(02-05-2018 09:28 PM)BeagleUSM Wrote:  

(02-05-2018 03:35 PM)thefaU Wrote:  

(02-04-2018 09:12 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  BTW, based on the various preseason Top 25 polls, Rice is now scheduled to play 16 regular season games (30% of our schedule) against Top 25 caliber opponents...

Stanford x 4
Houston x 3
USM x 3
Sam Houston State x 2
Virgina
UCF
TCU
Texas A&M

One thing Rice does extremely well (in all sports) is schedule. Ours has never been too terrible, with most of our top 25 caliber opponents hailing from Florida, but I'd like to see us schedule another strong series every year.

To me, this is what separates the Big West and the AAC (and possibly even the Sun Belt) from C-USA. The top teams in these conferences schedule much tougher than the top teams in CUSA do (aside from Rice).

Look at the schedules for CSF or LBSU in the BW or Houston, Tulane, and ECU in the AAC. Even ULL, USA, and Coastal in the SB. No comparison to your average C-USA team.

USM's schedule is a little better this year (we finally have a marquee OOC series for the first time in a decade), but most years we're just content to schedule a bunch of terrible snowbirds so we can pad our record and have a bunch of home games early.

Agreed. Of course, you've got to be willing to travel if you want to schedule quality OOC weekend series. Rice typically schedule home and home series with the likes of Stanford, Texas, UCF and ECU. Our season-opening, UCF-hosted tourney in Orlando (with UCF, Virginia and Samford) is payback for UCF coming to Reckling for an early series two years ago.