Okay, here's something weird...

[SFHoya99]

The Rainbow Classic is an exempt tournament.

I've been assuming all along that it is not an exempt tourney; that since we have 27 games scheduled including all three classic games, that we all three games counted towards our 27.

But they don't seem to count towards Clemson's, or UAB's, or Oral Robert's...so basically, for some reason or another, GU is choosing to play two less games than it could have this year.

Anyone have a reason? Does this mean it doesn't count as an exempt tourney for us? Is it because we lose money on the creampuffs? Didn't feel like playing two more whole games?

One thought - Esh didn't like the Temple/Duke games during the conference season if I remember right. And GU doesn't like to load up December. So maybe they reasoned that 27 games was enough.

[Joe Hoya]

Maybe with the 2-in-4 rule, if we don't treat this as exempt, we can enter a more prominent event when we have a chance of winning more games. Just a thought.

[SFHoya99]

Yeah, I thought of that. Hope it is true.

[FOTP]

I actually think the real issue was getting teams to play us so late in the cycle. Just because we don't take advantage of the extra games doesn't mean playing in the tournament effectively doesn't count. We chose not to take advantage of the rule.

The real issue was our very narrow timeframe for games. We just couldn't schedule the extra 2-3 games the exempt tournament would allow us to.

Heck...we barely got to the minimum 27 games at the last minute.

[SFHoya99]

That's a fine excuse for the current regime.

But why didn't Esh & Co. have us scheduled? Not criticizing, just curious.

[Deleted]

When III was hired, he pretty much cleaned the slate on scheduling. We had commitments to the back end of home and homes (Temple, Davidson, Citadel, Penn State), but other things that Esh had in the works went on hold - some got scrapped, some (like, I'm guessing, Howard and Norfolk) stayed on the schedule.