AD Dave spoke about the split between XL and Gampel on the CT Scoreboard Podcast. Nothing we didn't know already but I am happy enough to see he didn't duck the question. Big East gives us a schedule that we can't control in terms of dates and opponents. XL schedules events ahead of time, though UConn tries to block out dates where we envision having games. Dave acknowledges it is important that XL books other events because they need to do well financially to warrant the improvements we need in the arena. Says UConn tries to schedule XL games over winter break. They try to balance it but doesn't always work out exactly as fans want.
As an XL season-ticket holder, Dave’s answers on the podcast do little to make this situation better.
+ He starts by saying “not to cop out” then cops out by blaming the Big East giving us dates plus the XL Center (though he understands why) needing to book a year in advance.
So let’s get this straight: For decades this venue split has existed and this level of disparity has never occurred but this time, it just so happens they could not make even a single marquee Big East matchup work in Hartford.
+ He then glosses over how even after knowing the Big East schedule at XL is clearly considerably worse, they still made the decision to put the premier non-conference game at Gampel and give XL ticket holders an extra KenPom 300+ game.
+ He admits it is fair to say the schedule is unbalanced — an understatement, to say the least — but that things change from preseason projections (Sure, Dave maybe we’ll all look back and have a good laugh when G’Town, DePaul and a KenPom 300 outperform Baylor, Creighton and St. John’s this season) and offers that maybe the schedule has been unbalanced like this before.
As I said earlier in this thread, I have run numbers by venue when the split is announced and it has not looked anything like this in either direction.
Dave runs a major college athletic dept., this information should already be on hand and it would take an intern an hour or two to look into that instead of just offering it up as a maybe sorta could be fact.
+ He then adds a “Well, this is a great chance to see UConn go undefeated at the XL, haha.”
This is the back-to-back national champions, not some plucky mid-major, we expect to see them win. We got to see them go undefeated at XL last season while playing a representative schedule including dominating the Marquette showdown, destroying Xavier and Pitino’s St. John’s trip in.
We put our money down with an expectation of a fair value when the split comes out. The AD is admitting that did not happen this time.
+ Which leads to the most important point: Where is the make-good attempt? If you run a business and you disappoint your customers, you make it up to them.
It wouldn’t take a whole lot to admit this was a blunder and offer
something to show you care. A signed basketball, tickets to a women’s or football game,
anything that says “We know we let you down and this is a program that has championship standards in every aspect, so we are doing the best we can to live up to that.”