Geoff Burke-US PRESSWIRE
With the Old Dominion basketball schedule for the 2012-13 season still fresh, ODU Athletic Director Wood Selig, is already looking ahead to next season. Selig will be in attendance at the Conference USA meetings later this month, lobbying on behalf of his school to have less conference games in their opening season.
C-USA would ideally like teams to play 19 conference games. These games would consist of home-and-away games against the teams within ODU’s seven-team division, then the other five games would come from one matcuhp with teams in the other division. Selig wants the team to play three less conference games.
The Monarchs will enter C-USA starting the 2013-14 season, but they still want to keep their options open for intra-state matchups with schools such as rival VCU, William and Mary, JMU and Richmond. Conference re-alignment has and will continue to affect devoted fans of rival schools. Just like other big rivalries across the country, these games have great importance to the students and fans. So, naturally, Selig and ODU would like to keep those relationships in tact.
Keeping those in-state games would also mean less travel fatigue for the Monarchs, as they now have to make journeys to Texas and Florida to take on new conference opponents.
A roadblock to Selig’s rhetoric is the fact that C-USA takes a more active approach in scheduling than the CAA. The CAA lets teams make their own schedule and gives financial incentives to those who play tougher opponents. C-USA on the other hand, gets more involved with the scheduling as the conference has to approve non-conference opponents based on how good they think the team will be. So, if you are a good team, you’re expected to play great teams. Less talented teams will be judged accordingly.
It should be an interesting development for the upcoming months. Stay tuned.
