Tufts is one of the worst teams in D3 to criticize for their OOC scheduling, both in opponent quality and willingness to travel.Laxattackjack wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 7:16 am i agree with this. lynchburg did this last year. you will never see a team like tufts, scheduled tough game on the road south of MD in the middle the week.
1. Tufts @ Stevenson was a Tuesday night road game every single year from 2012-2019 (which produced some great video content before their old channel got taken down for copyright strikes). The Stevenson date was replaced by road games at Gettysburg in 2020, Lynchburg in 2022, and Cabrini in 2023. They’ve also played series with Union, Cortland (when they were still good), and others. They’re playing RIT at the Mustang Classic this weekend. Hopefully this CNU game is the first of a ‘24-‘25 H&H series. Just a very silly criticism overall.
2. On the “road game south of Maryland” thing…someone correct me if my geography is off, but as far as I can tell there is a grand total of one team south of Maryland that would be a good, competitive game: CNU. The Lynchburg H&H series was one-sided (40-15 aggregate); W&L wouldn’t be any better. No one else stands out.
In general, it’s kind of pointless for any school to spend multiple days traveling for a blowout win that does little for them, especially when they can get better OOC games closer to home. Like…there's a reason CNU came up to play Tufts and not Trinity. I assume that’s at least part of why the Tufts-Stevenson series ended; Stevenson regressed a ton as a program from their early/mid-2010s peak, the games became blowouts, and it was no longer worth the trip for Tufts.
In general, the willingness of most top teams to put together aggressive OOC slates despite schedule/travel constraints is (IMO) one of the more entertaining parts of the D-III game. Games are generally fun/unpredictable and add some hype to the start of the season. Credit to CNU and Tufts for scheduling this, hope they run it back in 2025.