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.

UPDATE:  According to the East Texas Baptist schedule, the ASC is having a conference tournament this year Nov. 6-8.  Presumably, everyone will make it, which is how LeTourneau got to the championship game last season.

[Kuiper]

[Cross-posted from the 2025 Schedules Threa]

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

Coach Cartee and CMS aren't playing around when they set up their schedule.  Last year, they went to Minnesota and took on defending national champion St. Olaf and a regional power Mary Hardin-Baylor and this year they travel to Texas on opening weekend and take on Trinity and Southwestern and then travel the next week to eastern PA and take on Messiah and Gettysburg.  If you have the money, that's usually kind of what you have to do under the NPI because playing a 12 game schedule against SCIAC teams is probably not going to get much in the way of SoS credit. 

This year, however, if CMS (playing Trinity, Southwesterm, Messiah, and Gettysburg), Redlands (playing Rutgers-Newark, Swarthmore, Virginia Wesleyan, and Christopher Newport), Occidental (playing Babson, MIT, and UMass Boston), Cal Lutheran (playing Colorado College and Whitman), and even Chapman (playing DePauw and Wheaton (IL)) are all successful on their road trips and their opponents go on to have strong years, the SCIAC's SoS might be the highest it's been in a long time.  That's a lot of solid to very strong opponents (and tough places to play away).

Interestingly, Cal Lu did the exact same Texas/PA swing in 2024 as CMS is doing in 2025.  I know Trinity routinely invites Region X opponents, but it seems like Messiah might be doing that now as well.  It didn't really do Cal Lu any favors last season, when it only got a point from Gettysburg in the four games, but it did beat CMS 4-2 a few days after returning from the road trip.  My sense is that it wore Cal Lu out and contributed to their inconsistency.  It raised their highest level so they could hang with almost anyone, but it made average SCIAC conference games more difficult because they were tired and took them for granted, which might have accounted for losses against La Verne, Pomona-Pitzer, and Cal Tech.  We'll see how it affects CMS.

[Ron Boerger]

Seeing Cartee take on his long-time mentor McGinlay should be fascinating.  It's going to be a hot one in San Antonio (August 29th) but they had the foresight to set the start to 8pm when it won't be totally nuclear.   It's on the calendar.

[Kuiper]

Classy statement from SCAC Commissioner on the last day of Trinity and Southwestern's membership in the conference

[Kuiper]

[Cross-posted from the 2025 Schedules Thread]

This is the Planes, Trains, and Automobiles version of a schedule

Whitman

If this is accurate, Whitman has to have agreed to the craziest three game travel schedule I have ever seen.  First, they fly from either Walla Walla or drive 45 minutes to Pasco (or 2.5 hours to Spokane) to fly to Colorado Springs or Denver and play at Colorado College on Thursday, Sept 4.  Second, they hop on a plane in Colorado Springs or Denver and travel to (I assume) Austin and then take an hour bus ride to Belton, Texas to play Mary Hardin-Baylor on Friday, Sept. 5th.  Third, they fly from Austin to Los Angeles or Burbank airports and drive 1-2 hours (depending upon traffic and time of arrival) to Thousand Oaks to play Cal Lutheran on Sunday Sept. 7.  Then they have two weeks off before conference play.  I'm envisioning some travel agent's Rubik's cube of one way flights on regional jets to pull this off.  Three games in four days in three different time zones and 5000+ feet changes in elevation.  Maybe the Admissions Office was offering a subsidy to any coach who could visit several different metropolitan areas for recruiting events this year?

Beyond the logistical nightmare of the trip, that's a nice opportunity to play three strong schools from three different conferences.  Whitman traveled to SoCal last year and beat Chapman and La Verne, while losing to Redlands, so Cal Lutheran should be a good matchup for them.