PiPress: Pitinos won't face off next year; U looking at marquee home-and-home

per Marcus:

"I don't think we'll play them next year," he said. "Anything can happen, certainly. I don't think next year it will happen. But I think more than anything, the amount of exposure that we got for our basketball program, to play at 7:30 prime time (on) ESPN, that was great for our program."

When asked if his father would play sometime in the future at the Barn, Pitino didn't sound optimistic about that happening.

"I don't know if he'd want to play here, to be honest with you," he said. "There are so many factors that go into scheduling. He has to play Kentucky every year. He's now in the ACC. He's probably going to play some type of a preseason tournament.

"I understand our fans want marquee opponents in the Barn in the nonconference. We're looking at that as well. Any type of opportunities that we can play on national TV is great for the growth of our program."

http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_26955367/gophers-basketball-pitinos-wont-face-off-next-year

Go Gophers!!

All talk, no action on the U of M's part. The last time we played a power conference team at Williams Arena that wasn't sent here by the Big Ten ACC/Challenge was USC in 2007-08. Five of the past ten seasons have featured not one visiting team from a power conference.

Joel Maturi once told me by email that to get a power conference team here, we would have to do a home and home. Doing a home and home meant giving up the revenue from tickets, concessions, sponsorship, and premium seating from a game we would end up not playing here. This was something we couldn't afford to do since the money was so important due to all our non revenue sports and football traditionally underperforming monetarily. So he basically said I should never expect to see power conference foes at Williams Arena apart from the Big Ten/ACC Challenge or to at least expect them rarely, certainly on his watch. The best he could say was he'd attempt to get quality mid majors that would not expect the Gophers to visit.

After the football team axed the North Carolina series to much anger from fans, I made the athletic department aware of my disgust. It led to a conversation with Norwood Teague. During the course of the conversation, I made my unhappiness about the weak men's basketball non conference scheduling be known and told him point blank that a home slate minus a single power conference school outside the Big Ten in the first season after the implementation of Gopher Points and redoing the seat assignments was basically an insult to the season ticket holders. He laid the blame at Tubby's feet and said he'd get better teams in the Barn. Exactly zero has resulted on that front apart from one mid level ACC team basically forced upon the U of M by the Big Ten, ACC, and ESPN.

So when Pitino says they're "looking at it", I have a very hard time taking him seriously given the recent track record on this front. To not get any good teams here in the preseason when the Big Ten slate lacks Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State upsets me and makes me feel very taken for granted as a season ticket holder. I know belly aching about this is old news here, but the U of M asks for a lot of money for a good number of games that lack atmosphere and aren't competitive. It's an issue that has me on the fence about renewing if it isn't addressed in the future.

Our non conference home games against power conference teams from the past twenty seasons.

1995-96: Nebraska, California (Metrodome)
1996-97: West Virginia, St. John's (the one from Queens, not Collegeville)
1997-98: Villanova (Target Center, technically a neutral site game), Alabama, Nebraska, Fresno State (a WAC team, but Tark had a miscreant all star team)
1998-99: Seton Hall, Oregon, Cincinnati
1999-00: Marquette, Virginia
2000-01: Georgia, Nebraska
2001-02: Oregon, Nebraska
2002-03: Georgia, Georgia Tech, Texas Tech
2003-04: Nebraska
2004-05: Florida State
2005-06:
2006-07: Iowa State, Clemson, Arizona State
2007-08:
2008-09: Virginia
2009-10:
2010-11: Virginia
2011-12: Virginia Tech, USC
2012-13:
2013-14: Florida State
2014-15: