If, like me, you’ve read a few hundred thousand press releases over the years, your eyes tend to gloss over when you get to the quotes in them, which are unfailingly banal. They seldom have a pulse. If you haven’t read it on SLU’s website, I offer this from coach Rick Majerus on the team’s scheduling:

“The only reason we are not playing teams like Boston College is because they will not play us. We are hoping to renew the B.C. series, but associate head coach Porter Moser is working hard to secure a series with Gonzaga as well as with a Big East team. Our hope is that for basketball in the state, Missouri will want to play us again.”

I think it’s unlikely that any other school’s press release announcing its schedule includes a passage like this.

Next year’s schedule could be interesting. As SLU gets better — and next year’s team has the potential to quite good assuming this year’s freshman class performs up to expectations — it becomes easier to schedule good teams because good teams don’t want to lose to teams with mediocre RPIs. But losing to teams with good RPIs is less of a problem. And if TV starts getting involved, then everything looks better. Next season or the season after, SLU should finally land one of those Hawaii/Virgin Islands/Alaska tournaments. An offseason foreign trip is also in the works.

As for this year’s schedule, the road trips are fairly simple. Go to Chicago. Go to Atlanta and bus to Athens. Go to Detroit and bus to Bowling Green. Life without connections is the way to go.

And I think the travel is nicely balanced. The Chicago trip is right after Thanksgiving. After the Georgia game, the team doesn’t leave town for a month. There’s a nice break around Christmas. And then after New Year’s, it’s off to Bowling Green.

As for how I think the team can do against this schedule, it’s too soon to tell. You could expect wins over SEMO, Kennesaw State, Miss Valley, Rockhurst, Belmont, UMKC and Eastern Illinois. That’s seven wins. But how SLU does against Nebraska, Iowa State, NW or ND, Georgia, SIU, MSU and Bowling Green, it’s really tough to get a feel for since there will be so many freshmen playing. Presumably they would do better in the later games than the earlier games, but who knows? It’s likely they will win some you don’t think they’ll win and lose some they should win.