Your Coach Needs You

I wish teams in the HL (including my favorite team) would schedule no more than 2-3 buy games per year since they just wreak havoc on our conference rating. I get the economic side of it and why they are necessary but if we want our league champion to not be a 15-seed in the NCAA Tournament we need all of our teams to schedule like Wright State has recently. Just win baby, schedule winnable games and then win those games.

With that being said, since you asked to be realistic...here's how I'd try and schedule for Green Bay within the "winnable games" yet "realistic" parameters (assuming a 20-game HL schedule. It'll be interesting to see if they keep the full round robin and play 22-games):

3 high major buy games:
- at Wisconsin - Hopefully the Ryan connection results in the Badgers eventually coming back to GB for a game but I still like this game on the schedule which usually results in a national TV game on BTN
- at Marquette - Glad to see this in-state game happened this year, hopefully it becomes an annual thing when fans are allowed to attend
- at Minnesota - Regional opponent in an area that GB should be recruiting more. Could be winnable with a MN going through a coaching change

3 games at neutral site tournament (Call this hypothetical tournament the ex-UWGB Coaches Invitational):
- Bradley
- Toledo
- UT-Martin (kidding on this one, though Linc Darner [has been linked] to this open job)

5 opponents from mid-major leagues:
- home vs Nebraska-Omaha (HL/Summit Challenge if that's still a thing)
- at Northern Iowa (GB was supposed to start a home-and-home with UNI this season but it was cancelled due to COVID)
- home vs Northern Illinois (always a MAC team on the schedule)
- home vs Morehead State (usually an OVC team on the schedule)
- home vs Evansville (lower level MVC team that may be willing to do a home and home)

Non-D1 games should be outlawed forever. Anyway, my schedule would have 4 road games, 4 home games, and 3 neutral site games. I think most teams want to have 15 home games for season ticket purposes but 14 is close enough.

My rough schedule for Wright State:

Morehead St. (High OVC/High MAC) H/H My dad's alamater
Miami OH H/H (local rival)
WSU Invitational - 2 small conference teams
UMKC 2H/A (Old coach, probably not realistic, can change this summit league challenge)
Belmont H/H
Toledo H/H (Any Ohio MAC team)
Buy Game - SIU/Loyola/any Missouri Valley team - we've done these in the past and won on their court, might be hard to pull off, but nothing beats getting paid for a w
UC 1H/2A - we've done this in the past, i feel like now is a time we could actually win
Butler H/H - i miss this rivalry
Buy Game - Georgetown/Bottom half Big East or Big Ten team.

For Detroit, we'll start with a MTE (2 games).
My preference: Sunshine Slam. In Daytona. Tulsa, Rhode Island, and Boston College are confirmed, with one TBA. We could be a realistic 4th. All beatable teams from higher ranked conferences, on neutral floor. Should be tough but competitive. Second choice: Las Vegas Invitational. Nevada will host. No one else announced.

Return dates already on the schedule
@ Toledo
@ Northeastern
@ SIUE (try to push back one year to schedule additional home game this year)

Buy games (2 total).
@ Michigan or @ Michigan State -- not optimistic either will give us the game, but hopefully.
Talk to following schools for 1 game, 2 if no game with the Michigan B10 schools: Marquette, Dayton, Butler, Xavier, St. Louis

Home and Home possibilities (need 2-3; because of previously scheduled games above, try to get 2 to start in Detroit):
Western Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Duquesne
DePaul, Loyola (both may require 2-1 or be limited to taking buy games)
Princeton
St. Bonaventure
Valparaiso
Canisius (especially if we're looking for a bit easier game in the mix)

The 22 game conference schedule makes things easier, in some ways, for the staff, but it becomes very difficult to put together any kind of interesting non-conference home schedule. If you take a couple buy games, you've got at most 5 games to play with, perhaps as few as 3. And the thing about Home and home series is that you do play one of the two years on the road. So you're talking no more than 2-3 home non-conference games. Schedule three buy games and and a 3 game MTE and you've got 3 games where you're buying small time opponents or playing home and home series, and figure at least one of the H&H games is on the road.