Scheduling has become more complicated since the Big East broke up, and the Huskies moved into the American Athletic Conference, which does not provide an annual array of ranked, and more important, RPI-rich opponents. UConn has had to schedule up, and it's McCarthy who lines up opponents for Kevin Ollie and Warde Manuel to approve, such as nonconference games with schools like Ohio State, Georgetown, Texas and Maryland for the upcoming season.
The 2015-2016 schedule isn't ready to be unveiled, but it does begin at home Nov. 13, against Maine, and other mid-major opponents next season will include New Hampshire, Sacred Heart and Central Connecticut.
McCarthy is thinking big, with a home-and-home series against Arizona to begin in 2017-18, and talks advancing to place the Huskies at Madison Square Garden on an annual basis. There are ongoing discussions moving toward three-game arcs against former Big East rivals Syracuse, St. John's and Villanova that would include home-and-home components, plus a neutral game in New York. Last season, UConn did not play a game at MSG for the first time in more than 30 years.
"We regard ourselves to be one of the premier college basketball programs in the country," McCarthy said, "and we look to schedule games in accordance with that, to serve the best interests of the program. Our over-arching objective is to best position our basketball team for the NCAA Tournament,given the measuring factors of RPI, number of wins, strength of schedule, roads wins, signature wins. … We want to play a national schedule."
As a working model, McCarthy looks to schedule three or four high major opponents – which he defines as schools in the top 30 to top 50 in RPI – with no more than two on the road. Then he anticipates three more games against high majors in a multi-team event, such as the Battle4Atlantis in the Bahamas next season. Then there is one neutral site game, such as Maryland in the Jimmy V Classic at MSG. It adds up to seven or eight major opponents.
This means that scheduling can no longer be approached year-to-year. "You're seeing more schools adopt the football approach, where you're scheduling high major games in the years going forward," McCarthy said.
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For example, when McCarthy began talking to Arizona, neither school could make a series work during the next couple of years, so it has been locked in for three and four seasons ahead. McCarthy said he would love to make a series with Kentucky happen, but with the longterm commitments of both schools, it would have to be scheduled several seasons in advance.
In the Bahamas this season, UConn is in a field that includes Syracuse, Michigan, Gonzaga, Texas, Washington. The Huskies will be in similarly strong fields in the Maui Invitational in 2016 and the Nike event in 2017.
When McCarthy sites RPI, he considers both the most recent season, and a multi-year sample. He keeps color-coded charts on about 30 of the top programs, how they are scheduling, and how UConn's schedule shook out in the final years in the Big East, and then works to balance UConn's conference and nonconference schedule to fall in with these comps.
In the last full Big East season, 2011-12, UConn played eight top 30 RPI opponents, 14 top 50 and 16 top 100. Last season, UConn played five top 30 games, slightly below the 6.9 average of the opponents McCarthy tracks, 10 top 50 games, on target with the 10.4 average, and 14 top 100 games, roughly the average.
Once McCarthy makes contact with an interested school, the give-and-take begins, and Ollie begins to mull it over.
"Kevin is smart, he will not make impulsive, emotional decisions," McCarthy said. "He will wait to have all of the meaningful information provided to him. He might be interested in the concept of playing the school, but he's very analytical, very deliberative, very smart in terms of making good decisions for his program and scheduling is one very good example."
Sometimes there are hangups. Last season, when UConn had the chance to play Duke in a neutral site game Dec. 18, there was a conflict with Stanford. The contract called for the Huskies to go to the West Coast to complete the home-and-home series and, with UConn the defending champs, Stanford did not want to postpone it a year. Eventually, it was agreed that UConn would go to California in mid-January, which made a difficult travel week, paired with a conference road game at Tulsa. UConn went 7-5 against its challenging slate of out-of-conference games, and missed the NCAA Tournament.
The travel of the AAC complicates things. UConn is finishing its contract with Texas with a game at Austin in late December, and it's possible the AAC will schedule the Huskies' league opener on Dec. 31 at Southern Methodist, Houston or Tulsa to ease travel. The AAC, McCarthy said, has been very willing to accommodate teams to facilitate playing strong nonconference schedules – which the league needs to boost its overall RPI.
McCarthy said UConn is trying to balance the need for strong opponents with the need to ease travel by looking regionally first. That's how the Georgetown series, which will begin at the XL Center next season, came to be. McCarthy said UConn is open to playing New England teams like UMass, Rhode Island, Providence, Boston College and Harvard, though there is nothing yet in place.