Rhode Island MBB Schedules UNC-Asheville - My Likes and Dislikes
The University of Rhode Island's men's basketball team gets to play UNC in the 2017-2018 college basketball season! No, not THAT UNC... The Rams will be hosting the Bulldogs of UNC-Asheville sometime during the non-conference portion of their schedule, as reported by Jon Rothstein:
As always, I wanted to highlight my likes and dislikes surrounding this scheduling move.
Likes:
1. UNC-Asheville is the premier college basketball team in the Big South. The Bulldogs are repeatedly at the top of the Big South standings and they could have moved on to a better basketball conference by now. Furthermore, between the other participating mid-major teams (Monmouth, Austin Peay, Oakland CIty, and Fairleigh Dickinson) in the NIT Season Tip-Off games, they are arguably the best team to play against.
2. In the current century, the Bulldogs have made the NCAA tournament in 2003, 2011, 2012, and 2016. This is a team that can be expected to do nothing but help Rhode Island's resume for the 2018 NCAA tournament and give the Rams a strong test early in the season.
3. Macio Teague, UNC-Asheville's second-highest returning scorer (15.4 PPG in 2016-2017), is a sophomore that should have his youth and inexperience exploited against the likes of Dan Hurley's veteran-laden backcourt.
4. UNC-Asheville is not a particularly strong rebounding team, as they averaged 34 rebounds per game last season. In comparison with Rhode Island's metrics from last season, these two teams are bound for a close game that will go under the radar on the national scale.
Dislikes: (I have no complaints about this one. In fact, I wanted URI to schedule UNC-Asheville going into this season.)
My tweet when I heard about this scheduling move says it all:
