Diary Series: Inside scheduling at Illinois, from Asst. Coach Jay Price

The season is off to a great start for the Fighting Illini, but I thought that I would center this blog on a subject that is second in questions to recruiting. That is scheduling. It is a topic that garners a lot of attention and reactions. So I felt that I would give an inside look to how the Illini schedule is pieced together.

It takes a lot of time to put together a basketball schedule. Unlike football where schedules are done years in advance, basketball schedules are mostly done year to year. We are allowed to play 27 games, plus an exempt event that can have no more than 4 games, plus the Big Ten tournament and 2 exhibitions. We try to have 17 home games per year.

There are certain games that are advanced out, such as the four year contract that we have had with Gonzaga, but that is the exception not the rule. Each season begins with certain games that are set. We always have the Big 10/ACC Challenge. While it is assumed that we will be home one year and on the road the next that is not always a guarantee. We also have the United Center game, a return from the United Center game and the Missouri game. That is four games that are set year to year. So, we must find a certain number of games to complete the schedule.

We need to play “guarantee” games at home. These are games where we pay the opponent to play us in Champaign and we do not have to return the game. On average we play 5-7 per year. These games take a lot of work to obtain. I probably make 150 calls to get the 5-7 games. There are a lot of different factors that are in play in the games. We take in to account the teams' RPI (knowing that it changes year to year), the style of play, distance from Champaign, as well as their prognosis for the season. We want to make sure that we challenge ourselves in these games.

We will always play an exempt event and these are done in advance. We want our student athletes to experience different parts of the country and so we will look at each event in its entirety. We always want to choose locals that will be attractive to our fans so that they can follow and support the Illini. Most of these events are now allowing for one to two additional home game which helps. We try to schedule these out 3-4 years.

The other games, such as series or the United Center games, we try to find the absolute best teams that we can find that also fit in our scheduling criteria. We try very hard to move around the country to play games. Since the University of Illinois has a huge alumni base we try to go to them. That is why we have played games in Seattle, Georgia, New York and Las Vegas. We also try to get players that are from out of the area home. So we will try and play a game in the south for Devin Langford. We were lucky to play at Maryland this year for Ibby Djimde.

Scheduling is also dictated by the availability of the Assembly Hall. We work very closely with the Hall to determine what dates are free and what dates are needed for other events at the Hall. Once we are able to secure the dates, these then have to match with our opponent. This can be an arduous task. Throw in that everyone takes finals and a lot of finals weeks are different, it can make it difficult to find a date to play.

One of the greatest feelings is being complete with the schedule. The goal is to have it completed before the Final Four, however that is not always possible. The latest that we have had to go still needing games was August. That was a bad summer!

I hoped that you have enjoyed some insight into scheduling. Please follow me on twitter @coachjayprice.  I would love to hear some feedback and suggestions of teams that you would like the Illini to play.

* * *