WE are just a few days away from the start of Herd football under a new coaching regime. Our defending National Champion Soccer team is already in action in trying to defend their Title. Exciting time in Herd Sports, and excitement is growing daily.
At the same time, got mail from the Athletic Department which reminded me, and I'm sure others, that the deadline to renew Season's Basketball Tickets is only a WEEK AWAY!! Yet I note that at the same time nearly a THIRD of this season's schedule, meaning the OOC games, is still UNKNOWN! Seems a lot for the Athletic Department to ask for fans to commit to purchasing tickets without a little more information about the opponents, games, etc.
So, being a HERD Fan with lots of "time" for pursuing a lot of important issues (its called "Retirement", folks), I decided to do some surfing on the Net to see what basketball "nuggets" I could dig up! My wife had another not so pleasant "term" for my endeavor, but since this is a "family friendly" board, I won't quote her! ;)
I decided to do a sort of "geographic" search of other college basketball sites starting with States around WV. Then I spread out a little farther to the likes of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana.
First, I recall that I believe Herdmeister had commented that we only had one $$ game, and that was at Indiana. I believe too that there was mention that perhaps this was as part of the Global Tournament that we have participated in for a few years, or maybe a similar such tournament.
Also, I need to mention that my "study" revealed that MU is not alone: there are many, many schools that still have incomplete schedules, schedules with only Conference games finalized, some with only OOC games finalized, etc., etc.
Indiana's schedule has all the Conference teams they play listed, at home and on the road, but with no firm dates set as yet. They have firm dates set with these OOC foes: Northern Illinois, Northern Kentucky, St. Johns, Syracuse and Notre Dame. Three games with OOC foes Merrimack, Louisiana Lafayette and MARSHALL are yet to scheduled, date and time wise! To me, that may mean that if this is a Global tourney type of event, that Herd fans could expect to see Merrimack (don't even ask me where that is) and Louisiana-Lafayette in the CAM this fall/early winter! Yes, that is the former SW Louisiana team, "Rajin Cajuns", that under Bo Lamar won a NCAA shootout tourney game over the HERD and Mike D'Antoni, Randy Noll, Coach Carl Tacy, etc.
Back to the Herd Schedule, from the Opponents sites only, I discovered that the Herd is slated to play at Akron on Weds., Dec. 1st, at home on Saturday, Dec. 4th, versus Duquesne, and at Toledo on Tuesday, Dec. 21st. In November, the Herd wil play Wright State at home on Friday, the 12th. We have a big football game, with UAB, in the JOAN the next afternoon. Not sure if Wright State will be the season opener, as teams can open as early as Tues., November 9th (WVU opens at home on that date). So MU may play earlier in that week prior to Wright State.
One final question regarding basketball scheduling. Hopefully, at least for most of us, there will be a "new philosophy" regarding how, where, etc., we can schedule some OOC games in the future whenever we have a new "permanent" Athletic Director in place.
In that regard, I hope that Danny and the new AD will perhaps consider this as a possibility. A recent article indicted that WVU will play Akron on OCT. 29th in Morgantown in a "charity exhibition game" to benefit a Cancer Research Endowment Fund named after Bob Huggins' mother. Article further noted that this is the 4th time WVU has played a Charity exhibition game, last done in 2019 against Duquesne to benefit the Dayton Oregon District Tragedy Fund. The article further noted that "The NCAA approved that an institution may use one of its possible two exhibition games against a Division 1 institution for the purposes of raising funds for a non-profit organization of the school's choice."
Why can't MU possibly schedule such an exhibition against another school who may not be on the HERD's regular schedule, or not want to play a regular season game a particular season against MU? Schools like Morehead St. and EKU come quickly to mind. Give them a decent enough $$$ guarantee to come to Huntington for a late October exhibition game. Sell 5000 or better tickets to such an event should make it viable, IMO. Have a benefit game say for the Hoops Children's Hospital, or perhaps the Edwards Cancer Center, or another worthy Huntington area organization.
I hope Danny considers this and takes it to our new AD to consider, maybe as early as the 22-23 season!!