NCAA Basketball: Modern-day scheduling is a puzzling art for coaches

Teams have different goals when scheduling, but postseason is always the goal

When coaches look at building a schedule their goals are multilayered and they have very little time and space to accomplish those goals. No matter what those goals may be, the NCAA Tournament is always the elephant in the room. Of the coaches I talked to, a majority of them said the NCAA’s NET rankings are always a consideration for them when they look at scheduling.

South Dakota State head coach Eric Henderson said, “We’ve been at the top, or near the top of our league for a while now, so we want to make sure we challenge ourselves and put ourselves in the best position possible, especially when it comes to the NET.”

It seems as though every school has at least one eye on the tournament selection process at all times and it’s not just the smaller Cinderella schools. I spoke to Tennessee’s Rick Barnes and he told me about a promise he made to himself and his teams early on in his coaching career.

"“I learned back when I was in the Big East with Dave Gavitt that if we are ever on the bubble, we don’t want our schedule not to stand up for what we need.”"

While postseason preparation may be the biggest goal when coaches build their schedules, they have other goals as well. Some of those other goals include going to the home areas of some of their players if possible and as Colgate’s Matt Langel told me, preparing your team for league play. He said, “We like to play a schedule that not only challenges us but also prepares us for Patriot League play, and one of the ways we do that is by scheduling as many different styles as possible.”

There is a lot to accomplish for coaches in a short amount of season time with only about two months in which coaches can dictate who they play, and for a lot of teams, those two months go a long way in determining the likelihood of playing in March.