Together We Transform Thursday – July 11, 2019
Here Comes the Steel!
As I drove home from work on Tuesday night, I saw steel rising from the Dubin Family Indoor Training Center construction site for the first time.
The subcontractor tasked with building the outer structure was scheduled to arrive early Wednesday morning but instead showed up early, a rare occurrence on any project of this magnitude.
Over the next month, substantial work on the indoor structure will take place. Once the steel is erected over the next few days, the outer membrane of the tension fabric will go up. By the time we kick off the football season at LaValle Stadium against Bryant on August 29, the indoor facility will look nearly complete from the outside.
The next phase will include the substantial completion of the attached support building, which is scheduled to be finished in November.
From a recruiting and training perspective, the Stony Brook Indoor Training Center will be a game changer. It will also help us generate revenue through rentals to outside groups.
The Art and Science of Scheduling
As you probably saw, our men's and women's non-conference basketball schedules were released this week. The end result is the product of countless phone calls, texts and broken promises. Please allow me to provide some background as to what goes into creating the schedule each year.
The most difficult task for a school like ours is getting home games. What factors do we contend with?
- Power 5 and larger schools have the ability to "buy" multiple home games. They pay schools between $75,000 to $90,000 to come and play them. As you can probably imagine, we are not in a position to do that. Even conferences like the Missouri Valley are buying games, which is why we played Northern Iowa last year.
- Schools simply refuse to play us. Geno literally contacted every school – and there are a lot of them – within a 200-mile radius to schedule a home-and-home series. Sometimes the dates simply don't align, but usually we get a flat "thanks, but no thanks."
- We've tried to get creative with Power 5 programs. One scheduling practice that we have attempted (to no avail) in order to get Power 5 schools to come to Long Island is to travel twice in exchange for one home game. We came close with an ACC and SEC school but ultimately we were denied.
- Scheduling a Division III game is not ideal, but often necessary. If you recall, the year that men's basketball went to the NCAA Tournament in 2015-16 two Division III opponents came to Island Federal Arena. We promise not to play more than one Division III game moving forward but it is one way to get an additional home date. Incidentally, this year's game against Farmingdale State is part of the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Tournament.
As for the overall non-conference schedule, highlights include a great home opening opponent in Yale on November 5. The road slate includes defending national champion Virginia and Big East foes Seton Hall and Providence.
The women will face two Power 5 opponents in Arkansas and Pitt with a December trip to Puerto Rico for games against Morgan State and Western Michigan.
You are going to want those
season tickets! Trust me!
Expanded 20th Anniversary Team Ballot
Earlier this week, we launched our ballot to select the top 20 athletes from our 20 years as a Division I program. The ballot is going to be expanded to include several names who were not included in the original list but should have been.
As with any list such as this, there will always be debate about who should be included. After a review, however, we unintentionally left several names off. Watch for the revamped ballot soon!
Our intention is to celebrate our 20
th anniversary and that is exactly what we plan to do. We want to make our 20
th year our best one ever!
Keep believing!
Warm regards,
Shawn
