(04-03-2015 12:52 PM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  Middle Tennessee will be traveling to the Bahamas for a summer tour (10 additional practices and four exhibition games). A summer tour is what propelled us to three straight regular season conference titles (or co-) beginning in 2011. This is the summer program that allows teams to go do this sort of thing once every four years.

It's also announced that we will be playing in the Great Alaska Shootout. Our guys are going to be logging some serious airline miles.

Nice!

(04-03-2015 12:52 PM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  Middle Tennessee will be traveling to the Bahamas for a summer tour (10 additional practices and four exhibition games). A summer tour is what propelled us to three straight regular season conference titles (or co-) beginning in 2011. This is the summer program that allows teams to go do this sort of thing once every four years.

It's also announced that we will be playing in the Great Alaska Shootout. Our guys are going to be logging some serious airline miles.

Sounds like a couple of nice trips for your team! I'm sure that they will enjoy seeing those places. Any idea of who you may end up playing in the Alaska Shootout? Hope MTSU brings the trophy back from Alaska. It would probably mean at least a couple of nice wins.

(04-03-2015 11:45 PM)ODU BBALL Wrote:  

(04-03-2015 12:52 PM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  Middle Tennessee will be traveling to the Bahamas for a summer tour (10 additional practices and four exhibition games). A summer tour is what propelled us to three straight regular season conference titles (or co-) beginning in 2011. This is the summer program that allows teams to go do this sort of thing once every four years.

It's also announced that we will be playing in the Great Alaska Shootout. Our guys are going to be logging some serious airline miles.

Sounds like a couple of nice trips for your team! I'm sure that they will enjoy seeing those places. Any idea of who you may end up playing in the Alaska Shootout? Hope MTSU brings the trophy back from Alaska. It would probably mean at least a couple of nice wins.

From GBR--

The Seawolves' men will host Drexel, Loyola (Ill.), Middle Tennessee, UNC Asheville, San Diego, San Jose State and Toledo.

The LA Tech AD has to be lying. Good midmajor teams schedule other good teams or they schedule cupcakes to boost the record. One of those helps improve the NCAA resume much better than the other! Maybe an occasional game to go on the road for some $$$ to play at a blueblood.

But let's be real, it is probably tougher to schedule at LA Tech than other places. LA Tech is in a podunk town in the north of Louisiana. I doubt many basketball recruits are coming from the area so teams have no reason to schedule a game to make a recruiting trip at the same time or a make 'home visit' for one of their players.

Also, as Dawgxas and other LA Tech fans have stated, it is a deterrent to go visit LA Tech because they do have a large home winning streak that looks quite ominous - it is a factor. Plus, I doubt any player at Kent State or UC Irvine (or many other midmajor RPI top 100 teams) is telling their coach, "I'd love to visit Ruston, coach! Can we please go play at LA Tech?? Please??"

Luckily for LA Tech, players don't choose where their team plays. You all can get a better schedule.

There is no reason anyone should have a non conference SOS over 200 unless you just know you're going to be garbage beforehand. LaTechs bad OOC SOS has been a trend for years according to KenPom and RealtimeRPI, well before you were winning a lot of games. If anything, higher mid major RPI teams would want to play you now...not dodge you.

(03-15-2015 05:06 PM)07owl Wrote:  

(03-15-2015 11:15 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  Rice returns 4 of 5 starters including two guys (Marcus Jackson and Max Guercy) who could be preseason all-conference players next year. Most of the other returnees are just role players but we are pretty excited about our incoming freshmen recruiting class plus we have a transfer from Arizona State who should be an immediate starter at the small forward spot. But we need a little more inside presence and hopefully our recruiting efforts will get some more help in that area. I do think we'll be picked middle of the pack and could be a top 4-6 team in the conference if things go our way.

And for the first time in awhile, hopefully we won't be losing starters who transfer to another school....

I'm cautiously high on the team, but obviously gunshy from the constant waves of transfers in recent years. But assuming we're mostly okay on that front, I like our team. Gearhart will be a big loss, but he's the only impact player we're losing. Marcus Jackson really took big strides this year (14.5 ppg), including a 28 point game in the C-USA tournament. Hopefully that will continue. Guercy had a bit of a slow start this year but by the end of the year was really keeping the team motoring at a high pace and seemed to have figured it out. Expect that to keep up as a senior. And as others mentioned, people are high on the ASU transfer and some decent talent coming in. I don't expect us to be in the mix to win the conference next year, but I expect us to be in that next tier.

1. Most insiders (including Bobby Tudor) have said that the ASU transfer would have been the best player on this year's squad had he been eligible to play. He's a more talented and athletic version of Seth Gearhart.

2. We don't just have "decent" talent coming in; we've got the best incoming recruiting class to come to Rice in the last couple decades.

We're going to once again be short and vulnerable in the paint (unless we can land a couple big men as late recruits, and we do have 3 scholarships available), but the increased depth, talent and athleticism should allow Coach Rhoades to deploy his 40-minutes of hell defense. Should be fun to watch.

The Shootout isn't what it used to be and lineup doesn't really provide us with much of an opportunity for a marquee win but the extra games will be useful.

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(04-04-2015 10:08 AM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  The Shootout isn't what it used to be and lineup doesn't really provide us with much of an opportunity for a marquee win but the extra games will be useful.

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Yeah it definitely doesn't have a strong lineup anymore. We played in it a few years ago and we won the tournament with a lineup that was mostly freshmen and sophmores...the same guys who couldn't finish .500 in 1 bid cusa as jrs/seniors he last 2 seasons.

We were the marquee team in that tournament in m y opinion. Sad.

D'Antoni doesn't look like he is out to dodge anyone and pad the schedule. Marshall has announced it will play in the Global Sports Management Tournament. The field will include Grand Canyon (2nd year DI), Marshall, Houston and Wyoming (Defending MWC Champs). The Herd will also travel to Knoxville and play Tennessee and 1st year head coach Rick Barns.

Eleven of Marshall's 13 non conference games are set and from what Im hearing D'Antoni and Hamrick are looking at adding one more high major game.

(04-08-2015 12:28 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  D'Antoni doesn't look like he is out to dodge anyone and pad the schedule. Marshall has announced it will play in the Global Sports Management Tournament. The field will include Grand Canyon (2nd year DI), Marshall, Houston and Wyoming (Defending MWC Champs). The Herd will also travel to Knoxville and play Tennessee and 1st year head coach Rick Barns.

Eleven of Marshall's 13 non conference games are set and from what Im hearing D'Antoni and Hamrick are looking at adding one more high major game.

While you guys normally play a couple non-D1 games, you make up for it by scheduling several games against major conference programs, or at least have since Charlotte has been in CUSA. I was impressed with the Marshall schedule last season.