Honestly I don’t care. I am just fine getting a couple wins then stepping up a level in competition for the third game.-
Cuse and the Vols are just fine though there will be plenty of talent on the court.
Especially, with those logo 3s…
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Would’ve loved Sampson vs McDermott…
How is a team’s 3rd opponent determined?
head-to-head record, total point differential (capped at plus or minus 20 points per game), total points scored, and total points allowed.
just flat point system for determining the championship $1 million, but im sure some considerations will be added for conference teams, not in the championship, to not play each other.
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I love that we are playing Tennessee because they have Nate Ament a highly touted 6’9 top 5 recruit.
There will be lots of NBA Scouts at the game that will also get to see Tugler, Cenac, Harwell, Sharp, McCarty, Uzan, and Flemings.
Also I live in Knoxville, TN so I’ll get to run our win in my friends face AGAIN 
.
with the addition of towson and new orleans … and the official player era schedule… we know 12 of our 13 games
had the potential to be really strong, maybe strongest ever, but after getting some of the names… the overall schedule is turning out to be relatively weak… florida state being our toyota game was a big dagger to the schedule…
Sampson has noted trying to get 1 last big game for Fertitta, that could change the tide if the opponent is good
but it could be a goood thing overall with such a young team
based on preseason expectations-
- no title contenders
- top 20 teams (3) - Arkansas, Tennessee and Auburn
- expected bad p5 (2) - syracuse (has potential), florida st
- buy games (6)
1- mte determined quality - play good get good opponent
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How relative are we talking? Should still be a top 100 non-conference schedule which usually translates to top 20 for P5 teams. Upper quartile isn’t elite but it’s respectable. It’s definitely better than what IU and UNC have rolled out, having seen their slates drop on Reddit recently. So we’ve got that going for us at least.
Alright player
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I don’t think it’s better than IU or UNC as is. Need to see the last game.
UNC: Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio State, and Michigan State as top 20 teams. Georgetown and St. Bonaventure are the weak P5-level teams.
IU only has 11 non-conference games vs. 13. If you add two Big Ten teams to Kentucky, Louisville, Kansas State, and Marquette, they’re stronger too.
But to be clear, it’s super close for all three. If the unknown game is good, we’d be above them. If we get St. John’s (as opposed to SDSU/UNLV) for Game 3, we’d be above them.
“Relative” as in it’s good enough to achieve what we need, but difficulty won’t be a selling point.
Schedule is fine for what we need. Lone exception is not getting a marquee name to the FC during OOC. The team will get challenged and we will win a lot of games. Looking forward to seeing what we have. I have zero interest in comparing schedule to other programs.
Just think of how far we have and would have been ecstatic not too long ago having Auburn, Arkansas, Tennessee, FSU, Syracuse and one more unknown in Vegas. We usually have a couple lesser known teams in the non conference who are going to be better than fans realize.
@pesik the only coaches whod have the guts to play at Fertita Center, would be Nate Oats & maybe Chris Beard (Ole Miss). Nobody wants a potential 10+ pt loss in the non conference
See if Will Wade & NC State are interested.
Solid schedule. Wish the home slate was better. We got robbed of Kansas, Iowa St, BYU
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Indiana’s is mid. 6 of 11 games will be Q4. Milwaukee could be a Q3. KState imo isn’t anything special. Maybe a bubble team next year (likely Q2), the other three games are probably Q1 tournament level games but you’re likely talking about 2/11 against T-25 comp. Decent but not that good.
UNC’s is better but it’s a far cry from the usual slate they roll out. They have four teams that could be T-25 but probably unlikely all four pan out. Saint Bonnie’s and Georgetown imo is comparable to Syracuse and FSU. The buy games are better than IU’s though and that’ll help their overall ranking.
I think we clearly have the best top end games. Auburn/Arkansas/Tennessee are showing up in everyone’s way too early T-25 lists. Getting Syracuse/Tennessee imo, could also a blessing in disguise imo. It’s a quality pairing (likely Q1 + Q2) that we should go 2-0 against. Obviously that’s not guaranteed but if we do go 2-0 and get someone like Bama or Michigan I just don’t see how that isn’t a better slate than UNC’s.
If we somehow grab a 7th P5 opp then that’s pushes the schedule into elite territory but even without it, we should be looking at probably the highest rated non-conference slate we’ve had under Sampson.
Gonna try to make Auburn and Arkansas games…
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i made a indepth big 12 preview like 2 weeks ago… ive been waiting for the ben henshall news (tech) and brice dessert news (kstate)… cause both would drastically change the tone of the preview … i have tech extremely overrated without henshall but title contenders with him…
and to me kstate might be the most underrated roster in the nation… if they land dessert and resume stack their players (not media hype) that would be a top 4 roster nationally, but currently unranked… i actually have reasons why but will see what happens with dessert 1st…
syracuse is bad but LOADED with talent… they could be a q1, but preseason ill lean with their recent history
going 2-0 in vegas, should get us a good opponent… that opponent is likely kansas 
who has a extremely easy path (im fine with it since we only play them once in conference )…
Getting past Tennessee will be interesting though just because of the time of the year. I think by February, March, we will be like drastically, drastically better than Tennessee, but early season will be interesting. Tennessee is a very extremely high floor team, but a very, very low ceiling. They have 4 elite upperclass defenders starting/Also Huge and Tall, but outside of Nate and the PG, they have no offense at all. like its bad. theyll have a lot of 40-50 games… we’ll have some young players.
i think last years schedule “as is” was tougher… I want to add the context that we lost in the MTE. Had we won the MTE, we would have gotten another top 10 opponent in the final round. (auburn /bama were seen as title contenders last year, unlike this year),
florida state who will be bad being the nuetral is the weakness of the schedule … any middling p5 and id agree this would have been a great schedule … curious to see the last opponent
If we’d beat Bama in the MTE we’d have likely gotten Oregon so another T-30 team but not T-10. We’ll see what happens. But my prediction for the slate is that it rates higher than last years (#100 in KP).
Things can go sideways in early season games but it is hard to find a loss.
I don’t expect the semi road game vs AU to be easy but they return one player, a very good PG to matchup vs Milos.
There will be no revenge tour for Tennessee because they are all gone!
FSU loses their team and looks bad on paper.
Syracuse returns a couple guys
Arkansas is a hit or miss but they could be pretty good by August.
As for the Big 12 Arizona and BYU are our immediate contenders.
Cincinnati can potentially get into this group but still see them as a team who will have some big wins and bad losses.
The next group I think is Iowa St, Tech and Kansas.
Is that st. Joe’s in the graphic?