There has been some discussion on the conference board about the POD system for the men (some here too although there are more people on the conference board who don't seem to like it, and I really haven't seen any Rice fans who oppose it). But it's worth noting that both the men and women's schedules for the final month are a little different this year.

Both the men and women play two games this week as normal - the men in Florida and the women hosting the two Florida teams. But then it gets odd after that.

We don't know the men's dates yet but apparently there are two games on Feb. 23 (Sat), with the majority of men's teams having a 12-day break until their next game on Thurs. Feb. 28. The other games are on Sun. March 3, Wed. March 6 and Sat. March 9. They haven't announced it publicly but I'll assume a team is home or road one week, and then the opposite the next week (surely they won't make a team play two midweek road games and two weekend home games, or vice versa?). It also does make scheduling Senior Night a little difficult because we don't know when that final home game will be quite yet.

Meanwhile the women's schedule is a bit different too, probably to ensure that no team is playing a men's and women's game the same day over the last 3 weeks? After the two Florida games, the women go to UNT on Sat. the 23rd (1 week break), then host Louisiana Tech (Senior Night) on Sat. March 2 (1 week break), and then go to UTSA on Thurs. March 7 before beginning the conference tournament (at least in Rice's case) March 14.

So the good news for the women is they are in Texas the next 5 weeks. But the bad news is the last 4 weeks are 1 game a week pretty much until the conference tournament which we hope is 3 games in 3 days.

I'm not sure if any of this is a bad thing. It's just a little different than past years.

I think the breaks will benefit both teams. Rest and practice time should be helpful.

Also, probably unique to this year due to the balance/depth of the conference on the men’s side... is that as of this writing with only two games left in the round robin portion of the schedule, Rice has not yet mathematically clinched even a 12-seed with an invitation to the Conference Tourney, yet also remains alive with a narrow chance to sneak into the top pod and even gain a top-4 seed and first round bye. A lot of drama going into this week, and even more drama to be expected in pod play...

My favorite part of the pods really doesn’t even matter this year... that every in-pod matchup should be a good matchup. That’s because this year any team in the league has proven capable of competing with any other team on any given day.

Good season so far and glad to see the men get back in the mix ahead of schedule and the women move ahead of the entire pack in CUSA.

For fans who closely follow the season, the pod system makes every game more important. I can see that landing the sixth spot would seem like a raw deal because you are "prematurely" eliminated from a Top 4 seed and can only get hurt by pod play. The 10th spot is also a little bit of a bummer because you are locked into no better than the 10th seed in the tournament. But, realistically, that 10th place team was never going to move high enough to do well in the tournament anyway. Overall, it seems like the pod system makes the season more interesting. Particularly this year, these next two games have far more importance than they would without a pod system.

I like the pod concept. It makes the season a little more interesting. There will be seasons where it gets us two teams in the NCAA tournament.