The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
The Process Behind Scheduling for UAB Men's Hoops
10/5/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Steve Irvine
The pieces that come with the scheduling puzzle for the UAB men's basketball team include what seems like a simple understanding from Jerod Haase.
"I do have the mindset of let's play anybody," said Haase, who is entering his fourth season as the program's head coach. "If we're going to be the best, we have to play big time teams."
It's a mindset that is part his natural competitive nature and part learning from his coaching mentor, North Carolina's Roy Williams. Haase became accustomed to that approach when he played for Williams at Kansas and coached under him at Kansas and North Carolina. It's an approach that he hopes to bring to his first head coaching, even though that hasn't been easy thus far.
"It's safe to say we've reached out to all the Power 5 schools," said UAB assistant coach Jeff Wulbrun. "They'd be on our schedule if they were willing to play the game."
One of Wulbrun's tasks is finding opponents to fill out the Blazers' non-conference portion of the schedule. He did the same thing as an assistant coach at Cal and Virginia Tech and professes to enjoy the process. It's also his job to keep Haase up to date on which schools either turn the Blazers down or refuse to answer inquiries.
"It is frustrating but that's not my reaction to it," Haase said. "My reaction is let's find a solution. Let's look under any rock, open any door to try to find solutions."
Finding those solutions travels much deeper than throwing out ideas in staff meetings. Hoping to get a better take on using the RPI as an advantage, Haase and Wulbrun sought advice from ESPN college basketball analyst Joe Lunardi. Wulburn called Mark Whitworth, the SEC associate commissioner for men's basketball, to ask for help in scheduling teams from that conference.
The Blazers had a home-and-home series with LSU and will begin the four-game series with Auburn next month. Former Tennessee head coach Donnie Tyndall was interested in the teams playing in Nashville but that idea ended when Tyndall was fired. Other than that, though, Wulbrun said the Blazers have found "little traction with anybody else (from the SEC)."
UAB coaches also used a private company to reach out to traditionally strong men's basketball programs and talked to promoters working on neutral site games. One promoter was interested in the Blazers but the other team he was working with balked at the matchup.
"We've had plenty of ideas, suggestions and no willing participants," Wulbrun said.
Of course, there has also been plenty of work over the telephone and on the recruiting path. Wulbrun handles most of the phone calls while Haase and all of the assistant coaches - Wulbrun, Rob Ehsan and Turner Battle - throw out the idea to other coaches while on the recruiting trail.
"If I knew the progress of our program, I would have scheduled four or five or six year deals when I first got the job," said Haase, whose team won the Conference USA Tournament and knocked off No. 3 seed Iowa State in a NCAA Tournament second round game last season. "We could have scheduled almost anybody that first year. Scheduling was very, very easy. Now, if somebody tells us that they don't want to play us, that's better than most teams. Most teams don't even return the phone call. Jeff keeps talking about it's a good thing he has thick skin because he's getting used to people telling him no."
Wulbrun recently began keeping a list of teams unwilling to play the Blazers at this point. Quickly he rattles off a partial list that includes 15 programs who have either said no or didn't return the call in the past few weeks. One school told Wulbrun the schedule was full. After getting off the phone, he checked an online site that allows college programs to advertise schedule openings.
"They say (on the site) that they still need games but they tell us they are full," Wulbrun said.
The rejections also come in different ways. Wulbrun kept an email from one of his friends in the coaching business that read: "Good luck with your scheduling. You guys are too good. You got good quick. Games will be harder for you."
Wulbrun said: "That sums it up. I got two dozen of these emails in the last month."
One special thing the UAB staff is really pushing to find a marquee opponent with direct ties to Gene Bartow to play in the Bartow Classic. That could include a school that Bartow was the head coach, perhaps UCLA or Memphis or a school with a former Bartow player (Ole Miss) or a former UAB head coach (Arkansas).
"We would love to have a big game to honor Coach Bartow," said Wulbrun, adding that thus far no one has stepped forward.
The UAB coaches also studied rosters from around the country, hoping to find one with an Alabama product that would want to travel back to play in his home state.
"We've tried to be creative," Wulbrun said.
Finding a spot in a strenuous tournament hasn't been difficult for the Blazers under Haase. The staff inherited a trip to South Padre Island in their first season but the tournament competition was much stiffer the last two seasons. The Blazers played New Mexico, Nebraska and Temple in the 2012 Charleston Classic and faced Wisconsin, UCLA and Florida last year in the Bahamas. This season, UAB plays Illinois in the first game of the Emerald Classic in Destin, Florida and then faces either Virginia Tech or Iowa State. The Blazers are already under contract for the NABC Hall of Fame Classic next season in Kansas City, which also includes Kansas, Cal and George Washington.
The trip to Destin is a centerpiece of a schedule which wasn't easy to put together, especially with the unprecedented circumstances that came with the initial decision to disband the university's football program. Scheduling efforts were suspended not long after the December announcement because of the uncertainty.
"We didn't know what conference we would be in if they didn't reinstate football," Wulbrun said. "We didn't know how many conference opponents we might be playing, when the conference season might be starting."
It put the scheduling efforts, which weren't picked up again until soon before the announcement to work toward reinstating football in June, way behind.
"If it's done in February, your chances of scheduling opponents would have been done two to three months before we made our run in the NCAA Tournament," Wulbrun said. "We might have had a better chance of scheduling a high major opponent."
As it was, the Blazers will play a non-conference schedule highlighted by the tournament in Destin, trips to Auburn and Illinois State and home games against Stephen F. Austin, which had a RPI in the low 30s at the end of last year's regular season, and a Georgia State team that, like UAB, won a NCAA Tournament game last year as a No. 14 seed.
"I think it's very, very challenging," Haase said. "We have to win a bunch of games but if we win a ton of games, one of the goals is to be able to put ourselves in position for an at-large bid. We have to win the right games and win some big-time games but I think it is a schedule that will put us in that conversation."
Maneuvering through this year's schedule is the obvious priority right now. But putting together the next one is also very important.
"There are so many factors we need to look at in a schedule - being able to get an at-large bid, trying to get good home games, trying to get name teams, brand recognition is big, trying to get into a holiday tournament is big," Haase said. "We have to balance all of those but our number one priority right now is trying to get big names on our schedule and getting big names to Bartow."
For more information on UAB men's basketball, follow the Blazers on Twitter (@UAB_MBB), on Instagram (@blazerhoops) or on Facebook (Facebook.com/UABMensBasketball). For more on all Blazer sports teams follow the official social media accounts of UAB Athletics on Twitter (@UABAthletics), on Facebook (Facebook.com/UAB.Blazers), on Instagram (@uabathletics) or on Snapchat (@uabathletics).
