Southern Miss coach doesn’t hold back in criticism of new C-USA basketball schedule format

Conference USA unveiled in late May a new scheduling format for the 2018-19 men’s basketball season that the conference described as “innovative.”

Southern Miss coach Doc Sadler doesn’t necessarily disagree with that characterization, but he sees little upside in a new format that he believes will only create headaches across the conference.

When a Wednesday interview with the Sun Herald turned to the topic of scheduling, Sadler didn’t hide his feelings.

“For me, double thumbs down,” he said. “I don’t like it at all.”

The new conference slate will have the 14 C-USA teams playing each other and their travel partner twice. The travel partner for Southern Miss, which has yet to release its schedule, is Louisiana Tech.

After the first seven weeks of conference play come to an end, C-USA teams will be placed in one of three groups that will be based on conference standings through the first 14 games of league play. Teams will be split into two groups of five (1-5 and 6-10) and a group of four (11-14).

In the final three weeks of league play, teams will only play opponents within their groups.

A preset formula, which has yet to be revealed, will determine home and away games over those final three weeks.

Teams within the lower two groups will not have a chance to move into the top five seeds for the Conference USA basketball tournament. Teams will only be guaranteed seeding within their own groups. If a program lands in the 6-10 group, it will be seeded no higher than six and no lower than 10.

The top 12 teams will advance to the C-USA tournament.

“The way we’re doing the deal this year blows my mind,” Sadler said. “Maybe I’m too dumb to figure it out.”

C-USA commissioner Judy MacLeod said in a May 29 press release that the reason behind the new format was “to improve seeding and increase the number of teams that advance to the postseason.”

C-USA said that the schools’ athletic directors and its Board of Directors originally passed the concept in January with former Central Connecticut head coach Mark Adams, who is an ESPN analyst, playing a role in its development.

The Sun Belt Conference announced a similar format for the 2019-20 season in early June.

According to C-USA, basketball coaches and athletic directors finalized its deal during the league’s annual spring meetings in Destin, Florida.

With Sadler obviously serving as a “no” vote, it couldn’t have been a unanimous decision.

“My deal is that if it is such a great idea then why ain’t everybody been doing it?” Sadler said. “All of a sudden we pick something out of the sky and we’re going to be the innovator. I don’t agree with it, but I’m old school. My deal is to make it like football — two divisions and then fans can get used to who you’re playing, get some rivals going again.”

C-USA is already a spread-out league with members ranging from El Paso to Huntington, West Virginia, to Miami. The conference has added seven new schools since 2013 after many members jumped to the American Athletic Conference.

“This league has changed so much,” Sadler said. “No disrespect because people at FIU and FAU don’t know anything about Southern Miss or La. Tech either. But our people could care less, ‘Who is FIU?’ and ‘Who is FAU?’ Ninety-nine percent of the people in our fan base don’t even know who it is.

“You get two divisions and everybody else in the country does it so there must be a reason. You develop rivalries and you have an east champ and a west champ. That’s the way I look at it.”

Sadler sees a healthy list of issues that could complicate the final three weeks of the season.

“You could actually be tied with five games left in the season,” Sadler said. “You might be two games out. You play the whole conference schedule to see how it ends up.

“You may have an easy part of the (conference schedule) to begin. In our situation, you might be 7-2, but guess what? You’ve still got to play Marshall and Western Kentucky. You may go through an easy 14 at the beginning, but it may be hard. That’s why you play 18 games. At the end of that, you have champions. That’s not the way it’s going to be. You may have nine home games in conference or you may have 10. That’s not fair either.”

Sadler also pointed out that something as simple as scheduling Senior Night will be difficult and arranging flights for road games in the final three weeks will be especially tough.

Sadler’s USM squad played the role of spoiler last year against Middle Tennessee when the Golden Eagles upset the regular season champion Blue Raiders, 71-68, in the C-USA tournament quarterfinals. Marshall won the tournament and the league’s NCAA automatic bid, sending MTSU to the NIT.

Southern Miss, which finished 16-18 last season, is expected to take a significant leap forward in C-USA this year with plenty of experience back from last year’s squad.

Middle Tennessee’s NCAA snub likely played a large role in C-USA’s decision with hope that the new format will end the league’s run of being a single-bid conference for the NCAA Tournament.

When asked if he was aware of how many schools voted against the new format, Sadler shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s always unanimous when it comes out,” he said.

This story was originally published July 19, 2018 at 11:53 AM.