Analysis: Does Illinois Have a Non-Conference Schedule Problem?
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The coronavirus pandemic has shifted the nature of basketball scheduling for the upcoming 2020-21 season and left certain power schools scrambling to preserve a competitive non-conference slate.
For God’s sake, this year’s Maui Invitational will be played in Asheville, North Carolina. If that's not some kind of shift, I don't honestly know what would be.
One of those schools obviously scrambling is Illinois. The Illini program has lost its canceled multi-team event (MTE) in Niceville, Fla., where it was slated to play Florida and the winner/loser of Iowa State vs. Oregon due to concerns over COVID-19 protocols and fears of traveling long distances to a non-bubble situation. Illinois also announced the postponement of the return game in Champaign of the home-and-home contract with Arizona until a mutually agreed upon date in the 2021-22 season. The Arizona-Illinois game was originally scheduled for this season on Dec. 12, 2020.
College basketball analyst Jon Rothstein has reported the ACC/Big Ten Challenge will still be played on school campuses this season despite several changes to the 2020-21 college basketball schedules.
Therefore, Illinois, as a preseason contender for the Big Ten regular season title, is likely slated to get a road game against a highly-ranked power program in that matchup.
Therefore here is what I currently know (or at least have been informed via sources) about the Illini’s 2020-21 season:
- The MTE in Niceville, Fla., where Illinois would've played Florida and the winner/loser of Iowa State/Oregon is CANCELED.
- The return game in Champaign of the home-and-home contract vs. Arizona is POSTPONED.
- The status of the Braggin' Rights game vs. Missouri in St. Louis is UNKNOWN. Since 1983, this game has been played every season in St. Louis and the two teams have only failed to play each other in one season (1982-1983) since scheduling a four-year, home-and-home contract starting in 1976.
- The ACC/Big Ten Challenge will reportedly go on as planned on campus sites with the target dates being Dec. 8 and 9.
- Illinois is putting together plans to host its own MTE in Champaign during the opening week of the 2020-21 season (Nov. 25-27).
- The NCAA Division I Council has restricted that men’s basketball teams can play 24 or 25 games, as well as no more than one multiple-team event. Therefore, if Illinois unretires the Illini Classic for the opening week of the 2020-21 season, that would be its one MTE for the season.
With all these complications arising mostly because of COVID-19 and the NCAA’s continued confidence and borderline insistence (mostly for the obvious financial revenue benefits) to conduct some form of a 2021 NCAA tournament, the obvious question is: is Illinois going to be putting itself behind other national championship programs as it tries to put together an attractive resume for the selection committee? Remember, in a year where Illinois was set to end a seven-year NCAA tournament drought, it still had a non-conference strength of schedule of just 242nd out of 353 Division I programs.
In order to answer that question, I reached out to ESPN bracket analyst Joe Lunardi and the longtime expert on NCAA tournament selection pushed back on any notion that A) Illinois was an early preseason candidate for a No. 1 seed (which directly contradicts the assessment of NCAA.com analyst Andy Katz) or B) the Illini necessarily had a potential schedule problem.
“The talk of a No. 1 seed seems overly optimistic to me,” Lunardi said. “As of today’s new bracket, I have Illinois at No. 14 overall. Not impossible, obviously, see Dayton and San Diego State last year, but historically unlikely to make it to the top line.”
“As far as the non-conference schedule for them, it is a modest concern at this point, but the Big Ten offers the best safety net in the country. Say Illinois gets the equivalent of 10 Quad 1 games in the league and zero outside of it. That’s still going to put them ahead of 80% of the Power 5 (and) we still really have no idea what criteria will ultimately determine seeding (or selection, for that matter) given the extremely unbalanced nature of the season.”