Coach Rowe was kind of vague today when asked why they have scheduled a game against a D3 team to open the season and why they have a D2 exhibition in the middle of the regular season on Dec 27th.

Does anyone have any insight?

It doesn’t make any sense to me and Rowe wasn’t willing to reveal the reasons. He offered up “one of the biggest games we played last year was against D3 EMU” , “we had some scheduling things...” , “there were some reasons that we did It this way” and “If I had it to do over again I would have liked another exhibition game”

The D3 opener doesn’t even count in official NCAA statistics so while it is allowed to be termed a regular season game, it has no benefit. Why wouldn’t that be scheduled as an exhibition and then another OOC game be scheduled for legitimate competition sometime between Nov 10th and Dec 3rd? I believe it is part of the exempt tournament games even though it isn’t in the Bahamas and that window for the 4th game must be within 2 weeks either side of the actual Bahamas tournament.

The D2 exhibition in late December is a head scratcher too. What is the point of playing an exhibition against a D2 after you have already played 12 regular season games.

I'm all for this extremely young team getting additional game time experience together before our actual season begins and counts for our record.

Also it's Bridgewater so it just makes sense with how easy it is to set up. I could see the confusion if it was some distant D3 school we have no ties to but this can only benefit us.

Could they have played another D1 OOC game? If so I think they should have scheduled one but I can understand wanting a break in the middle to get ready for the Conference season especially after 4 straight OOC road games the last two as part of a Florida trip. My guess is that they tried for an OOC home game in that spot and couldn't find a match so they scheduled a D2 school instead.

Well I can answer one part. It is my understanding that JMU intends to schedule a game vs EMU/Bridgewater every year moving forward as tune up for the rest of the regular season and as a community goodwill event.

"The D2 exhibition in late December is a head scratcher too. What is the point of playing an exhibition against a D2 after you have already played 12 regular season games."

For me, not a head scratcher at all. They play Florida away on Dec 20th. Their next game (home) would have been 10 days later, Dec 30th, the CAA opener against NW. Instead of traveling and paying for a X-mass tourney, they "rest" a week and play a "for fun" game at home a couple days after spending time with their families. Basketball is a very long season so having a break before hitting the conference grind is pretty smart.

If you are looking for a break, why play the D2 exhibition at all? The players have to have 3 full days off some time during the winter break.

Staying sharp vs getting a break. Getting a break vs staying sharp. It just seems weird that a D2 exhibition got thrown in there. Put that game prior to the season and it makes more sense.

Oh well, maybe Rowe will spill the beans after the games are played. He did say he would have preferred it to turn out with 2 exhibition games this year. Maybe they get it refined next year with a D3 exhibition against Bridgewater then a D2 exhibition against whoever and then a full slate of 31 division 1 games against like competition.

Sort of ok with these “scrimmage” type games if we aren’t paying them and don’t ever play in their tiny gym/location.

It sure would be embarrassing if one of these games ever got close, but I can see the value of a couple easy tune-up games. Would have preferred to play a low level D1 instead. My longer term concern about this series would be any potential impact on NCAA tourney resume, hopefully they are just ignored for SoS purposes.