DI Basketball Scheduling

[Slappy]

Just a 'what if' scenario...

The Missouri Valley Conference has asked their teams to schedule non-conference games against only teams that are in the top 150 of the RPI index. The conference offers a $50,000 incentive/bonus if a team complies. How does this affect NDSU when scheduling games for next season? The MOValley is a relatively close (geographically) league to NDSU, with the Bison possibly even becoming a member of that league if things don't work out with the BSC. Northern Iowa, among other teams, would be a natural fit on NDSU's schedule, possibly even a future rival. Given that NDSU is not going to immediately jump into the RPI top 150, won't this greatly hamper non-conference scheduling opportunities? NDSU theoretically would be a quality non-conference opponent in time for any of the teams in the MOValley. The first years of DI are going to be economically trying, so having the ability to schedule teams that are not too terribly far away would be extremely important.

What do you all think? And what do you know about this 'incentive' that the MOValley has?

FWIW, I heard about this on the UNI flaghip station (1540 AM???) with a rep of their basketball program as a guest. It wasn't Jacobsen or McDermott.

[tony]

Hm. Never heard of the incentive and can't imagine Northern Iowa ever being a natural rival - except in wrestling. Did you hear that the MVC was considering NDSU as a conference member? I mean, everything that I've heard from UND fans and Grand Forks media outlets is that the MVC would rather add the University of South Central Little Rock before NDSU.

The bottom line is this: if NDSU gets into the MVC, the rankings are meaningless because it only applies to non-conf teams. If NDSU isn't in the MVC, it doesn't matter that much anyway. RPI is not subjective so if NDSU performs well, they'll get the RPI to show for it. If they don't, not being able to schedule a MVC team is not going to be their big worry. Anyway, I'm not sure that any MVC teams are a bus trip away - unless NDSU's AD is a sadist, that is. Once the team is in the air, the perceived proximity of the MVC teams has no affect on ticket prices so why not apply the same rule to NDSU - only teams in the top 150 for non-conf games if they're going to have to travel?