Basketball Schedules Out

Lipscomb has released its basketball schedules for the Bisons and Lady Bisons. Highlights:

-- 10 road games. The men only play 3 of their 13 nonconference games at home. That'll help the conference RPI. My first look gives them about 6 wins, but with road games valued the way they are in the RPI everyone will look better.

-- Men's road games at Vandy and tournaments at Iowa State and MTSU. App. State is in the MTSU field.

-- Divisional play. The A-Sun now has 12 (!) teams, so Lipscomb only plays home-and-home with Belmont, ETSU, Gardner-Webb, Campbell, and USC-Upstate. The rest of the conference only plays once.

-- The women get to go to Hawaii again. They kicked off their NCAA run with a couple of big wins in the islands 4 years ago. Unfortunately, the likelihood of history repeating itself is slim unless they get a lot better at winning away from Allen Arena.

-- The women are at Vandy and at TSU. They also travel to Arkansas in November. Best case for the Lady Bisons? Assuming their tall girls are healthy (which is so rare as to be laughable lately), they are capable of going 7-7 out of conference. That said, if they have the injuries again (especially if those injuries force Coach Bennett to play a perimiter-oriented game instead of the post-play style he likes) and they play on the road the way they have the last 2 1/2 years (3 wins total since February '05), we could be looking at 2-12.

-- Speaking of Allen Arena, Lipscomb is the host school for both the men's and women's conference tournaments this year. The tournaments will be played concurrently with the top 8 qualifying. Three points on this: 1) See above about the importance of Lipscomb's women playing at home. Since January 29, 2005, they are 14-17 at home and 3-36 on the road. 2) Finishing with a top 2 seed will be vital to winning this thing, since they will likely put the 1-8 and 2-7 games on Day 1 and the 3-6 and 4-5 game son Day 2. The extra day of rest will be huge, especially for a team like Lipscomb who tends to play with a short bench anyway. 3) I am so there. I'll be looking for tickets as soon as they come available.