Many years ago, during my first semester as a student at Georgetown, I had a difficult class list. I was in the School of Languages and Linguistics, which meant that I had to take two language classes (in my case Italian and Spanish). The SLL language classes were called “Intensive”, which meant that they met everyday. My Italian class also had a lab session. Those two classes, plus my other standard three credit courses meant that in my first days at college I was taking 20 credits. To make matters worse, all five of my classes met on Fridays, so I was in class from 8:50 to 4:05 every Friday that semester. I should’ve transferred to Cincinnati. My schedule that fall was a piece of cake compared to the Hoyas’ calendar this winter.

The Big East schedule is a dangerous one for the Hoyas. There’s a new format in the Big East; this year the conference schedule has been extended to 18 games. Teams play each of the other 15 conference teams once with three teams on the schedule twice (once home, once away). For the Hoyas, Syracuse, St. John’s, and Louisville are the three teams that they will play twice. The tricky part of the Hoyas’ schedule is not the teams that they will have to play more than once; it’s the order of the games.

There are no easy games in the Big East; any given day, yadda, yadda, yadda. It sounds like a cliché, but it is true (see GU at USF 2006). If we use the word easy, we should indicate that we don’t intend it to mean easy as in simple; it means more winnable than others. Home games are easier than road games, and games against the bottom of the conference are easier than against the top teams in the conference. Nothing is easy, we know. Last season, the Hoyas started Big East play with two home games, followed by three straight on the road. Of those road games, two of the three were against teams that failed to qualify for the Big East tournament. Georgetown beat Notre Dame in their home opener, lost at home to Villanova, lost on the road at Pittsburgh and fell to 1-2 in the conference. At that point they started their 11-game winning streak with back-to-back road wins at Rutgers and Seton Hall. The Hoyas climbed back above .500 in the conference and never looked back. Those two road games were not easy, but it helped to play bottom of the pack teams on the road instead of top of the pack teams. This year, the schedule doesn’t provide any assistance to Georgetown, take a look:

• Big East regular Season Game 1: at Rutgers
• Big East regular Season Game 2: at DePaul
• Big East regular Season Game 3: vs. Connecticut
• Big East regular Season Game 4: at Pittsburgh
• Big East regular Season Game 5: vs. Notre Dame
• Big East regular Season Game 6: vs. Syracuse
• Big East regular Season Game 7: at West Virginia
• Big East regular Season Game 8: at St. John’s

The favorable schedule last year didn’t mean that the Hoyas had it easier than other teams in the Big East, but it did provide a nice opportunity for Georgetown to right the ship after a tough opening three games. Full credit to the coaches and players for righting the ship as well as they did. This year, the Hoyas won’t get any help from the schedule, and the coaches and players will have to be even sharper to start Big East play than they were a year ago.