The Art and Science of College Basketball Scheduling

By Jim Beseda I jimbeseda@gmail.com I @JimBeseda

When setting up Pilots schedules, University of Portland men's basketball coach Eric Reveno is looking for at least four things in a non-conference opponent.
 
Reveno wants teams that play a variety of styles at both ends of the floor, teams that will help the Pilots grow individually and as a group, teams that will help prepare the Pilots for the rigors of West Coast Conference play, and teams that are willing to play the Pilots at the Chiles Center.
 
Throw in a game or two against a top-25 team from one of college basketball's six major conference like Monday's game against No. 2 Michigan State in East Lansing, plus games with Oregon, Oregon State and Portland State when they're available, and the Pilots end up with a schedule that Reveno says is a crucial building block in taking his program where he'd like to see it go.
 
Sounds easy, right? Call a few buddies in the coaching fraternity, pick some dates and — boom! — done.
 
It's more complicated than that, especially in a world where guaranteed contracts can fetch a visiting team anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 for a single game and where cable television networks such as ESPN are dictating a number of early-season match-ups as well as when and where those games are played.
 
The tricky part for the Pilots, who are close to finalizing their 2014-15 schedule and have already filled a couple 2015-16 dates, is projecting the type of team they and potential opponents are going to have in two years.
 
"There's a science to it, but the art is in knowing how good Boise State is going to be. Is that a good game for you?" said Reveno, who works closely with assistant coach Michael Wolf and Pilots athletic director Scott Leykam in lining up a schedule. "Sometimes I think in the end you just need to be lucky a little bit, because you can get unlucky and have a schedule that looks good on paper come back and bite you."
 
Many of the Pilots' struggles over the past two seasons could be traced to schedules that were too ambitious and too demanding for a program that was retooling after the most successful three-year run in school history.
 
"I've definitely learned my lesson," Reveno said. "I did not get out in front of it two years ago. With recruiting, I've got some constraints. Our scheduling was a problem that we should have solved sooner and I'll take responsibility for not having pushed harder for more resources going to scheduling. 
 
"If you over-challenge a young team, it tends to hamper their development. Out of 351 Division I teams, if you're playing the top 100 all the time, that's asking a lot from the human spirit of a competitor to have them just keep standing up and taking one on the chin. You at least want to pick some fights where you can go 50-50.
 
"I don't want to dwell on the past, but the positive is that we are now allocating more resources to scheduling."
 
By that, he means the Pilots in the two years since Leykam took over the athletic department have been more creative in their scheduling, whether that's lining up multi-team events or spending money to bring teams to the Chiles Center. Either way, it's a departure from how the Pilots scheduled games during Reveno's first few seasons on The Bluff when the philosophy was more about playing big-name teams in big-time arenas than it was about trying to build the local fan base.
 
"We've gone from looking for the biggest bang we can get to the most balance we can get," said Leykam, who served as a senior associate director with the West Coast Conference before coming to Portland. "A byproduct of the bang was getting stuck playing on the road too often in tough situations.
 
"The first month of the year last year, we were at Ohio U, New Mexico, Washington State and Kentucky, and that's a tough way to start, especially for young players. Where's the balance? You want one or two games that have some bang, but you also want to balance that with some home games and games at neutral sites to get you ready for league play."
 
Scheduling also can influence recruiting, but here's the question as it pertains to the Pilots: Are prospects impressed more by a schedule that features one or two non-conference games against national powers or a schedule that has the potential to produce a 20-win season and a berth in a post-season tournament?
 
"I think it's a little bit of both," said Wolf, in his eighth season as a Pilot assistant. "It probably leans more towards the marquee match-ups, because you can balance out the win-loss part by playing well in other games. Or even playing well in the marquee game. But if you play well at Kentucky, win or lose, the recruits are watching that game on ESPN and thinking, 'I want to do that. I want to be a part of that.'"
 
Reveno likes the games against the big-name teams, too.
 
"As a player at Stanford, I remember playing at Indiana, I remember playing against Dean Smith and North Carolina in the Dean Dome," Reveno said. "I want to give our players those opportunities, so when they're watching Michigan State they can say, 'I played there.' 
 
"So, you want to have some of those … maybe one or two a year. You don't want four or five."
 
Monday's Portland-Michigan State game is not the typical David vs. Goliath affair where David walks away with a big paycheck. It is part of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, one of the growing number of multi-team events that are popping up on most Division I non-conference schedules.
 
In exchange for Portland going on the road to play Michigan State on Monday, the Pilots get to host three games in three nights at the Chiles Center — Thursday vs. Idaho, Friday vs. Columbia, and Saturday vs. North Texas. There are no return game commitments for the Pilots and Portland was not forced to pay a guarantee to any team in the tournament. 
 
"Playing Michigan State once is great, but the bigger question is can we take advantage of those three home games?" Reveno said. "If you win those three home games, then the trip to Michigan State was worth it. If you go 0-4 during that stretch, then all of a sudden people will say, 'That's bad scheduling.' "
 
Nobody said it was a perfect science.
 
"Our scheduling woes are not unique to us, nor are the solutions unique," Reveno said. "Right now, when it comes to schedules, the middle is getting squeezed. The high-majors love the model, because they buy their schedule and a team like Notre Dame doesn't leave South Bend, Ind., during the non-conference season.
 
"The Pac-12's teams are like that, too. They have big budgets where they can buy teams and play most of their non-conference games at home."
 
Reveno said he wants to play Oregon, Oregon State and Portland State every season, but finding the right terms has proven problematic in recent years.
 
When the Pilots faced Oregon State in Corvallis Wednesday, it marked the first time the teams had met since 2007. It also was the first half of a home-and-home series that will see the Beavers come to Portland for a game in the Chiles Center next season.
 
"I remember what it was like being at a smaller school in a state where you had a couple of bigger schools when I was at Brown," Beavers coach Craig Robinson said. "You had Rhode Island and Providence, and I can't tell you how much it meant to me when those guys would play us, and even come to our place to play us every once in awhile.
 
"I think it's important for the state of Oregon that we play each other and keep the interest in college basketball high. Having said that, when I was at Brown, I understood why the big schools didn't want to come that often."
 
As for the Ducks, the last time they played Portland was in 2009 when Ernie Kent was in his final season as coach at Oregon and the Pilots won 88-81 at the Chiles Center — the final game in a 10-year, home-and-home contract.
 
Since then, the Ducks have shown some interest in playing the Pilots in Eugene, but progress has not been made on Oregon returning to the Chiles Center.
 
Said Wolf: "We'd like to play them, but we'd like to get them here, too. We don't need to just go down there to get paid. Some teams need to make that money. For us, the money helps, but we'd like to have a little more equity in the relationship, if that's possible."
 
Ducks or no Ducks, the Pilots' 2013-14 schedule still works for Reveno.
 
"I think it will challenge our team in a way that it doesn't smother them," Reveno said. "It will help us grow and that's what it's all about — building a schedule that allows your team to grow."

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About the author: Jim Beseda, a former sportswriter at The Oregonian, is writing feature stories about that Pilots that will appear throughout the 2013-14 season. Readers can reach Jim at jimbeseda@gmail.com or (503) 720-7684. You can also follow him on Twitter @JimBeseda.