So, sometimes, I have to say or my assistant has to say, ‘We’ve got to play this team,’ and I wouldn’t really want to. “It’s just not the ones that you want to play. “We’re diligent about it, but like the people who say that they won’t play us, there’s always a, ‘Well, who won’t play you?’ because someone will,” Gonzaga head coach Lisa Fortier said at last month’s WCC media day. Why don’t large programs travel to the courts of mid-majors more often? Why are the costs of guarantee games in women’s basketball creeping ever upward? Why do West Coast teams have difficulty getting home games against teams from the Eastern part of the country? Is the problem really that no teams will come to a mid-major or West Coast court or is it about coaches not getting the kind of opponents they want?
Nonconference scheduling in Division I basketball is a topic fraught with complaints and controversy on both the men’s and the women’s side of the sport.
