AE rules to limit hoop teams to 1 non-Div. I game

The University of Maine men’s basketball team will host its second non-NCAA Division I opponent of the season tonight when it takes on the University of Maine-Farmington in a 7 p.m. game at Memorial Gymnasium (The Pit).

This may be the last time that happens and will certainly be the last time in the foreseeable future as America East institutes new scheduling standards for member schools starting with the 2007-08 season.

The new guidelines call for AE basketball teams (men’s and women’s) to schedule no more than one Division II, III, or NAIA team per season.

It also calls for a minimum of three nonconference games against the top 100 teams as determined by the RPI (ratings percentage index) system, and no more than five games against teams ranked lower than 250.

“We’re doing this for two reasons,” said AE commissioner and former UMaine athletic director Patrick Nero. “The main one is to impact the RPI of the conference, which in effect impacts your seeding in the NCAA Tournament. Second is to improve out ability to get multiple teams into the tournament.”

RPI is a system used by the NCAA to supplement selection of at-large teams and seedings in the NCAA Tournament since 1981. RPI is derived from teams’ Division I winning percentage (25 percent), schedule strength (50), and opponents’ schedule strength (25). Games against non-Division I teams are not used in calculating RPI.

America East, one of the lower-ranked conferences in recent years, will put its emphasis on opponents’ two-year average RPI for the previous two seasons each year.

“This resulted from conversations with school athletic directors and coaches over the last two years,” Nero explained. “This was proposed to school presidents in August and they voted for it.”

Nero said the new guidelines won’t require a lot of adjustment for most AE teams since Maine and New Hampshire are the only schools among the nine members playing non-Division I teams this season.

Maine men’s coach Ted Woodward has no problem with the new policy and welcomes the chance to play higher-caliber opponents and thereby improve the play of his teams.

“I think it’s good. I actually think we can use this to help our program,” said Woodward. “I understand why the policy is going into effect. Most leagues have them and hopefully it’ll help raise our league profile.

“This is proactive and hopefully it creates more nonconference home games. It’s a plan for our program that if we keep it going, it will level the playing field with all conference teams.”

That’s one of the goals. Nero said the AE was split with half the schools playing a very competitive schedule and half not, but “those playing bad schedules were also impacting those playing good schedules when it came to the RPI.”

Geography has always been a bit of a problem for some of the more far-flung AE schools such as Maine and Vermont.

“Scheduling has always been challenging so I don’t look at this as something that’s going to present an unreasonable challenge for us in terms of scheduling,” said Woodward.

So what does this mean for non-Division I teams in Maine? Probably not much.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to play a DI and honestly, I’ve never wanted to,” said UM-Presque Isle men’s coach Mike Carlos. “They [UMaine] have tried to schedule me the last two years, but I really haven’t been interested. We’ve been willing to come down, but only if we can get some money. If I’m going to take a drubbing, we should at least get some money out of it for my program.”

Carlos said the chance to measure up against a Division I team isn’t worth the potential impact of a demoralizing loss.

“Of course you expect to lose, but you don’t want to wreck the psyche of your team,” Carlos said. “Karl [Henrikson] did that here one year with a really good team and got clobbered [92-47 in 1997].”

The UMF Beavers will try to avoid that same fate tonight.