Michigan assistant coach Kyle Church joined MGoBlue’s Defend the Block podcast this week to provide an update on one of his primary tasks this offseason: scheduling.
Church played a crucial role in designing the non-conference schedule at Florida Atlantic and inherited the same role with the move to Ann Arbor. It was one of his primary jobs this spring and summer, in addition to helping to construct a roster, coach staff, and get everyone into the Crisler Center.
Scheduling at Michigan is different than at FAU, and Church’s process started by working backward and analyzing successful teams at this level.
“We put together a spreadsheet of 20 league conferences and who they played, what kind of quads they were in, how they finished in the NET, what their NCAA Tournament seed was,” Church explained. “Just to give us a reference of what other teams in our league are doing.”
Michigan’s schedule was confirmed last week, and the highlights are games against Wake Forest, Arkansas, TCU, Oklahoma, and the Fort Myers Tip-Off. There’ll be six high-major games, all but one being played away from the Crisler Center.
The goal was to create a grueling schedule for a roster that the staff feels is up for the challenge.
“As soon as we felt like we had a really competitive roster, Coach May gave me more or less to go ahead and said, ‘Let’s put together a really difficult schedule, something that’ll be one of the tougher schedules in the country.'”
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