Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

[Kuiper]

[Cross-posted from the 2025 Schedules thread]

Southwestern

The other Texas school leaving the SCAC for the SAA with Trinity. It is playing most of the out-of-state and non-conference Texas teams mentioned as Trinity opponents in my earlier post, including Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (which is apparently not playing St. Thomas as I suggested might be the case), St. Thomas, Kalamazoo, Concordia (TX), Texas Lutheran, Mary Hardin-Baylor, and UC Santa Cruz.  It departs from Trinity in also playing Howard Payne, LeTourneau, Austin College, and East Texas Baptist.  They have 14 home games out of 19 total, including the first 7 and 9 out of the first 10, plus it's hosting the SAA tournament.  It kind of feels like Trinity and Southwestern left the SCAC and got the best of both worlds.  At least this year, they both are playing a ton of home games and they still get all the games against SCAC and ASC schools they want.  As much drama as Texas conferences have had over the years with teams switching from one to the other, they basically all need each other to fill out their schedules (at least in soccer).

[Ron Boerger]

The SCAC and ASC have always played each other freely in every sport but oblong football - as you say, they really don't have any choice that doesn't involve flying all over creation or talking more teams into coming to the state.

[Kuiper]

[Cross-posted from the 2025 schedules thread]

Mary Hardin-Baylor

With only 6 conference games this season now that LeTourneau has left and McMurry and Schreiner won't come back to the ASC until Fall 2026, Mary Hardin-Baylor had to load up on non-conference games this season.  They make a big trip to Colorado Springs the second weekend of the season to play Whitman and Colorado College and they travel to Memphis to play Rhodes and Jackson to play Belhaven, but otherwise they just load up on Texas opponents.  They drop UT Dallas and LeTourneau, but play Schreiner, Texas Lutheran, Concordia (TX), St. Thomas, Austin College, Southwestern, and Trinity.  With 18 games total and only 4 teams in the ASC, it looks like there may not be an ASC tournament this year, which means the Mary Hardin-Baylor game at Hardin-Simmons on Nov. 1 to end the regular season could be the de facto championship game.