From the OWH:
"The Vegas trip is over," CU Athletic Director Bruce Rasmussen said. "They (Vegas) want to get as good a game as they could get for North Carolina. I think we are going to be pretty good by January or February, but by November we'll be pretty young. So we said we don't object to it if you can find somebody else. If you don't, we'll play. It wasn't we [sic] were trying to get out of it."
And with that, the Jays are no longer playing in the Thanksgiving tournament against North Carolina, and either Louisville or Brigham Young. The story has been spun a couple of different ways -- the most popular among fans being that Creighton is ducking a Top 5 team for fear of embarrassment on ESPN. Right. You bet.
As a fan, I'm disappointed, to be sure. You always want to play the best teams you can, and opportunities to play the Tar Heels don't come along every day. But thinking as a coach, I see the not-so-coincidental announcement of a trip to Canada in September/October for a round of exhibition games as a better tool for improvement.
My understanding is that you can take an international trip once every four years, and doing so allows you to have 10 2-1/2 hour practices in September before the trip. The Jays last international tour was in 2003-04, when the team was facing a similar influx of new players.
In exchange for the extra exhibition games and the ability to get a jump on everyone else by practicing early, you're not allowed to play in an exempt tournament (Tourneys where a series of games count as "1" on the schedule, such as the Rainbow Classic, Great Alaska Shootout, Maui Invitational, etc.) You can, however, still play in non-exempt tournaments -- which is how Wichita State managed to do both a Canada trip and play in a tournament last year.
My hunch -- and that's all it is, a hunch -- is that Dana Altman and staff decided that a trip to Canada and the extra practices it includes would better serve this particular team. So they told the Vegas organizers they would love to come play UNC, but if Vegas found another school to replace them, CU wouldn't be against backing out and coming back next year. I have no magic inside sources on that, it's just my gut feeling.
And if my hunch is correct, I don't see that as "ducking competition" or "chickening out". I see that as smart management of a program with a lot of new players this year. In my estimation, they can benefit a lot more from an international trip and extra practices than they can from playing one game against a Top 5 team.
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