We added our final game at Northwestern to complete our non-conference schedule in basketball this season.

Northwestern, UIC, Bradley, ND, are Maryland ES are 1-for-1 deals added to the schedule this season. SE Miss St. and Tenn St are return games from the bracketbuster. Not sure if we have to give Temple a return game or not. Chicago State is a return game from last season. Illinois and Minnesota are one-and-done deals.

http://www.niuhuskies.com/sports/m-baskb...09aaa.html

Quote:We'll also be resuming our series against both Southern Illinois and Loyola (Chicago) next season.

Sunday, Nov. 1 AURORA (Exhibition)
Friday, Nov. 6 MARYGROVE COLLEGE (Exhibition)
Friday, Nov. 13 at Northwestern
Tuesday, Nov. 17 at Illinois
Friday, Nov. 20 TENNESSEE STATE
Sunday, Nov. 22 SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE
Saturday, Nov. 28 at Chicago State
Wednesday, Dec. 2 BRADLEY
Saturday, Dec. 5 at Northern Iowa
Tuesday, Dec. 15 at Minnesota
Saturday, Dec. 19 at Illinois-Chicago
Tuesday, Dec. 22 MARYLAND-EASTERN SHORE
Wednesday, Dec. 30 TEMPLE
Saturday, Jan. 2 NORTH DAKOTA
Saturday, Jan. 9 at Ball State*
Wednesday, Jan. 13 WESTERN MICHIGAN*
Saturday, Jan. 16 EASTERN MICHIGAN*
Saturday, Jan. 20 at Toledo*
Saturday, Jan. 23 at Central Michigan*
Wednesday, Jan. 27 OHIO*
Saturday, Jan. 30 BUFFALO*
Monday, Feb. 1 at Kent State*
Wednesday, Feb. 3 at Akron*
Saturday, Feb. 6 MIAMI (OHIO)*
Wednesday, Feb. 10 at Bowling Green*
Saturday, Feb. 13 BALL STATE*
Wednesday, Feb. 17 at Western Michigan*
Saturday, Feb. 20 at ESPNU BracketBusters
Saturday, Feb. 24 CENTRAL MICHIGAN*
Wednesday, Feb. 27 at Eastern Michigan*
Thursday, March 4 TOLEDO*
Sunday, March 7 MAC Tournament 1st Round (Campus Sites)
Thursday, March 11 MAC Quarterfinals (Quicken Loans Arena)
Friday, March 12 MAC Semifinals (Quicken Loans Arena)
Saturday, March 13 MAC Championship (Quicken Loans Arena)

*Indicates Mid-American Conference game

Good names and I like the fact that NIU has at least 6 home games.

All MAC schools should have at least 6 at home.

I like that we're playing more in-state teams. I also like that all of our away games are easy for our fans to make. Four of our away games at Illinois, at UIC, at Chicago State, and at Northwestern are all between 1 to 2.5 hour drives away. While Northern Iowa and Minnesota are even close enough to travel to. There is no sense in scheduling games against schools far away when there are many quality programs for us to play in-state.

I see 4 wins with that schedule for NIU. Some difficult matchups for NIU. 3 Big Ten, 2 MVC 1 top A-10 team and road game vs Horizon League team. That is seven quick losses for most MAC teams. I would predict NIU as a 10-12 seed again in the MAC this year. EMU has Medlock back which makes them better, Toledo, CMU, WMU and Ball State will be better as well. Not sure if NIU is improved as much as the others. Some key exits in the offseason. Football season looks a lot better for them. Football team could have more wins than basketball team this year. That could be bowl in fooball, but not very far in basketball.

I see at least five games we SHOULD win -- Chicago State, Tenn St, North Dakota, MD ES, and SE Miss St. With three others we should have a decent chance to win -- Bradley, UIC, and NU. I'm not optimistic for Northern Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, or Temple.

If anything, this will probably be one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the conference and it should surely get us battle tested for MAC play.

Key exits? I'm not sure what you mean.

We only had one senior last season so we return everyone but him. We had three true freshman who contributed a lot last season in Mike DiNunno (led all freshmen in scoring), Bryan Hall and Tyler Storm and two redshirt freshman walk-ons who also played a lot as well in Lee Fisher and Michael Fakuade. All those guys have a year of experience and another offseason of training. Jake Anderson is one of the best, if not the best, players in the MAC West. Then 6'5" Xavier Silas (whose dad James Silas played in the NBA) will play for us this season after sitting out last season. Everyone says he is better than Jake Anderson. So that means we'll have two of the best players in the West on our team. Then we have a 6'11" post in Sean Kowal who led the MAC in FG% and averaged 9.4 ppg and 5.2 rpg. If we could get him to average 12 and 8 this season that would be plenty good since DiNunno, Silas, and Anderson will be our Big 3 scorers.

We also bring in one of the MAC's top recruits, 6'4" Tony Nixon, who had 20+ offers.

I think we have as good of a chance to win the West as anyone else.

Updated!

NIU officially released the entire 2009-10 basketball schedule.

Based on all the new 1-for-1 deals made this season we already know what most of our 2010-11 non-conference schedule will look like:

Non-conference home games next season: Northwestern, UIC, Northern Iowa, Bracketbuster return game TBD, Loyola ? (i would guess we play them at home since last time we played them it was on the road)

Non-conference away games next season: Bradley, ND, Maryland ES, Temple?, SIU ? (i would guess we play them on the road since last time we played them it was at home)

Yeah, After looking at Kent State's and Ohio's schedule. NIU has by far the most difficult schedule of the three.

NIU should have a much improved team, but with this schedule the record may not show it, although I think your RPI will improve greatly.

Roadtrip to NIU!

(08-19-2009 09:31 PM)OUBOBCATJOHN Wrote:  Yeah, After looking at Kent State's and Ohio's schedule. NIU has by far the most difficult schedule of the three.

Patton said that this is the type of schedule he wants to play every season but his goal is to have all 1-for-1 deals in the future. He said he reached out to every in-state school his first season at NIU to get them on the schedule. We already know most of our non-conference opponents next season. By adding SIU and Loyola next season we will have another tough non-conference schedule next season too.

(08-19-2009 10:02 PM)DICK Wrote:  NIU should have a much improved team, but with this schedule the record may not show it, although I think your RPI will improve greatly.

Agreed, we may not see how improved this team is in the wins column because of the non-conference schedule. Only way we will tell is by how many close losses we may have and most people judge your season on wins and losses. I expect us to go at least 8-8 in the conference though, which would be a three-game improvement over last season.

In the end, having a better RPI will help the rest of the MAC even if it doesn't help us.