8.5

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MBB Scholarship Chart

How can we not get games with Northwestern, UIC, and DePaul? There will be no fans in attendance, so revenue and home court advantage aren't as much of a factor. It connects us to the schedules of the Big 10, Horizon, and Big East in tournament ranking numbers.

Add UW-Milwaukee and 2-3 other area teams.... Western Michigan? Notre Dame?

There should be enough local teams with minimal travel to put together a non-con schedule of 6-8 games before conference season starts.

Per Matt Norlander on Twitter, Loyola and Cincinnati are teaming up for a four-school MTE in Indy. Two other teams TBD.

Awesome!

Seems promising.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Has our Depaul game been officially canceled?

Let’s not kid ourselves. The egos and need for self-preservation are the only reason we don’t have a Chicago-area bubble with 4 or 5 possible games.

There is absolutely NO reason Loyola, DePaul, Northwestern, Notre Dame, UIC, and Chicago State couldn’t get together in a neutral location for a week and knock out 4 to 5 games each. It’s not about the cost, it’s not about travel, it’s not about safety. It’s certainly not because Porter wouldn’t do it.

At Northwestern, Collins is on the brink of his 4th losing season in a row after making the tournament - with a worse record each l year. They’ve finished 15-17, 13-19, and 8-23 the past 3 years. They aren’t getting better. 4 straight losing seasons will bust Collins. He needs a winning record, and he’s not gonna risk losing the local recruiting war by possibly losing to the likes of Loyola or UIC, or taking another loss to DePaul. He wants to avoid the local teams if possible - his job depends on it. Not winning in the big 10 sucks - but losing to the local valley or horizon league teams? He doesn’t have that long of a leash now.

Same with DePaul - Dave just needs to try and find wins this year whenever he can buy them so his record is as close to .500 as possible, and maybe the recruits he miraculously got will stay with him. He wants no part of a loaded Loyola team.

If “safety” is the issue ... it only makes sense to minimize travel and play local. If you don’t see DePaul and Northwestern on Loyola’s non-con schedule this year ... you know exactly why.

Interesting scheduling in some other conferences. Some are having only 4 road trips playing the same team on both Th and Sat. That would be like us hosting Bradley on both Th and Sat but never playing there or going to Valpo for two games but never hosting them. https://www.google.com/amp/s/newsadvanc ... d.amp.html

https://conferenceusa.com/news/2020/10/ ... ormat.aspx

Also: https://www.google.com/amp/s/thesouther ... c.amp.html