Couch: MSU's road-heavy basketball schedule imperfect, but worth it
EAST LANSING – The news this week that Michigan State’s basketball team will play at Duke in the next ACC/Big Ten Challenge was met with a sigh from more than a few Spartan faithful.
Nothing to do with the matchup. Just the location. “At Duke.” Never East Lansing, it seems.
“Why does MSU always have to play there?” A friend’s father asked.
“Always” is a relative term.
The home-road disparity in this matchup isn’t actually much of a disparity. While Duke has only visited Breslin Center once, in 2003 as part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, MSU has only played at Cameron Indoor Stadium twice, in 2004 and 2010. Both of those games were also part of the annual ACC/Big Ten pairings. The other seven meetings in the Tom Izzo era have been on a neutral court.
The Big Ten/ACC Challenge has been fairly fair to MSU, which, after this fall, will have been scheduled for nine home and nine road games in the event’s 18 years, alternating home and away each of the last six, including home last season.
If there is disappointment for Spartan fans it should be in this: The most perilous and perhaps intriguing November in MSU basketball history will happen almost entirely away from East Lansing.
MSU opens with six of its first eight games away from Breslin — beginning against Arizona in the Armed Forces Classic on Nov. 11 at Pearl Harbor, before facing Kentucky four days later in the Champions Classic in New York, then trekking to the Bahamas for a three-game tournament over Thanksgiving and finally playing at Duke on Nov. 29.
“Which one do you not do?” said MSU assistant athletic director Kevin Pauga, who handles much of the basketball scheduling.
It’s a rhetorical question, of course. You do all of them. At every chance.
Beyond the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, each of these events and games are either happening on a neutral court some place interesting or they’re not happening at all.
This is the price of having a sought-after program, one so closely aligned with the sport’s blue bloods.
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The value of these events and frequent marquee matchups is worth it for MSU, even if the home season ticket comes with a little less sizzle.
Think of what the Champions Classic alone has provided MSU — the annual association with programs once in another stratosphere, the No. 1 vs. 2 matchup with Kentucky three years ago, Denzel Valentine’s coming out party last season against Kansas.
“For Denzel to perform at that level, a triple-double on that stage, for us as a university to be exposed in that way … if he had that same game against a lesser team in a home game, it’s not as noticed,” Pauga said.
For this year’s unproven but heralded MSU team, the early tests — including at Duke — could be tremendously useful.
MSU has endured a few schedules close to this — six of eight away from home to start (2014-15), opening seasons with Connecticut and Kansas (2012-13) or North Carolina and Duke (2011-12) — but never quite to this extent, even if the field in the Bahamas is better in brand than it is in basketball this coming year.
“That team (in 2011-12), Draymond (Green’s) senior year, wound up with a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and I think learned a lot about themselves right away,” Pauga said.
Pauga is an analytics savant of sorts, fascinated by rankings, metrics and scheduling even before his days as the director of operations for MSU’s basketball program. But even he can’t create the perfect basketball schedule. Not in this climate, where teams for some reason run like hell from true road games, unless they’re forced — like with the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, which brought Louisville to town last year and North Carolina two years ago.
Pauga is hoping to have one marquee non-conference opponent at Breslin next December, though nothing is done at the moment. The only games announced are Dec. 18 against Northeastern and Dec. 21 against Oakland.
Pauga’s goal — every year — is to have at least seven of the 13 non-conference games at Breslin. With annual commitments to the Champions Classic, a three-game exempt tournament somewhere, the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and sometimes the Armed Forces Classic, it’s tricky to also bring in premium opponents, like Florida last season or Texas in recent years. Those sort of deals usually include return games. For example, MSU will play at Florida next year. But if your six away dates are already spoken for, as they are this November, there’s no room for a return game, complicating negotiations.
“We don’t have a lot of space to play with,” Pauga said.
The result: MSU mostly pays smaller opponents to come to East Lansing — Eastern Michigan, Texas Southern, etc.
MSU hasn’t even had wiggle room on its schedule to take part in the Gavitt Games, a yearly challenge between the Big Ten and Big East, which began last season. Eventually, over the next decade, MSU will participate four or five times, with at least two homes games.
Pauga, though, understands the sigh. About Duke. About a lack of big-time home games before Big Ten play. The latter he hopes to fix with better scheduling balance in coming years.
“I think it’s a valid point, and it’s something we’re shooting for,” Pauga said.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.