Aiken and Lander, the odd couple

The GCSU Men’s and Women’s Basketball Teams played Peach Belt Conference foes Lander University on Nov. 21 and USC Aiken on Nov. 27 at the Centennial Center in “non-conference” games.
The reason the games were designated nonconference is because these were “regional” games, meaning these games would count toward the South Atlantic Region standings, the region in which GCSU and the PBC is in to compete in postseason tournaments. the games would not count towards determining the regular-season champion of the PBC.
Stan Aldridge, athletics director, was having difficulty in finding teams outside the PBC and in the South Atlantic Region for GCSU to play so they could have a full schedule.
“We needed games that count as region games for the NCAA Playoffs,” Aldridge said. “Even though they do not count as conference games, they do count as region games.”
The reason for the shortage for the games is the amount of games GCSU plays in the conference.  If the conference has 12 teams or more, which it does for the 2006-07 season, then the teams are split into two divisions that are made up of six teams.  Each team plays every team in their respective division twice, but only plays every team from the opposing division once.
Aldridge is not a fan of this system and feels that each team in the PBC should play each other twice every year.
“I think you get a better indication of a true champion if everybody played each other the same amount of games,” Aldridge said.
The benefit of having these “non-conference” games was that it cut the travel time and costs for both Lander and USC Aiken to get to Milledgeville which is about two-to-three hours compared to driving for several hours to play a game in Alabama or Tennessee.
“Some of the schools that weren’t far away, we wanted to schedule them because of travel and costs,” said Terry Sellers, head coach of the men’s basketball team.
While travel was a major reason in scheduling these games, women’s basketball head coach John Carrick believes that the basketball programs’ reputation as a winner was something that drove other teams away.  Carrick said he tried to schedule his team to play Valdosta State but was unable to reach an agreement.
“It is hard to get teams to play us both because we win and where we are located,” Carrick said.
However, Carrick and the GCSU athletic department will not have to worry about a shortage of games next season as USC Upstate is leaving the PBC after this season.
This will drop the amount of teams in the conference to 11 and opening the possibility of every team playing each other twice in the PBC next year.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Dec 1 2006. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry