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Message: [QUOTE="Carnac, post: 4408778, member: 5798"] It's a given that the during the last 10-11 years, the teams in the AAC and BIG East conferences were/are not strong enough to impress the tournament selection committee during seeding. Wanting a high seed, UConn is thus forced to front-load their schedule with ranked teams, most of which will only play them during November and December. Remember, scheduling OOC schools like UConn does in January and February plays havoc with scheduling BIG East Conference games. The BE schedulers have to work around those games that have already been scheduled. The ideal thing for UConn to do would be to spread their out of conference (OOC) games throughout the first 3 months of the season. That's "IF" those ranked schools will agree to play them that late in the season. You can only schedule teams that will play you when it's convenient for BOTH schools. Most (not all) schools play ALL of their OOC games in November and December. The BIG East conference is improving. It had 4 schools get in the the NCAAT last year. Butler hired a new coach that should turn that program around in a couple of years. Competition in the BE is not what we'd like it to be, but it's getting better each year. For purely selfish reasons, I'd like to see UConn play a home and home series with [B]Stanford[/B] and [B]UCLA[/B] [U]every year[/U]. Of course that would mean that UConn would have to come to Southern California every other year. :D THAT would be nirvana for me. It should not be hard for both of these schools to find another ranked program on the east coast willing to play them every year, or every other year to make the trip east worth while. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach