[Card10Fan]

Is it because we are all the way on the West Coast? I mean, that's a lousy excuse for opposing coaches and programs to make not to want to play a premiere program coached by a legend, get experience and possibly put a big win on your resume come tournament-time, just because they don't want to make a cross-country flight, especially if we are willing to schedule a reciprocal game at their location the following year.

Maybe as Card10Fan mentioned that South Carolina will also play UCLA in their next West Coast swing in the 2024-25 season, we can work with other Pac-12 teams to create a packaged deal to play both us and one or two of the other top Pac-12 teams on a road trip out west since Tara has a good relationship with other conference coaches and other teams in the Pac-12 are getting better. Just a thought.

In the meantime, these holiday tropical tournaments are more important for a non-conference SOS perspective; especially when our team is loaded, like it has been the last few years, we should try to schedule tournaments that had fields like last year's if we can (I am not sure how timing works and whether we are aware of who else has entered), rather than this season's where our best opponent will be FGCU.

It's about money. South Carolina's charter alone to play at Stanford is six figure Staley quoted and they had to scrap and beg to get a 2nd game in the area. They will play 2 games while in California. Tara said west coast schools have to pay more for guarantee games  for teams to come out and play them because of location and travel costs.  

The last two seasons, the Bahamas has had the best Thanksgiving tournaments (competition wise). This year at the Battle4Atlantis: Tennessee, UCLA, Louisville, Texas, Gonzaga, are the headliners amongst others. Last year was South Carolina and Uconn. I like our trips to Hawaii but I don't ever remember an extremely competitive 3 games of that caliber. We've played Baylor and North Carolina there before but generally the competition has not been great.

[Card10Fan]

Is it because we are all the way on the West Coast? I mean, that's a lousy excuse for opposing coaches and programs to make not to want to play a premiere program coached by a legend, get experience and possibly put a big win on your resume come tournament-time, just because they don't want to make a cross-country flight, especially if we are willing to schedule a reciprocal game at their location the following year.

Maybe as Card10Fan mentioned that South Carolina will also play UCLA in their next West Coast swing in the 2024-25 season, we can work with other Pac-12 teams to create a packaged deal to play both us and one or two of the other top Pac-12 teams on a road trip out west since Tara has a good relationship with other conference coaches and other teams in the Pac-12 are getting better. Just a thought.

In the meantime, these holiday tropical tournaments are more important for a non-conference SOS perspective; especially when our team is loaded, like it has been the last few years, we should try to schedule tournaments that had fields like last year's if we can (I am not sure how timing works and whether we are aware of who else has entered), rather than this season's where our best opponent will be FGCU.

It's about money. South Carolina's charter alone to play at Stanford is six figure Staley quoted and they had to scrap and beg to get a 2nd game in the area. They will play 2 games while in California. Tara said west coast schools have to pay more for guarantee games  for teams to come out and play them because of location and travel costs.  

The last two seasons, the Bahamas has had the best Thanksgiving tournaments (competition wise). This year at the Battle4Atlantis: Tennessee, UCLA, Louisville, Texas, Gonzaga, are the headliners amongst others. Last year was South Carolina and Uconn. I like our trips to Hawaii but I don't ever remember an extremely competitive 3 games of that caliber. We've played Baylor and North Carolina there before but generally the competition has not been great.