Wake Forest Basketball: Out of Conference Schedule Breakdown

Take a quick look at the out of conferece schedule for the 2018-2019 season

The 2018-2019 men’s basketball out of conference schedule was released last week, and since we’ve got a big lull in Wake Forest sporting action, I figured it would be a good idea to just run down the games and take a look at each opponent.

I’ll just give a quick statistical break down of each team from 2017-2018 and then give some thoughts.

NC A&T

• Record: 20-15
• Kenpom ranking: 306
• Points per game: 74.9
• Points against per game: 74.4

Houston Baptist

• Record: 6-25
• Kenpom ranking: 333
• Points per game: 76.8
• Points against per game: 84.4

Western Carolina

• Record: 13-19
• Kenpom ranking: 302
• Points per game: 68.4
• Points against per game: 75.6

at Richmond

• Record: 12-20
• Kenpom ranking: 181
• Points per game: 71.8
• Points against per game: 75.6

Charlotte

• Record: 6-23
• Kenpom ranking: 308
• Points per game: 71.2
• Points against per game: 79.9

Davidson

• Record: 21-12
• Kenpom ranking: 43
• Points per game: 76.3
• Points against per game: 67.9

at Tennessee

• Record: 26-9
• Kenpom ranking: 13
• Points per game: 73.8
• Points against per game: 65.7

Gardner-Webb

• Record: 14-18
• Kenpom ranking: 261
• Points per game: 70.6
• Points against per game: 72.1

Cornell

• Record: 12-16
• Kenpom ranking: 265
• Points per game: 75.9
• Points against per game: 80.4

Obviously it has yet to be announced who we will be playing the Myrtle Beach invitational, so I did not included any of those teams here. The toughest 2 teams in the tournament appear to be West Virginia (12th in Kenpom last season) and Western Kentucky (47 in the Kenpom last year).

The good thing about this schedule is that we have plenty of easy games early on. Not counting the Myrtle Beach games, our first 3 games are against teams that were 300+ in Kenpom last season. That will likely be beneficial for a young team that has 1 scholarship player with more than a year of experience playing at Wake.

After a few easy games to ease our guys in, we have a Davidson and at Tennessee back to back, which should give us an idea of what to expect from the team when ACC play starts. These are 2 solid NCAA tournament teams that will definitely be a challenge.

After 2 tough games, we finish up the out of conference schedule with 2 260+ Kenpom teams in Gardner-Webb and Cornell, which should give us an opportunity to get some momentum going into ACC play.

This definitely looks to be a fairly easy out of conference schedule, and my only concern is that the younger players may not be ready for the increased level of play that they will face when the ACC schedule rolls around.

With this schedule, I could definitely see us going into conference play with 3 or fewer losses. Of course, I thought we’d lose at most 2 games in that span last year and we started 0-3, so what do I know?

What are your thoughts on the out of conference schedule for next season?