I think I'm just about to finish playing catch-up with the next couple of posts. In this one, both basketball teams released their schedules last week and both have some really good highlights in the march to conference play. There should be a challenging yet winnable games along the way.
I'll posts the schedules and after each off, provide my take.
The women's schedule is as follows:
As summer closes and Universities across the country start to release the upcoming basketball season schedules, it is time to start compiling what we know about the UT Arlington schedules. To refresh your memories, UTA is usually makes their schedule known at the back end of school releases. They are usually quite late to the game. It gets harder and harder to schedule teams at UTA's level to get quality games, or in some cases, games at all.
I get my non-conference information from two sources generally. The individual teams that have released their schedule already and Rocco Miller, who does about the best job out there of covering every school in the country as you'll find. Occasionally a third source comes out, but that is rare.
Additionally, the Western Athletic Conference has released the upcoming conference slate. As was rumored, there will be a third game, ending the traditional round-robin, home-and-away format that has been the staple. Once the schedules are released, I'll opine my opinion of that and how the Mavs fare with that third game.
Here's what we know:
As is par for the UT Arlington men's basketball team, it seems they are one of the last in the NCAA to release a schedule. But on Tuesday, the 2024/25 schedule came out and there's some noticeable talking points.
In August, playing schedule detective, we knew of a home game against Louisiana Tech, a road game at Missouri State, an in-season home and home with Louisiana-Monroe sandwiched around a buy game at Arkansas State, a road game at Liberty to complete the WAC/CUSA scheduling initiative and a home game against Evansville. Later, I learned the team would play in the Jacksonville Classic, but did not know the matchups, as well as a schedule release from the University of Southern California that had the Mavs on it.
Now, with the schedule release, we can fill in the blanks.
We are on the eve of the upcoming athletic season, which means the summer dropoff in athletic competition is nearing its end. To fill the void until late, late August, let's dip into this year's edition of schedule detective.
For the new-comers, much of my information comes from Rocco Miller on X. He's a great follow for college basketball. While not all the information comes from him, he gets a lot of scoops and information in regards to the non-conference scheduling contract. Instead of having to look through his thousands of tweets, I'll compile it here, though some games do come from other sources.
Going in this season, we knew there'd be a return game from last season in Oral Roberts. There's a high chance, but not a guaranteed one, in North Texas and Texas State reappearing on the schedule. There's usually a guarantee game, or usually many, as a (usual) Power 5 school pays a non-P5 school for a one-off game, a non-DI, or many, and a multi-team event, or MTE, on the final schedule release. Additionally, the Western Athletic Conference has released the conference schedule, so more than three quarters of this coming season is known.
Here's what I can report so far:
No need to dance around this one with a fancy introduction. As the title indicates, the UT Arlington volleyball squad recently released their schedule for the upcoming season. Aside from a couple of spotlights here and there, nothing particularly stands out to me.
For the non-conference portion, I will highlight the four tournaments, the participants and their conference. I will also briefly look at the teams finish in the prior year.
The Mavericks open the season at the Sawyer Camillo Memorial Classic in Lafayette, Louisiana. There, they will play the Missouri Valley's Murray State Racers, the Southwestern Athletic Conference's Jackson State Tigers and twice former conference rival Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns from the Sun Belt Conference.
MSU was a game under .500 overall in 2023, 13-14, with a 7-11 MVC mark, placing 9th out of 12. JSU finished 17-13 and 10-6 in conference, good for 5th in the 12-team SWAC. Louisiana, arguably the best non-P5 team in the state, was 19-13, 9-7 SBC last year. The Sun Belt used divisional play to divide the 14 teams, but based on an unbalanced record, they'd have been 7th.
I went to the UT Arlington volleyball match on Thursday against Cal Baptist and when I got s program, I happened to see a paper with the men's basketball schedule for the 2023/24 upcoming season. Thought I had the chance to post the schedule before the University formally released it, they formally released it on Friday.
There wasn't much we didn't know by piecing together the schedules other teams released, with my most recent post about the topic listing it here.
The missing pieces are a November 11th homecoming match against U of Texas-Tyler, another non-DI home game against North Texas-Dallas and the known-opponent, unknown-date road contest against North Texas on December 23.
Overall, I'm happy with what I see. Coupled with a new coach, new roster with proven skins and a different vibe coming from College Park Center, I'd expect several indicators to be pointing up for the program. I'll give my impressions of the 31-game schedule.
It's been near a month since the last post regarding the schedules of the UT Arlington basketball programs, so rather than put the new information in a comment of an old post, I'll add the new information into this one.
First, I haven't seen much on the women's side, so I don't have anything new to add. In year's past, the ladies have fewer leaks or people interested in putting the information out before the schools. What is released now will likely be it, save for a game or two, until the schedule is released.
On the men's side, the schedule is getting near complete by piecing together information from other team's schedule releases. Announced yesterday, Texas Tech has published their upcoming schedule and the Mavs will make an appearance in Lubbock for the first time since 2010. UTA is 0-6 all-time versus the Red Raiders, all in the Texas Panhandle, save for a neutral site game in 1992.
I almost put the following news into the comments of the schedule post from last month, but I'm excited about one of the two games I'm going to update for the upcoming UT Arlington men's basketball season, so its own post it gets.
Rocco Miller broke two games this week on his Twitter account. The first is most likely a guarantee game against the New Mexico Lobos on November 16 in Albuquerque. The teams have met four times prior, including three in New Mexico, losing all four.
But the big news is that the UTA Texas State series that I speculated to coming is now known and the series continues. It looks like the rumors I received that Texas State played their half of a home-and-home contract in Fort Worth last year aren't true as College Park Center will host the Bobcats this year and the Mavericks travel to San Marcos next. The game is schedule for November 25.
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.
Like I mentioned in the baseball companion entry, the Christmas season took priority over my hobbies. Like the baseball team, the UT Arlington softball team released their schedule for the upcoming season. Unlike their baseball counterparts, the Mav softballers have some local teams and big names coming to Arlington.
The season starts with four games, two each against Texas Tech and Tulsa in Arlington. Two good tests against two good teams to start the season.
The next week, they go north to Denton. The UTA site shows three games. The North Texas website shows the Green playing six games and when I check the Tracy Beard Classic website, there are six teams. No official schedule, but the teams include UTA, North Texas, Kentucky, McNeese State, Sam Houston State and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. Interesting that the six teams represent four conferences. I wonder if they will play each other or if there's scheduling agreements to avoid it.
The holidays are never a good time for a fan blog who posts in spare time, as this entry shows. The UT Arlington baseball team had announced their upcoming schedule a few weeks ago, but I'm just now getting to it. Having to pick between my college or my kids isn't a fair choice.
This is the first season under new coach Clay Van Hook, so I was expecting something different. There are some newer teams coming in 2023 but was somewhat disappointed by what's coming to Arlington this year.
My understanding of scheduling in baseball is that schedules can vary widely year-to-year and aren't made far advance, unlike football where the non-conference slate is done five years or more down the line. So, a new coach can make a wild difference from the prior one.
The season opens like many recently have with a three-game trip to Corpus Christi to play Texas A&M-CC. This will be the sixth year in a row these two teams play each other to open the season. UTA also plays the Islanders in a mid-week game in Arlington in late April.
The UT Arlington Athletic Department recently announced a key date on the men's basketball schedule. On top of that, it looks like they are trying to elevate the match-up.
On December 10, 2022 UTA will renew the now-non-conference rivalry with the Texas State Bobcats. Additionally, it will be played off-campus at Dickie's Arena in the Fort Worth Cultural District.
I was certainly excited to see the game on the schedule. I was afraid it would turn into a casualty of conference realignment. UTA was fortunate to have both the Bobcats and Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners move to the Western Athletic Conference together, giving the Mavericks some familiar faces in a new conference. When UTA moved to the Sun Belt, Texas State did too, maintaining what was UTA's then-longest current conference rival. It was theirs a well.
But, when UTA was forced out of the Sun Belt, the longest-continuous rivalry meter was reset to zero. However, UTA does renew some conference rivalries of various degrees, but nothing continuous.
Consider what the Texas State rivalry had climbed to in men's basketball:
