What grade would you give the 2024 Gophers basketball non-conference schedule?

What grade would you give the 2024 Gophers basketball non-conference schedule?

  • A

    Votes: 4 5.1%

  • B

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • C

    Votes: 7 9.0%

  • D

    Votes: 31 39.7%

  • F

    Votes: 36 46.2%
  • Total voters
    78
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MNVCGUY said:
Surprised to see a couple of C votes, not surprised we haven't seen a single A/B and if one shows up it will obviously be someone trolling.
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Obviously the teams on the schedule are majorly underrated. They will all be close to undefeated throughout, except for the Gophs. Then it will be a top 20 schedule and Ben will look like a genius. Calling it now!!!!!!

Ok, where's my medication? I know it's around here somewhere......
 


TwistingMyMelon said:
D but I'll watch the games anyway and I probably could buy early season tickets cheaply in front of the arena and have a good choice of seats. Should be able to see the whole lineup in four or five of these games. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
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We’re choosing the lemons, not getting them.
 

TwistingMyMelon said:
D but I'll watch the games anyway and I probably could buy early season tickets cheaply in front of the arena and have a good choice of seats. Should be able to see the whole lineup in four or five of these games. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
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Guessing the majority of these will be streaming again so unless you pay extra you won’t likely be watching many of them.
 



CentralGopher said:
Guessing the majority of these will be streaming again so unless you pay extra you won’t likely be watching many of them.
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Right now the primary streaming channel from last season comes with Xfinity. There really isn't any other television viewing that is as important to me as Gopher football and basketball so I'll pay if I have to.
 

TwistingMyMelon said:
Right now the primary streaming channel from last season comes with Xfinity. There really isn't any other television viewing that is as important to me as Gopher football and basketball so I'll pay if I have to.
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I wonder if it included with the Samsung streaming options as well. When the time comes I’ll have to look to see.
 

D. It’s bad. Would be an F without the tournament. Just my opinion.
 

CentralGopher said:
I wonder if it included with the Samsung streaming options as well. When the time comes I’ll have to look to see.
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The streaming channel that carried a number of the league games last year was Peacock. I initially paid for it but then Xfinity added it for free. The monthly fee wasn't bad though: I think about $5.99. Like everything else, I wouldn't be surprised if they raised it a bit.
 



TwistingMyMelon said:
The streaming channel that carried a number of the league games last year was Peacock. I initially paid for it but then Xfinity added it for free. The monthly fee wasn't bad though: I think about $5.99. Like everything else, I wouldn't be surprised if they raised it a bit.
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There were a couple games on B1G+ last season. I'd imagine there might be a couple on that platform again. Along with a couple on Peacock. I already sub to Peacock, but not B1G+.
 


Gophers7633 said:
There were a couple games on B1G+ last season. I'd imagine there might be a couple on that platform again. Along with a couple on Peacock. I already sub to Peacock, but not B1G+.
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I do wonder if one may have to rely on BTN+ for more games now that the league has been enlarged but maybe Peackock can handle the load. Typically I bought a one month subscription to BTN+ for earlier November games only. Peacock's televised games are better produced and they're archived for awhile.
 

TwistingMyMelon said:
I do wonder if one may have to rely on BTN+ for more games now that the league has been enlarged but maybe Peackock can handle the load. Typically I bought a one month subscription to BTN+ for earlier November games only. Peacock's televised games are better produced and they're archived for awhile.
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I didn't realize you could do a one month sub to BTN+. I may end up doing that if we have multiple games shown on it. My guess is our first game will be. After that I'm not sure. I do like the Peacock presentation. Even our OOC games on Peacock last year, had a big(ger) time feel to them. Even though our OOC schedule is what it is, I am very much looking forward to the season. I do think we have a chance to be better than last year.
 




Gophers7633 said:
We're already set up for failure. We've gotta do something in league play we've only done a handful of times this century(finish above .500). CBJ has yet to beat a top 25, so playing a good OOC schedule was a must. He's failed us yet again.
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The finishing touches on this schedule sure are discouraging but, if we can finish over .500 in the conference as you say, making the tournament is possible. TCU made it last year and their nonconference was almost as lowly rated as ours (#352 by Pomeroy). They were only 9-9 in conference. Undoubtedly they were helped by the Big 12 being overrated during the season.
 

Gophers7633 said:
I didn't realize you could do a one month sub to BTN+. I may end up doing that if we have multiple games shown on it.
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You can do a one-month subscription (or at least you could in the past - one never knows about the future) for the whole league and it wasn't that much more than doing it for one team.
 

TwistingMyMelon said:
The finishing touches on this schedule sure are discouraging but, if we can finish over .500 in the conference as you say, making the tournament is possible. TCU made it last year and their nonconference was almost as lowly rated as ours (#352 by Pomeroy). They were only 9-9 in conference. Undoubtedly they were helped by the Big 12 being overrated during the season.
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Yeah, I think TCU is a good example. Played an awful OOC, and didn't have any Q1/Q2 OOC wins. We could possibly get 1, and I'm guessing that's probably it. I think 11 conference wins will probably be the magic number for us to put ourselves in position entering the B1G tournament. TCU was also aided by the predictive metrics, something that we were hurt by in OOC, even though the record was good. Losing to Missouri and get blown out by San Fran, really hurt our overall metrics and we had to play catch up the rest of the year. Which we did fairly well until the 2nd IU game and beyond.
 

Gophers7633 said:
Yeah, I think TCU is a good example. Played an awful OOC, and didn't have any Q1/Q2 OOC wins. We could possibly get 1, and I'm guessing that's probably it. I think 11 conference wins will probably be the magic number for us to put ourselves in position entering the B1G tournament. TCU was also aided by the predictive metrics, something that we were hurt by in OOC, even though the record was good. Losing to Missouri and get blown out by San Fran, really hurt our overall metrics and we had to play catch up the rest of the year. Which we did fairly well until the 2nd IU game and beyond.
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Yeah, but just glancing at TCU, they also played 4 neutral site games (not counting conference tourney) and won a conference tourney game. Gophers will play 2 neutral site games this year.
TCU also played 2 away games, Gophers will play 0
Agree TCU had a weak schedule, but even theirs appears stronger than Ben's.
Ben is probably the most cowardly coach out there.
 


fan of Ray Williams said:
Agree TCU had a weak schedule, but even theirs appears stronger than Ben's.
Ben is probably the most cowardly coach out there.
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Yes, there was a bigger difference between the 352nd and 362nd nonconference schedule than one might think. TCU did lose to both of the good teams (Clemson and Nevada) they played in nonconference. Clemson had a very good year though and TCU played them pretty close. TCU beat Georgetown and AZ State but both had losing seasons.

Yes, Ben is a cowardly scheduler but, as I said before, I will watch the games anyway. It's possible that they ran out of good options given how long it took them to finalize the schedule but it's hard not to think that they couldn't have done better than the final two (Western Michigan and Morgan State). Getting Wichita State in the first round of the MTE didn't help either (I'm still mildly shocked at that one). If Ben is still here next offseason, maybe he can figure out a way to get the schedule completed before the 3rd week in August.
 

Expectations can be tempered, if Johnson thought he was going to have a good team he would have scheduled accordingly. He's had a chance to see them practice so he knows what to expect, bummer.
 

jovs said:
Expectations can be tempered, if Johnson thought he was going to have a good team he would have scheduled accordingly. He's had a chance to see them practice so he knows what to expect, bummer.
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I wouldn't read too much into the poor schedule. If the team isn't very good, there will be plenty of time to be depressed later.
 

It's an F like the whole Ben Johnson tenure has been. My view of last years ridiculous schedule was that it was designed to give Ben Johnson a misleadingly "good" record so that Coyle didn't have to fire him after year 3. The reality is the Gophers were something like 10-15 outside Quad 4 and were still worse by all the metric based sites than they were in 6 of 8 Pitino seasons. My worry here is that were going back to the same playbook and Ben Johnson is going to get a 5th (!) year as long as he doesn't lose any of the cupcake games. I just don't understand what the purpose of this is. If you are going to give him another year where he doesn't have to at least make the tournament, then this schedule (and roster construction of almost exclusively Seniors) makes zero sense. If he's got to make the tournament (and my god, that absolutely has to be the bar) then this schedule also makes zero sense. Last year Minnesota finished 89th in NET (below Penn State and their first year coach) and was 1-9 in Quad 1 games. This schedule sets the Gophers up with 1 (or possibly zero if they lose to WSU) opportunities at a Quad 1 win before conference play. Assuming the conference is of similar quality to last season, the Gophers probably end up with about 10 total opportunities at Quad 1 wins again. Given how weak the overall non-conference slate is, they probably need to win 5 of them (or 4 with a "monster" win- again looking back to last year Nebraska and Northwestern made the tournament with 4 Quad 1 wins and both had a win over Purdue). Interestingly, KenPom had Nebraska and Northwestern also playing terrible non-conference schedules last season (-5.41 and -7.35 compared to the Gophers -12.77). If the Gophers are good enough to go 5-5 (or 4-6 with a win over a #1 seed) in Quad 1, then they are likely safely in the tournament. It's just incredibly difficult to win a high percentage of those Quad 1 games. Kansas was 7-9, Kentucky, 6-7, Alabama, was 4-10, etc, etc. There's just zero room for error with this schedule and it throws in the added bonus of alienating whatever is left of the season ticket base too.
 

EG#9 said:
It's an F like the whole Ben Johnson tenure has been. My view of last years ridiculous schedule was that it was designed to give Ben Johnson a misleadingly "good" record so that Coyle didn't have to fire him after year 3. The reality is the Gophers were something like 10-15 outside Quad 4 and were still worse by all the metric based sites than they were in 6 of 8 Pitino seasons. My worry here is that were going back to the same playbook and Ben Johnson is going to get a 5th (!) year as long as he doesn't lose any of the cupcake games. I just don't understand what the purpose of this is. If you are going to give him another year where he doesn't have to at least make the tournament, then this schedule (and roster construction of almost exclusively Seniors) makes zero sense. If he's got to make the tournament (and my god, that absolutely has to be the bar) then this schedule also makes zero sense. Last year Minnesota finished 89th in NET (below Penn State and their first year coach) and was 1-9 in Quad 1 games. This schedule sets the Gophers up with 1 (or possibly zero if they lose to WSU) opportunities at a Quad 1 win before conference play. Assuming the conference is of similar quality to last season, the Gophers probably end up with about 10 total opportunities at Quad 1 wins again. Given how weak the overall non-conference slate is, they probably need to win 5 of them (or 4 with a "monster" win- again looking back to last year Nebraska and Northwestern made the tournament with 4 Quad 1 wins and both had a win over Purdue). Interestingly, KenPom had Nebraska and Northwestern also playing terrible non-conference schedules last season (-5.41 and -7.35 compared to the Gophers -12.77). If the Gophers are good enough to go 5-5 (or 4-6 with a win over a #1 seed) in Quad 1, then they are likely safely in the tournament. It's just incredibly difficult to win a high percentage of those Quad 1 games. Kansas was 7-9, Kentucky, 6-7, Alabama, was 4-10, etc, etc. There's just zero room for error with this schedule and it throws in the added bonus of alienating whatever is left of the season ticket base too.
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So, this schedule makes zero sense. I agree with you. On all levels.
 



Coyle and CBJ should be responding to why the pre-season schedule is good/bad...
 

Really want to hear from the people who voted this as an A schedule.
 


MNVCGUY said:
Anyone who voted A is just messing around or trolling. There is no way anyone would rate this non-conf schedule as an A if they were being serious about the ranking.
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GopherBlood777 said:
Really want to hear from the people who voted this as an A schedule.
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As a member of The A Team, here is our take on the rest of you -

 

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