The Better Belding

When it comes to the America East conference schedule, which came out yesterday, I think of it like Mr. Belding. Do you remember when he wanted to take the gang on their Senior Class Trip to Yosemite for a lovely, but slightly boring and predictable, nature outing? But then his brother the substitute teacher, Rod Belding, swooped in with the more exciting prospect of whitewater rafting, leaving Mr. Belding to sadly toss his Yosemite brochures in the trash.

Every year, the non-conference schedule swoops in, tempting us with fun exciting games like Notre Dame and UMass and GW. But where's that non-conference schedule gonna be when the end of the year comes and BU wants to try to make the Big Dance? That's right: taking off with some stewardess who's only in town for the weekend.

And that's when we'll realize who's been there with us the whole time - the predictable and slightly boring games with Maine, Binghamton and Stony Brook. The long, flowing golden locks of GW and the chiseled jaw of Marshall are not taking us whitewater rafting to the postseason... it's going to be the balding, paunchy Hartford's and Albany's.

To paraphrase, it may not be the most exciting schedule, but yesterday we got the better schedule.

Thu 1/8 - @ Albany
Sun 1/11 - vs. New Hampshire
Wed 1/14 - vs. Vermont
Sat 1/17 - @ Binghamton
Mon 1/19 - vs. Stony Brook
Thu 1/22 - vs. UMBC
Sun 1/25 - @ Maine
Sat 1/31 - @ Hartford
Mon 2/2 - @ UMBC
Thu 2/5 - vs. Albany
Sat 2/7 - @ New Hampshire
Wed 2/11 - @ Vermont
Sat 2/14 - vs. Binghamton
Wed 2/18 - @ Stony Brook
Sat 2/21 - vs. Bracketbuster TBA
Thu 2/26 - vs. Maine
Sun 3/1 - vs. Hartford

We found out which AE games are going to be held in The Greek too: Vermont on 1/14, Albany on 2/5, and Hartford on 3/1 (along with GW, Marshall, Holy Cross and the Bracketbuster). Vermont and Albany are no-brainers, as the dominant forces in the conference over the past few years. To me, Hartford is a mild upset - I thought they would give UMBC some respect for winning it all last year. But it'll be cool because the Hartford game is Senior Night - hopefully a starting lineup consisting of Matt Wolff, Marques Johnson and someone named Sam Tully can fill the Arena.