COLLEGE BASKETBALL : The Wonders of Scheduling

Before the teams started practicing in October, the University of Connecticut’s game with St. John’s Tuesday night was expected to be one of the biggest of the Big East season.

Those clubs were in everyone’s Top 25 preseason rankings. Yet the game will be played at UConn’s on-campus home, the 8,241-seat Gampel Pavilion, instead of the Hartford Civic Center, which holds more than 16,000 spectators.

Later this month, the Huskies will be in Hartford to play Boston College, a team rated next-to-last during the preseason by the league’s coaches.

Why did the Redmen rather than the Eagles get sent to Storrs? Welcome to the wild, wacky and always difficult world of Big East scheduling.

Housing Crunch: A majority of league teams play at least some Big East games at a large arena and there are a limited number of dates available to use those facilities. For example, Georgetown plays all its Big East games in the Capital Centre and can use the building only when the Bullets and Capitals aren’t home. UConn has to work around Whalers games to secure the Civic Center.

The only teams that play all home games on-campus are Syracuse and Boston College. That makes life difficult for Big East Assistant Commissioner Chris Plonsky, who put together this year’s 90-game league schedule with the help of Commissioner Mike Tranghese.

Plonsky said the schedule was made “with much pulling of hair and mashing of teeth. We didn’t finalize it until August, and that’s much later than we had hoped.”

The first order of business was to satisfy CBS and ESPN Big East contracts. CBS broadcasts seven league games and four intersectional matchups. ESPN televises 18 Big East games and four intersectional contests.

The schools that play in large arenas submit dates when those facilities are available. It’s then up to the Big East office to pull it all together and come up with a workable schedule.

The Big East does try to put road games for Georgetown and Syracuse in large arenas, since they have traditionally been the most successful teams. It also tries to prevent any club from playing more than two straight league games either home or away.

“I think we came up with a good schedule, considering the cards that we were dealt,” Plonsky said. “Our schools need their schedules done fairly and quickly. I think the schedule is fair but quickness is something we need to improve on.”

As for the St. John’s-UConn game, Plonsky said that during early negotiations with CBS the teams were going to play a nationally televised game in Hartford during Super Bowl weekend. But those plans were scratched and the network eventually decided to televise their game at Madison Square Garden the following weekend instead.

The Redmen will play Syracuse in the Carrier Dome the day before the Super Bowl (Jan. 25) on CBS.

St. John’s has played the past two seasons at Gampel, including a nationally televised game last year. That was one factor into the decision to play in UConn’s on-campus arena again, despite the teams’ lofty reputations.

“It’s a fine line and that’s when it becomes the commissioner’s call,” Plonsky said. “He wants to do the right thing for the teams involved.

“Is a team being put at a disadvantage by playing in Gampel rather than Hartford? Absolutely not. Gampel is one of the class on-campus facilities in the country.”

In order to speed up the scheduling process, Plonsky is putting together a computer program with the help of Borts & Co. of Denver. Borts & Co. does the NBA schedule.

Considering all the elements that have to be factored in when making out the Big East schedule, going high-tech is a necessity.

“We’ve always done it literally by hand,” Plonsky said. “This will allow us to run scenarios faster.”

CBS Takes Control: The Big East-Big Ten game between Illinois and UConn Saturday was just one of several that CBS had arranged -- and more are on the way.

CBS has contracts with both leagues, making it convenient for them to create intersectional games between them. Ohio State will play Seton Hall later this month.

Such games are attractive to schools since they get a larger share of the television revenues.

“Intersectional games are better for you financially, quite frankly,” UConn Coach Jim Calhoun said. “It’s like $250,000. The other ones (nationally broadcast league games) you (divide among all league members).”

Despite CBS’ Big Ten ties, the Huskies nearly played some other very attractive non-conference opponents before settling on Illinois.

“We went through Oklahoma and we were very close with UCLA,” Calhoun said. “We went through a whole bunch of different people.”

Calhoun nixed the UCLA game because he didn’t want to play at Pawley Pavilion the same year his club had to travel to Texas’ home court.

Though these games are made-for-TV affairs, schools normally agree to a home-and-home series before finalizing the deal, even though the second of those games may not be televised nationally. Illinois will head to either Hartford or Storrs next season. UConn will travel to North Carolina State next season since the Wolfpack played a CBS game at Gampel last year. Texas, which played UConn in an ESPN game last month, will return the favor in the 1993-94 season.

“You try to get a team that you know is going to reciprocate,” Calhoun said.

Hamilton Sees Inspiration: Miami Coach Leonard Hamilton looks to the rise of UConn and Seton Hall as a source of inspiration as he attempts to turn the league’s newest member into a viable Big East contender.

“I remember six years ago how Seton Hall presented itself and look where it is now,” Hamilton said after Miami’s inaugural league game, an 85-62 loss to UConn Thursday. “You look back four or five years ago where the University of Connecticut was and where it is now. So what I want to do is just work our butts off and get it done.”

Hamilton, in his second year with the Hurricanes after being head coach at Oklahoma State from 1986-90, has no specific timetable when that will occur. But he vows that sometime in the future he’ll be coaching one of the league’s elite teams.

“We know it’s just a matter of time before we reach this level,” he said. “Believe me, we’ll get our basketball program to this level.”

Hamilton’s club certainly picked a tough way to enter the league with killer road games at UConn, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Syracuse.

This wasn’t a payment for becoming a league member. The Hurricanes actually asked for it since they wanted to play as many road games as possible before their second semester began Jan. 15. However, Tranghese has stated that he won’t let Miami have an extended road trip like that again.