basketball schedule released

Day late, maybe even a dollar short, but it's like I said: news postings just weren't in the cards for the past three days. That said, I'm safely ensconced back home, and here for you is the '08-'09 basketball schedule.

11/16: VMI
11/19: South Florida
11/21: Radford
11/25: Liberty
11/28: @Syracuse
12/2: @Minnesota
12/17: Longwood
12/20: Auburn
12/23: Hampton
12/28: @Georgia Tech
1/3: Xavier
1/6: Brown
1/10: @Virginia Tech
1/15: North Carolina
1/20: @Maryland
1/24: Florida State
2/1: @Duke
2/4: Boston College
2/7: @North Carolina
2/10: @Florida State
2/15: Clemson
2/18: Virginia Tech
2/21: @North Carolina State
2/26: Miami
2/28: Wake Forest
3/3: @Clemson
3/7: Maryland

More detailed look coming eventually. First impression: moderately favorable.

- The only really really good team we get twice is UNC. We also get a double dose of Maryland, VT (as per usual, these two), Clemson, and FSU, in which list the teams are more beatable than not.
- Kudos to Littlepage for again scheduling some recognizable teams on the nonconference slate, even though Xavier is going to squash us. Auburn, who you may recognize from the sport of football, is a terrible team and a good chance to get a win over an SEC team without actually beating a good one. Cuse is their usual pretty good self, which will probably also be good enough to smoke us, especially since the game is in the Carrier Warehouse. (Side rant - Syracuse was a school I was considering applying to and that awful building is a big reason why I did not. College football in a dome? Wrong, so wrong.)
- As usual we got hosed in the Challenge. After we have good years we always get some loser team that causes nobody to care about the matchup; after bad years we are the bone that gets thrown to the Big Ten so they can scrounge a win somehow. Minny is a good team and getting better.
- Our five-hundred year contract with Longwood continues. Personally I'm just glad to see that game pushed back into the non-conference part of the season with the rest of the tomato cans.
- Bit heavier on the instate teams than usual. Five are on the nonconference schedule, which doesn't include Tech.