Rand: Gophers' basketball schedule tough, but not at home

The Gophers men's basketball team just finished, by far, the toughest stretch of its nonconference season. The year opened with a game against Louisville. And in the past 10 days, they've faced St. John's, Georgia and Wake Forest. All of those are major conference foes in basketball.

But if you are a Gophers fan, unless you could afford to travel, the best you could do was watch all of them on TV.

It continued a trend that we consider the biggest complaint we've heard, spanning multiple coaches, about the Gophers. It's not that they don't play good teams in the nonconference season. It's that very rarely are any of the best matchups at Williams Arena.

Outside of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, which gives the Gophers a major conference home game some seasons, Minnesota has had exactly two nonconference home games against "Power 5" schools in the past decade: In 2011 against USC, and in 2006 against Iowa State.

The rest of the nonconference home schedules feature opponents like Western Carolina, whom the Gophers face Friday. That's no disrespect to smaller schools. And it's not a suggestion that Minnesota should buck the national trend and load their home schedule with top opponents.

But with season ticket packages topping $1,000 in many cases (including preferred seating fees, though the Gophers advertise that those donations are 80-percent tax deductible), fans are justified when they lament the bang for their buck.

Even scheduling one enticing nonconference game, against a top opponent, would be a good start. Fortunately, it sounds as though Gophers coach Richard Pitino agrees.

Pitino noted that the Big Ten and Big East will have a matchup similar to the Big Ten/ACC Challenge starting next year. That brings another attractive nonconference game, potentially at home. Add in preseason tournaments and an 18-game Big Ten slate, and the schedule gets pretty challenging even without adding another tough opponent.

Whether that's good or bad for the program can be debated, and Pitino noted that as well. But fans are stakeholders, too, and they have to be part of the consideration when it comes to scheduling. "I think that our fans deserve it, and we're looking into it," Pitino said. "We were just talking about it this morning."

Michael Rand