When the Red Flashes of St. Francis (PA) visited The Convo on Dec. 6, 2015, many Bobcat fans had never heard of the school.
They wondered how this obscure school in Loretto, Pennsylvania — with less than 2,000 undergraduate students — ended up on the schedule. For the Bobcats, though, they were just catching up with an old friend.
“It is a lot of (networking),” Ohio and former St. Francis assistant coach Marwan Miller said. “If you have a good relationship with somebody, you know that they’re not gonna try to embarrass you or your kids.”
Coach Bob Boldon’s assistants are constantly trying to grow their network of coaching acquaintances for scheduling purposes. Sometimes, it’s an easy fix like when assistant coach Tavares Jackson, who is in charge of organizing the schedule, made the arrangements with Miller for St. Francis to come to Athens.
Other times, it’s a friend of a friend. Illinois agreed to play the Bobcats because the Fighting Illini had played Miller’s St. Francis team in a tournament the year prior.
When the Bobcats traveled to Ann Arbor to play Michigan this past December, it was because forward Hannah Thome’s sister, Hallie, plays for the Wolverines. Indiana appeared on the schedule last season after guard Taylor Agler transferred to Ohio.
The underground network of assistants seems endless. But it is up to Jackson to decide which connections to use that best set up the program for future success.
“You don’t wanna kill yourself in the scheduling where you’re playing all top-50 teams,” Jackson said. “You wanna seek out teams that give you a little bit of everything so you’re ready for whatever the (Mid-American Conference) holds.”
At the beginning of the Boldon era, success was a foreign concept. His first season as coach came after five-straight losing seasons, and the non-conference schedule reflected it.
The Bobcats played nine of their 11 non-conference games away from home in 2013-14, including games against nationally ranked Louisville and Maryland. They were playing four freshmen 12 minutes or more per game that season, and those freshmen learned quickly how hard Division-I basketball could be.
“Our players kinda got thrown into the fire,” Jackson said. “They learned what it took to win at this level.”
Since then, the Bobcats have played nine true road non-conference games in the past three years. They’ve lost 10 non-conference games in the same timeframe as opposed to seven in Boldon’s first season.
Those four freshmen turned out to be Quiera Lampkins, Yamonie Jenkins, Jasmine Weatherspoon and Hannah Boesinger. Now the Bobcats schedule with the mindset of raising their RPI and bolstering their NCAA Tournament resume.
Teams aren’t so eager to play them anymore.
Whereas the Bobcat e-mail inbox and voicemail used to be full of teams trying to schedule them with an easy win in mind, now teams are hesitant, strategizing around when the best Bobcats will be graduating.
“It was kind of bittersweet when we would call people, ask them if they wanted play and they would say yes and we’d get the contract that day,” Boldon said. “It’s nice that teams respect us as a program.”
