So we know for sure:
St. Bonaventure (11/16)
Pittsburgh (12/3)
Seton Hall (12/14)
NJIT (no date)
Bryant (no date)
UMass
IDEALLY we will play the full slate of games (11) instead of 10 like last season but I have no confidence in that so that's five open spots.
One fun thing about college basketball is there's a message board ADs or coaches post on when they want to schedule games. It is viewable publicly. While nobody from Rutgers had used it since the Pernetti days, we can see what's out there.
Eastern Michigan mentioned they lost their MTE... that's multi-team event, the kind of cobbled-together thing that allows teams to play an extra game. Doesn't need to be a tournament like Maui or Atlantic, it can be an on-campus thing. For example, last season the games against Eastern Michigan, Boston U, Drexel, and Fairleigh Dickinson were technically a part of the "
Hub City Classic." Essentially it's just a round-robin scheduling alliance.
Anyway, if Rutgers and EMU were in another similar arrangement, it fell through. And EMU is looking for a buy game, they could be sub-200 with losing a bunch of seniors though.
UMBC is looking for a buy game on either November 5 or Dec 28-31. They should be around 200ish, could be worse (aka could be Bryant or Niagara)
Iona is looking for a game and has multiple November/December dates. They should be top-175ish.
UCF wants a game on December 10 in Orlando. Getting into a home-and-home with them would be cool but doubt Pikiell wants a midweek trip down to Florida the week of the SHU game.
Princeton is looking for a "regional home-and-home." I know it won't be with us but still.
South Florida is looking for a home-and-home series but the dates don't match up. They'd have been a good opponent.