State’s mid-major programs scrambling to put schedules together

Conferences and schools across the country are scrambling to put together schedules for men’s and women’s basketball, after which individual teams will have to fill in the blanks.

The NCAA set parameters Wednesday, now it’s on conferences like the Big East, NEC, America East and others involving Connecticut’s Division I teams to assemble meaningful regular-season schedules.

The Big East plans for each of its teams to play each other twice, a total of 20 league games. It is recommended that teams play at least four nonconference games in order to build a resume for the NCAA Tournament selection committees to pick its at-large teams. Mid-majors like Fairfield, Quinnipiac, Sacred Heart, Central Connecticut, UHart and Yale, play in conferences that usually get only one tournament berth, so nonconference games are less important, although such schools bring in significant revenue from early season “buy” games against major opponents. CCSU, for instance, has a buy game vs. UConn on the original pre-pandemic schedule.

“We’re trying to figure out our schedule right now,” said UHart men’s coach John Gallagher, who has a contract to play in a multiteam event at Kentucky. “We’re going down to Lexington still. We’re trying to work that out. If we can somehow make that happen, we’ll be in Lexington. We’re trying to figure it out now [the dates].”

America East coaches, including Gallagher, were planning to meet Friday to hash out the conference schedule.

The MAAC, which includes