Booking it

Sporting News, The, Dec 26, 1994 by Bill Heller

The confidence came from the string of Ws early in the season against lesser teams, and the effect is still being felt on and off the court. "It was very important because our attendance jumped up," Spoonhour says.

The Billikens, who thought they drew a large crowd of 7,978 in the opener against Mercer, drew 17,117 for their sixth game, a winning showdown against undefeated Southern Illinois. "And then our crowds just mushroomed because we were ranked," Spoonhour says. "People came and it made for a very fun season. Last year, we started a bit of a trend."

This season, coming off a good season and playing in a new arena, Saint Louis' season tickets topped 10,000, an increase of more than 60 percent. In their winning debut against Bradley, the Billikens played before a crowd of 17,775. And the momentum came from that great start a year before. "There was no question about it," Spoonhour says. "It set a tone for our whole city."

The soft schedule worked because Spoonhour, who inherited a 5-23 team, has built a successful program in two seasons at a school that had been dormant for decades.

But setting a tone for a whole season isn't that easy, especially for established powers that have created high expectations before they take the court for their first game. There is no magic formula for scheduling. "Good schedules don't make good teams; bad schedules don't make good teams," Boeheim says. "It just isn't that simple."

Yeah, maybe. But it's a heck of a lot more fun watching UMass play Arkansas than watching St. John's lambaste three cupcakes annually in its season-opening Lapchick Tournament. Not that St. John's, which does play Michigan later in the season, is alone. It's almost a tradition to invite three inferior teams to visit around Christmas for a tournament, schedule your team against No. 4 and No. 2 vs. 3, and call it a "Classic."

The classics are in March. But a bunch of new, high-profile, early-season clashes sure do whet the appetite. And what's wrong with that?

RELATED ARTICLE: Time marches on

A look at the December schedules of the last five national champions reveals that playing tough teams in December can give a hint of a team's potential. Last season, for example, Arkansas, in only its second game, blew away (120-68) a Missouri team that would go on to make the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament.

Champion         W-L    Patsies            Powers
1990
UNLV             7-2    Pacific            California
                        Long Beach State   Kansas(*)
                                           Oklahoma(*)
                                           Arkansas
                                           Iowa
1991
Duke             9-2    East Carolina      Arkansas(*)
                        Hawaii             Georgetown(*)
                        Lehigh             Michigan
1992
Duke             6-0    East Carolina      Michigan
                        Canisius
                        William & Mary
1993
North Carolina   8-1    Hawaii             Michigan(*)
                        Butler             Ohio State
                                           Texas
1994
Arkansas         8-0    Murray State       Missouri
                        NW (La.) State     Memphis
                        Delaware State
                        Jackson State