going to NET (pun intended) us any better than 7-6 with this one. So I'd rather not fill the schedule Duquesne style with a bunch of schools who may not survive D1 realignment over the next decade.

Niagara and Canisius need to go. Keep UB H/H, fine. Keep Siena as a neutral if you'd like but no more road. . We havent played Niagara in 3 years. It was the perfect opportunity to say, let's move on. We should have taken it.

Use those opps as challenging games. My ideal non conf structure would be

-4-5 buy/home cupcake games. The 2 we use now, plus equivalent or CC/NU but always at home. Buy CC/NU every year if it gets your rocks off. Just stop traveling there.
-1 with Siena if you want. I could live with H/H for now, but would prefer neutral or Home.
-3 MTE games- aim high on these every year, not just when we're going to be good. No more Boca Raton Beach Classics, please. It won't always be Charleston but it doesn't have to be Boca.
-1 UB H/H
-1-2 strong mid major (sorry for the phrase, Bill) H/H or combination of H/H neutral - UNI, SDSU, Iona all fit this
-1-2 challengers - go after what we can get on the road or neutral with a solid P5- but NOT playing at NET 175 Missouri just because they shower with Kentucky


The number of buy/cupcakes, strong MM's and challengers could vary depending on the year, based on expectations and what those expectations can get us. I know especially in the case of going after a big gun, its easier said then done.
 
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That's not going to NET (pun intended) us any better than 7-6 with this one. So I'd rather not fill the schedule Duquesne style with a bunch of schools who may not survive D1 realignment over the next decade.
If we beat those UMES-type teams by a wide margin, we could have a strong NET still.

The last couple of Decembers and Januarys there’s always a good amount of mid major programs ranked in the top 100. Those schools rarely have a lot of good wins, but pound the teams on their schedule.

I agree with your take on the schedule though. Besides the little 3 games, I don’t think Bonaventure has as much pull as many of us would like to think…especially with a lot of people expecting us to finish in the bottom half this year.
 
We should be scheduling so we can win as many games as possible. I know that sounds obvious but the reason is the stronger we are (no matter where we are in conferece) the better everyone in the A10 is. We want as many bids as we can get, and we get a slice of that pie so its in our best interest. Fordham has done a nice job scheduling over the years. As we saw last year, you can beat the snot out of teams and game the NET and KP. See Iowa. I like our schedule this year minus the trip to Caneatshit. There are some challenges, some money makers and some buy games to fluff the win total. At the very least we should not be a landmine for Dayton, SLU and VCU. Since we dont know what we have, its really hard to schedule for this squad.
 
I think we're all saying the same thing, in different ways. At the end of the day how you get to your NET is less important than what your NET is. For the betterment of the conference, if we square of at St Louis in the top 75, then we're a Q2 game for them. SLU doesnt give a shit if we got there by playing the entire MEAC and going undefeated, or playing the entire Big East and going 4-7. They just care that we are top 75.

We learned last year that beating up teams sub 150 doesnt move the needle. So that's why I'd rather get good experience and schedule some teams who can actually pass, dribble and shoot and risk losing instead of beating up on exclusively cupcakes.

3rd, you mentioned Rhode Island, they are a good example. They've put on a clinic in recent seasons of how to finish below 500 and still not be a landmine. Their mix is key to that. Not that we should strive for that, but if you can go 3-12 over your last 15 and still finish top 150, at least you know it means you scheduled well!
 
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I think we're all saying the same thing, in different ways. At the end of the day how you get to your NET is less important than what your NET is. For the betterment of the conference, if we square of at St Louis in the top 75, then we're a Q2 game for them. SLU doesnt give a shit if we got there by playing the entire MEAC and going undefeated, or playing the entire Big East and going 4-7. They just care that we are top 75.

We learned last year that beating up teams sub 150 doesnt move the needle. So that's why I'd rather get good experience and schedule some teams who can actually pass, dribble and shoot and risk losing instead of beating up on exclusively cupcakes.

3rd, you mentioned Rhode Island, they are a good example. They've put on a clinic in recent seasons of how to finish below 500 and still not be a landmine. Their mix is key to that. Not that we should strive for that, but if you can go 3-12 over your last 15 and still finish top 150, at least you know it means you scheduled well!
I agree pretty much with that.

Issue is that last year we didn’t beat up on any team OOC that we were supposed to…most of the bad teams we played at home our squad did not cover.

Had we done so, it would have been a different story in terms of our net. Throw in a few bad losses and that’s why a virtually perfect OOC was scheduled last year.

I think this year’s schedule is pretty good. No one really knows what to expect. This is a rebuild, but we could have five D1 starters in the roster come Nov. 9.

Only unknown is if the jump from the Patriot League, A-East, MAAC and MEAC is too much for these guys to handle.
 
This is what we’re looking at right now:

11/07- ST. FRANCIS PA
11/12- @ Canisius
11/15- vs. South Dakota State (Sioux Falls)
11/19- BOWLING GREEN
11/22- SOUTHERN INDIANA
11/25- vs. Notre Dame (Belmont Park)
11/30- MTSU
12/03- @ Buffalo
12/11- vs. Iona (Brooklyn)
12/19- @ Siena
12/22- @ Northern Iowa
TBA- ???
TBA- ???

As an A10 member, four OOC road games kind of can’t happen. Very frustrating. Oh, and if the staff fails to fill all 13 games again, I might just spontaneously combust.
 
This is what we’re looking at right now:

11/07- ST. FRANCIS PA
11/12- @ Canisius
11/15- vs. South Dakota State (Sioux Falls)
11/19- BOWLING GREEN
11/22- SOUTHERN INDIANA
11/25- vs. Notre Dame (Belmont Park)
11/30- MTSU
12/03- @ Buffalo
12/11- vs. Iona (Brooklyn)
12/19- @ Siena
12/22- @ Northern Iowa
TBA- ???
TBA- ???

As an A10 member, four OOC road games kind of can’t happen. Very frustrating. Oh, and if the staff fails to fill all 13 games again, I might just spontaneously combust.
Have you or Unfurled been whispering in Matt's ear about all this?
 
I can’t speak for Unfurled, but I know I’ll be bringing it up the next chance I get.
You guys should give him that feedback. The home slate is pretty meh. I am still getting season tickets but none of the OOC home games move the needle for me. MTSU should be good I guess. I know they cant snap fingers and get a good opponent here necessarily but more H-H with Northern Iowa type schools would be cool.
 
This is what we’re looking at right now:

11/07- ST. FRANCIS PA
11/12- @ Canisius
11/15- vs. South Dakota State (Sioux Falls)
11/19- BOWLING GREEN
11/22- SOUTHERN INDIANA
11/25- vs. Notre Dame (Belmont Park)
11/30- MTSU
12/03- @ Buffalo
12/11- vs. Iona (Brooklyn)
12/19- @ Siena
12/22- @ Northern Iowa
TBA- ???
TBA- ???

As an A10 member, four OOC road games kind of can’t happen. Very frustrating. Oh, and if the staff fails to fill all 13 games again, I might just spontaneously combust.
And it's really five road games (two at MAAC programs)... That one in South Dakota is certainly not a true neutral site game, and they are not returning to Buffalo or Rochester.
 
I think over the last coupke years the staff has done a decent job of putting together an OOC schedule based on the team that they have.
I'm not as upset as others are that they are playing some road games. Bonas isnt a program with unlimited funds so I think it makes sense to play some road games and save some funds for buy games when the tesm is ready to make another run or at least has less question marks comming into the year than they have this year.
 
Full slate is out now. They added FGCU and Cleveland St. Overall its a decent schedule for this group other than the already mentioned road game at Canisius.
 
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