Last season, when Tom Richardson stared down the barrel of his first campaign at the helm of Illinois State mens basketball program, he saw a couple ominous signs.
The most obvious was an inexperienced roster that had a hole or two, but a close second was the fact that his young team had just 13 home dates on what would become a 30-game schedule.
An influx of seven newcomers ensures that this years club will also require some nurturing, but as Richardson brings this team along he will do so more often in familiar surroundings. The non-conference slate, which is made up solely of Division I competitors, announced Friday includes six home games. Coupled with nine Missouri Valley Conference home tilts, this schedule will land Redbirds on their homecourt 15 times.
The Missouri Valley Conference portion of the schedule will be announced later this summer.
We go into the season knowing that we will play a minimum of 28 games, Richardson said. The fact that more than half of those will be played at home is a big positive for our program. We need to do a better job of protecting our homecourt than we did last season, but this team will be better, on the road and at home.
Last season, we played eight of our first 12 on the road and that was difficult.
The Redbirds open the season Nov. 25 when they host Chicago State. Those two have not played since a Feb. 12, 1991, match-up that was halted in the first half due to a fight. ISU was awarded a 2-0 forfeit victory.
That game was a long time ago, Richardson said. We just think its good to renew another in-state rivalry.
After the Chicago State game, the Redbirds play back-to-back road games with a Nov. 30 date at Kansas and a Dec. 3 contest at Central Michigan.
From that point, ISU plays five straight home games, the longest home stand by a Redbird team since 1979-80. The five visitors during that span will be Bowling Green State on Dec. 6, Tennessee-Martin on Dec. 9, Texas-San Antonio on Dec. 17, Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis (IUPUI) on Dec. 23 and Georgia Southern on Dec. 28.
The final non-conference game takes place Dec. 31 at Western Illinois.
All basketball programs evolve through different stages and while we would always like to be top heavy in home games, we feel that it is particularly important this season as we work to build the program back up to championship level, said ISU Athletics Director Perk Weisenburger.
Two exhibition games, which will be included on the season ticket package, will be announced later.
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