If you could pick one school to start a home and home series with, who would it be? My choice: Gonzaga. -- Fordham Rams Basketball Message Board

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Date Posted: Wed April 27, 2005 14:20:22
Author: Rambacker
Subject: If you could pick one school to start a home and home series with, who would it be? My choice: Gonzaga.

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For purely selfish reasons I would like to see us play the Universtiy of Miami. It would be a great excuse for me to visit the family and South Florida is a great place to visit in November. I like the idea of Gonzaga, but they seem to have something going with St. Joe's so may not be interested in another A-10 team. Could not hurt to find out though. To me that is a less likely trip however. (NT) -- ace93, Wed April 27, 2005 14:31:32
- Miami would be interesting for a couple of reasons - one is the location would make for a great alum/student trip with discounted hotel deal, etc. by FU. Also, it's a winnable Big East game. the return date would have to be in the Garden, I imagine, due to Big East league rules for road games. (NT) -- Rambacker, Wed April 27, 2005 15:09:49
  - Miami is in the ACC. (NT) -- AC, Wed April 27, 2005 15:37:10
    - I think scheduling some big ten games makes a lot of sense. For one thing we have stout anderson and greene from the midwest. Playing Michigan and Ohio St or Illinois would help our sos and satisfy alumni desire to play with national bb programs and top academic institutions. (NT) -- joe b, Wed April 27, 2005 17:08:06
      - Agreed. Michigan and Illinois are good schools and would be good MSG games. Wisconsin is another good academic Big Ten school with a top notch hoop program. (NT) -- Rambacker, Wed April 27, 2005 20:40:28
  - Correction: a winnable ACC game. Even more attractive. (NT) -- Rambacker, Wed April 27, 2005 19:14:59
Since the series seems to have been interupted, I'd vote for St. John's even though it wouldn't be a "start". 2nd choice -- BC. (NT) -- bfg, Wed April 27, 2005 14:42:44
- We really need to get St. John's back on the schedule. That should be a priority. BC would be awesome, we've played them a lot in the past. They were a big hoop rival at one time. (NT) -- Rambacker, Wed April 27, 2005 15:12:15
I am pretty familiar with the WCC since my father is a USF booster. I think it would be a natural for us to play USF, Gonzaga, and Santa Clara in home and home matchups. The Zags would be the toughest to schedule although I bet if we made the return game something at MSG, they might take the game. They like playing in "big" locations during the nonconference season. USF is a team we should have been playing home and home for last 50 years. It is a natural fit considering they are essentially the same school as Fordham in terms of big-city location, student body, etc. (although Bill Russell, K.C. Jones amongst others slightly tilts the hoops tradition in their favor). Santa Clara also makes a ton of sense as well. (NT) -- WaterPolo99, Wed April 27, 2005 15:08:45
- We could schedule two of those schools in one season to make it more economical with a west coast trip. Games like this also make sense to generate publicity on the west coast for student recruitment. (NT) -- Rambacker, Wed April 27, 2005 15:16:05
  - I think a West Coast swing would be a great move to get our names out there. You could do it a bunch of different ways. San Diego and LMU if you want to do a SoCal swing, USF and Santa Clara if you want to hit Northern California or the Zags and Portland if you want to get up to the Pacific Northwest. In my opinion we should have USF on the schedule every year. Jesuit school, about the same size, in a big metropolis, with a storied hoops tradition. We are essentially the same team right now as them (granted they made the NIT last year). Both schools with ambitious head coaches trying to get the programs to the next level. Both schools with "small school" gym settings that can get loud. I know they have brought up at www.donscentral.com the idea of playing Fordham in the past, when they have talked of making an East Coast swing. It just seems to make a lot of sense. (NT) -- WaterPolo99, Thu April 28, 2005 07:01:18
    - I agree. An annual west coast swing makes sense for a number of reasons. It's also an attractive recruiting tool for our prospective players and allows the west coast teams the same benefit by selling the east coast trip to their recruits. (NT) -- Rambacker, Thu April 28, 2005 11:46:35
- I would schedule any one of these Jesuit schools plus Stanford. Stanford is a great academic institution which FU is striving to be. Stanford is also in a very prestigious conference - Pac 10. Stanford usually fields pretty decent teams. (NT) -- JCMB, Wed April 27, 2005 17:02:02
  - Stanford needs to restore their Indian mascot. (NT) -- Stanford Indian, Wed April 27, 2005 17:15:49
  - Stanford is a good call. We played them during the Penders era - I recall the Stanford fans "adopted" Jerry Hobbie because he was such a hustler as a player. Prominent mention in Sports Illustrated about it, etc. A prestige program at Stanford. Return game at the Garden would be nice. (NT) -- Rambacker, Wed April 27, 2005 19:22:42
    - We played Stanford once during the Penders' era, 1985-86, in the finals of the Hawaii-Pacific Invitational, and won 69-66. We played Stanford three other times. First, during the 1960-61 season, under Johnny Bach, we lost at Stanford, 59-44. We lost again at Stanford under Hal Wissell during the 1972-73 season, 77-54. In 2000-01, we lost to Stanford under Bob Hill, 86-60. The time to which you refer, when the Stanford students "adopted" Jerry Hobbie, we were playing in the Stanford Invitational in December 1983. We did not play Stanford, however. We played North Carolina in the first round, and Hobbie played such a great game covering Michael Jordan that the Stanford fans started openly rooting for Hobbie, chanting his name and "transfer, transfer." As Rambacker notes, the whole incident was written up in Sports Illustrated, with Penders calling Hobbie "The Cabbage Patch Kid" for the way he won over the crowd. After losing to NC, we played San Jose State in the final, and won. (NT) -- JoltinJoe, Thu April 28, 2005 07:23:23
(1) Georgetown; (2) Villanova; (3) Marquette; (4) UCLA, USC or LMU (my chance to visit the folks back home); (5) Providence; (6) Loyola (Chi.); (7) San Francisco; (8) Gonzaga; (9) St. John's ; (10) IUPUI (just so I can figure out where they're from and what it stands for). (NT) -- John, Wed April 27, 2005 19:43:48
- Good list. The problem with the Big East teams like Georgetown, Nova and Marquette is getting the return games. Most of them already play in the Garden against St. John's and the BE has that league rule that requires minimum seating capacity for away games(6500?). I like UCLA and USC a lot - we could probably do a home and home with our home game at MSG for those two teams. Loyola, Chicago makes sense for student recruiting purposes in Chicago and the Jesuit connection. (NT) -- Rambacker, Wed April 27, 2005 20:02:44
  - I probably should have put Santa Clara in the list as well. I like the idea of a "Western Swing" every other year. It would help boost student and athlete recruiting from the Golden State. (NT) -- John, Thu April 28, 2005 06:07:43
  - Rambacker--we ought to find out for sure the minimum seating capacity which the B.E. and other major conferences require. Some day (the sooner the better) we may actually build a new gym. The seating capacity must take into account not only realistic estimates of the crowds we can attract to the campus, BUT ALSO the capacity needed to schedule major opponents for games in that new gym. We shouldn't have to use the Garden every time we play a major opponent. If we eventually play home games against OOC teams like Kentucky, NC State, Stanford etc., we should be able to play as many of them as possible ON CAMPUS. We may not need a 14,000-seat arena, but we sure as hell shouldn't build one for 6,000 if that constrains our scheduling of home games. (NT) -- BLT, Thu April 28, 2005 09:55:37
    - Besides asking how big an arena should be to accomodate the program we envision, we also should be asking how big it realistically can be given our tight space situation and other priorities that also need to be accomodated. We're not just talking a simple doubling of the RHG footprint. If you want to see how big a modern approx. 7,000 seat arena is just venture up to URI's Ryan Center. It can be done but it really should happen as part of an integrated center and rebuilding of the entire north side of campus, and that's going to take serious lead time and dollars. (NT) -- DamnRam, Thu April 28, 2005 11:30:40
    - I was told several years ago that the Big East minimum at the time for road games was 6500. Don't know if that was accurate or not. It may be more now. (NT) -- Rambacker, Thu April 28, 2005 11:50:29
Notre Dame. I attended the 71 game at MSG and another one when we had Daryl Brown go up against a future NBAer whose name I cant remember (possibly Adrian Dantley). Big crowds and lots of exposure. (NT) -- Jimbo65, Thu April 28, 2005 07:38:30
- I believe you may be thinking of Austin Carr. (NT) -- JCMB, Thu April 28, 2005 15:03:11
  - In the '71 MSG game against Notre Dame, ND's Austin Carr was covered (very well) by Fordham's Charlie Yelverton. I believe that Yelverton and Carr both graduated that year. Daryl Brown was on a later Fordham team, not the one that went up against ND in '71. As to where Adrian Dantley fits in, I'm not sure. (NT) -- Ram'69, Thu April 28, 2005 19:05:53
How about Kentucky? They're always going head to head with Louisville for prestige and Pitino's boys now get to play in Madison Square Garden as Big East members. A Garden date with Fordham gets Kentucky into the NY market via the Garden. Plus playing them in Lexington would be a great experience for our players. (NT) -- Rambacker, Thu April 28, 2005 11:54:17
You were wise to delete my earlier post. The suggestions from your base are far more hilarious than I could ever come up with. Finish above .500 ONCE, then maybe we can talk. (NT) -- PoBoy, Fri April 29, 2005 06:48:59