Basketball Schedule Detective, Addendum

 Wouldn't you know it, only a few hours after I posted about the known games for the upcoming basketball season, WAC Hoops Digest posted about the Western Athletic Conference's scheduling alliance with Conference USA, specifically the match-ups coming up on the women's side.

To recap, we know very little about the UT Arlington women's basketball schedule, but I expect a flip of venues of some of last year's opponents. Potential road games exist against Texas Southern, Texas A&M-Commerce and Arizona with potential home games against Lamar and Houston. Houston played at College Park Center in 2020/21, so that's likely a completed contract. Texas Southern played in Arlington in 2019 with no return game, so that's not set in stone either.

Unlike the men, the UTA women finished decently in the NET rankings as they played a difficult non-conference season well before injuries hurt the squad in conference play. Thanks to that, they get to participate and of the potential names to come to CPC, I'm pretty happy. 

Before I get into that, I do want to address one common complaint I have heard about the scheduling alliance. Ignoring the elitist from the opposite conference claiming the WAC is beneath them, the big complaint is these are teams that aren't rivals or teams their fans will care about. That's not the point.

The point is to schedule quality teams, have a home game and improve in the rankings. If this alliance removes one non-Division I game, it is already a win. Those games don't improve the rankings and even losses against good teams from DI will help the rankings more than hurt it. Then, once those rankings are in effect for conference play, the conference as a whole rises, potentially increasing the seed for the conference's representative in the NCAA tournament.

But for UTA, the team coming to Arlington is New Mexico State, a twice, one-year conference opponent that does have name recognition locally. Also as a bonus, coach Jody Adams seems to have the Aggies on an upward trajectory as she enters her second year. Breaking a streak of four consecutive losing seasons, her team went 18-17 and the Aggies advanced to the Womens Basketball Invitational finals last year. We'll see what the second year has in store. Hopefully for the Mavs, it will be a NET-raiser.

The road game in the WAC/CUSA challenge will be a trip to Alabama against first-year CUSA member Jacksonville State. I don't know much, other than to relay they went two games above .500 and lost in the first round of the Atlantic Sun Tournament. Their NET was in the mid-200's but in a much weaker conference.

But like the North Texas game, we don't have any dates set for these two games. But it is at least two more known games.