Just needed another Drake basketball topic to talk about until incoming transfer news starts breaking.

What kind of non-conference schedule do you guys want to see? Do we have some return games more or less locked in for next season? Who would you like to see us play?

I'm thinking we need a balance of pretty winnable games to build some chemistry with a lot of new pieces, but still have some challenging games to build an at-large resume.

Any chance of scheduling Creighton? Wondering if Tucker would relish a game at CHI or if Mac and D-Rock are actively avoiding facing each other. Any interest in scheduling Loyola? Or some Big East team's like Marquette, DePaul, Butler. Maybe St. Mary's, Gonzaga (dare to dream) or another WCC team?

What holiday tournaments are possibilities?

Just trying to stir up some chatter.

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Good suggestions. I say St Thomas to raise visibility up in the Cities. MN has a lot of Division I players for a state with only two Division I teams.

Plus if home and home it would be an easy game to see.

Being a mid-major team that has had a good level of success, there's hesitancy to schedule us since we might actually win.

Drake athletics administration has not wanted to schedule Creighton at the Knapp Center because the last time Creighton played at the Knapp they damaged seats and other facilities. It's been a while though and the staff has now completely turned over.

I don't think there's any interest in scheduling Loyola, especially after the season they just had. 

Drake actually got a home and home with St. Mary's in 2011 & 2012. That said coming off a Top 25 season St. Mary's can probably schedule more attractive matchups.

We will likely have at least one game maybe two against Summit League schools. As good as Oral Roberts has been the last two years they're losing their top player to graduation so it's anyone's guess if they'll be good or not next year.

I'm willing to be on the road end of a one time buy game if it gets us a chance or two at a Quad 1 win. Not sure if we could get Seton Hall but St. John's or something close to Newark for Brodie's senior year would be cool.

Was SLU a home and home? I also believe that Drake is due to play at Chicago State yet.

They did the secret scrimmage with Oral Roberts and have played them in other sports, that wouldn’t be a bad home and home. Or maybe Wichita since Mills is there now. Although the AD might view that as beneath them. 

I had similar thoughts regarding Creighton. I wondered if this would finally be the year they play each other considering you’d think it would be special for Tucker to play a game there. But like you mentioned, I could also see DD and McDermott not wanting to play each other.

Also agree with trying to find a game in the tri-state area for Brodie’s senior year.

Something that I noticed this past year that most of Drake’s non-conference games they scheduled were against fellow adidas schools. Wofford, IUPUI, Louisiana, Omaha, Richmond, and the Battle in the Vault were all adidas teams. Wonder if the three stripes are dictating some of this scheduling, and possibly looking into some of the MTE’s that Nike does?

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I'd guess this is very likely in the next few years.

I agree, having St. Thomas on a yearly basis seems like kind of a no-brainer going forward unless you can talk Minnesota into a 2 for 1 or just another buy game like we did before.

Would love if we somehow got Seton Hall on the schedule for Brodie both for him and because I could be at the Prudential Center on a train in an hour and a half.

Need to explore more weird opportunities like the one we got vs Miss St in Lincoln as well as the oft-discussed but never realized leveraging of the football relationship to get some games against Dayton and Butler.

Xavier will probably add football and join Drake's league (PFL) in the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, I doubt that will mean anything for basketball scheduling.

You may have something with the Adidas MTE thought.

Drake is in the Cayman Islands Classic. Others so far include Ole Miss, Wake Forest, Stephen F Austin, and Oakland.

https://www.bloggingthebracket.com/2023/4/4/23665918/2023-24-mens-college-basketball-exempt-multi-team-events-mte-thanksgiving-early-season-tournaments

Unfortunately, last year that was a FloSports event.

DD doesn't leave for a bigger job and suddenly we're playing in noted financial paradise Cayman Islands?? Not saying there's definitely a slushfund with his name on it but not not saying it either. 🤔

That is a really underwhelming tournament. I was really hoping we would line up some better competition next pre-season.

Just look at who UNI plays in the Battle 4 Atlantis. That's  the type of competition we need to play against if we really want to elevate our program and the MVC.

Who is we? We don’t have a full team at this point. Think we better be cautious in our early season schedule.

I think at this point the program should schedule to maximize at-large consideration. The goal should be to reload. That doesn’t mean they’re going to avoid down years, but there really should be a protracted slump. So act as if the NCAAs are the goal.

Hoping for amazing signings out of the portal, but even with that the team would need some time to gel so getting some confidence-building wins would be helpful.

Potential match-up with Wake Forest and Coach Steve Forbes is intriguing. I know some of you were pushing hard for Forbes as Drake Head Coach at one point and didn't want some tired UNI grad/Creighton assistant. I mean, not me, but... anyway, moving on...


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Note that it is so far, there are 3 more teams to be added. You never know what you're going to get, remember how we all thought a win against Wyoming and Boston College would be Q1 wins?

Yeah, why is that tournament underwhelming? Cuz it won't be televised on ESPN?
Wake Forest and Ole Miss will always have a chance to be tournament teams cuz of their conference. 

I loved playing College Hoops 2k8 on my Xbox back in the day. Before every season you got to create a schedule with whoever you want to play. Sometimes after reading this board and the mvcfans board,  you'd think that Darian can just plug in his Xbox and unilaterally pick who is on his schedule. 

It takes two to tango. While I'm sure there are better "schedulers" out there, Drake is definitely hamstrung by the no man's land of being a team that could absolutely beat the big boys, but not quite at the upper echelon of brand name mid majors. I'd give Darian some slack (and time) to improve scheduling. I actually thought last year was great scheduling with what should have been a good amount of Q1 games that just didn't materialize.