Game Thread: Mason (9-1) vs. American (3-4), Saturday, Dec. 7th, 7:00 PM

[sleeperpick]

Wait a second, did you just breakthrough and say that competing for top 5 and being no less than middle of the pack was actually okay and a good place for Mason to be right now? Good job my friend.

That said our OOC schedule isn't quite Fordham esq, last time I checked Fordham doesn't take buy games to go play a BCS team on the road to flip them for extra home games. But I get your point and where you are coming from.

And we all know why it was built this way, and at this point I'm fine with it, its nice to see wins on the court. Hopefully as years continue and Mason improves, there will be chances to get home and homes with some better quality opponents.

Never said middle of the pack haha I will definitely be pissed if we finish worse than 7th though which I anticipate us being close to.
Fordham schedule is currently 30 lower than us and by the end will be closer to 50. But as you said you get the point. I’m not saying we need a dayton or Davidson OOC but at least a vcu level which will be around 215.

 

[MasonSAE4]

It doesn't make sense in any season to schedule such few road games in your non-conference. Our freshmen are in a big surprise for the weekly grind of the conference schedule in January

On the flip side, our team has crashed and burned the last few years down the stretch through injuries and fatigue. If you're not expecting to go dancing this year, why put them through it? If we're gearing up for a run next year, spend this year getting experience and gametime for some younger guys without sending them all over the country. I think getting paid to play a top five team on the road that only requires a short metro ride to be a pretty good deal. Sure, I wish that one or two of the cupcake games at home were against top 150 teams instead, but we barely beat Navy and Loyola and struggled for long stretches against LIU.

At the end of the day, the only way in is by winning in Brooklyn, and the only way to do that is to get a double bye. If we're in the hunt for the top four, I'm happy.

 

[Five Two]

There is also a financial piece to the schedule. More home games means all our partners have that much more exposure in-arena, on ESPN+ and MASN telecasts, thus all those placements become a bit more valuable to sell. Now, I'm not naive to think that three additional home games results in an extra $1M in revenue. But more home games = more stuff to sell = more $$ to the department, even if thats only a few $$ more.

And we need every penny we can get.

 

[FreeGunston12]

Agree, if we aren’t 11-1 there’s zero discussion because you didn’t set yourself up to even be in the discussion and we are DOA. We shouldn’t have to play perfect basketball every night. That’s why we left the CAA.

Now that we are in the A10, and especially when it’s also a strong year, why not always try to give yourself a chance at an at-large? I thought that was the point of being in the A10.

A gaudy 12-2 or 13-1 record against low competition is just setting up the fan base for disappointment. Casual fans, and even us, won’t care how we started the year. It’s all about how you finish and getting to the NCAA or NIT.

2-3 more games against quality OOC would have been ideal (I’d like to see ~5 a year, with 8 ‘cupcakes’). It wouldn’t be that detrimental to the team psychology if we lose those games and so what if we do? Even if we lose them, our profile is better. Then, if we do tear it up in conference, we could still be in the discussion since we lost to quality opponents. If we win them we have a solid chance at an large and less pressure to be perfect during conference play and win the conference tournament.

If that’s not the philosophy going forward I’m not really sure we ever get out of “mediocre” territory and there’s really no point to watch this team until the conference tournament. That is what is so frustrating, to me anyway, about this year’s schedule.

But hey, I guess the counter point is that we only need to be sub .500 (7-9 conference wins) to get 20 overall and look good on paper. Then we can play in some crappy tournament and say the year was a success. What do I know?

Why are you acting like our resume is done? In my opinion, leaving the CAA allows us to have this type of schedule and then continue to build in conference play. We have opportunities to show that we belong in the discussion during conference play. What if we pick up a couple wins over vcu/Dayton?

Not saying it's going to happen, but this team is not out of tournament discussion. They may not be in the discussion either at the moment, but they could be right there in a couple weeks. And I think that's all you can ask for.

All of you that are so down on the schedule, just admit it - you're really worried that we aren't that good and that we will get exposed in conference play. In which case, it's a good thing we scheduled this way.

 

[FreeGunston12]

We shouldn’t have to play perfect basketball every night. That’s why we left the CAA.

Also, what was our margin of error against Navy? Jacksonville St? LIU? Loyola?

That's why we scheduled the way that we did.

 

[gmujim92]

Why are you acting like our resume is done? In my opinion, leaving the CAA allows us to have this type of schedule and then continue to build in conference play. We have opportunities to show that we belong in the discussion during conference play. What if we pick up a couple wins over vcu/Dayton?

Not saying it's going to happen, but this team is not out of tournament discussion. They may not be in the discussion either at the moment, but they could be right there in a couple weeks. And I think that's all you can ask for.

All of you that are so down on the schedule, just admit it - you're really worried that we aren't that good and that we will get exposed in conference play. In which case, it's a good thing we scheduled this way.

Every word of this.

 

[GMUgemini]

Why are you acting like our resume is done? In my opinion, leaving the CAA allows us to have this type of schedule and then continue to build in conference play. We have opportunities to show that we belong in the discussion during conference play. What if we pick up a couple win over vcu

Because they don’t believe we can actually beat any of those teams, in which case loading our schedule with heavyweights would be meaningless, because if you can’t beat vcu, URI, Dayton, or Richmond at home, you aren’t going on the road and beating any top 50 teams.

So either this team is good enough to be an at-large team or it isn’t. And we're going to find out pretty damn quick, because we get vcu at home in the first conference game. So, pull out a win against vcu at home and we can start pipe-dreaming of finishing top 4 and bubble discussions (win or lose @TCU in the game before that).