The problem is, Hurley is a numbers guy. He’s going to look at the schedule we played this year ( OOC), the Big East games we could have potentially won (Creighton 2X, Hall, Xavier, PC), the fact that we finished with a mid-teens NET and say “if we won a few of those games we should have, we’d have been a top 10 NET team. So let’s run it back again.”
Would love to see a packed OOC schedule, but it’s clear the numbers the staff has feels the risk of an L outweighs the reward as long as we take care of business in conference play.
The thing is, they aren’t wrong. But is annoying as fans because a close loss in a packed Gampel to Michigan State would be way more entertaining than a 12 point win over Gardner Webb in an empty XL.
*we also get 2 challenge games added to the schedule this year, even less incentive for the staff to go out and schedule anymore P5 OOC games