Crazy games fill the gap series#

Last year only BC had to make a trip in this series, and it fell 69-42 just three days after its emotional upset win at previously unbeaten Syracuse.ĭates: Feb. But for Miami, its trek to the Northeast is the tail end of a two-game trip that begins with a visit to Wake Forest. At least Boston College and Miami can take solace in the fact that each has to make a return trip to even out the massive distance needed to reach their opponent.īC makes the voyage first, for what amounts to a one-game journey away from Chestnut Hill sandwiched between visits from Pittsburgh, Boston-area rival Harvard and Virginia. With the addition of Louisville, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Syracuse, the Atlantic Coast Conference now features teams spread across 10 non-contiguous states, including ones closer to the Great Lakes than the Atlantic Ocean.īut it's a pair of teams that were part of the ACC's previous expansion, in 20, that provides the longest distances between schools. Arizona State at Washington State, Feb.Here's some of the longest one-way trips that teams will have to make for a league game, without the reciprocation of having that opponent visit them at home during the season: Long travel has become a necessary evil because of conference realignment, but when one team has to make more of those trips than others, it can seem unfair. While this helps some teams in the most expansive of Division I conferences, it hurts others. That means that some teams that are a great distance from each other might have to avoid a long trip to face that far-off foe, while that out-of-the-way counterpart is required to make the trek. The one team we didn't factor into this was Hawaii, which is forced into traveling long distances no matter what league it's in and has trips ranging from 2,445 to 2,610 miles for each of its eight Big West road games.īecause of the size of many conferences, it's not possible for some teams to play a true round-robin arrangement in league play.

Crazy games fill the gap series#

This is about conference-mandated competition, required games that help determine league titles.Īs the 2014-15 season nears, here's a look at some of the oddest trips that teams have to take to play conference games, putting emphasis on home-and-home series rather than one-sided travel.

We're not talking about the preseason games that schools set up between each other, often involving the exchange of some currency to lure one team a long way to face the other.

We also have some teams traveling very long distances, because of their conference affiliations, to attend league games.

Teams are lumped into 32 different conferences, but because of the crazy realignment that has gone on over the past decade-thanks, college football-the old concept of having leagues represent a certain geographic region (or even make numerical sense) is a thing of the past.īecause of this, we have 10 teams in the Big 12 and 14 apiece in the Atlantic 10 and Big Ten, and schools are nowhere near the southeastern part of the country or within a day's drive of the ocean for which their conference is named for. Sorry, Alaska and Puerto Rico, your involvement is limited to early-season tournaments. For the 2014-15 college basketball season, there will be 351 Division I college basketball teams spread across all 48 contiguous states as well as Hawaii.