A Glimpse Into Boston College Basketball's Future Non-Conference Schedule

The Heights recently caught up with Steve Donahue and his quote gives us a glimpse into how the future non-conference schedule will shape up.

Note starting next season, the Eagles will have just nine non-conference games to schedule after playing an 18-game conference schedule and three games in the holiday tournament. Eight after you factor in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

Let's take these one at a time.

We've got a great ESPN tournament down in Charleston with Baylor and a couple other teams where everybody is really good.

The Eagles will participate in this year's Charleston Classic along with the College of Charleston, Baylor, Colorado, Dayton, Southern Illinois, St. John's and an eight team to be named. Colorado and Baylor are the only NCAA Tournament teams of that bunch, but Dayton did win 20 games last year and Charleston won 19. The only program that won fewer games than BC last year was Southern Illinois (8-23 in the Missouri Valley). If the Charleston Classic organizers have a sense of humor, they'll pair BC with Baylor in the first round setting up a showdown between PG Brady Heslip and his former team.

Obviously we still have Providence and Rhode Island and Harvard being a top 50 team again next year for sure.

The Providence, Rhode Island and Harvard games are a staple of the yearly schedule. I'd imagine you can pencil in UMass and Holy Cross in here too. And maybe, just maybe this will be the year that we get the Harvard monkey off our backs (not holding my breath).

I think we're close with a home-and-home with someone out west most likely USC and Notre Dame home-and-homes over the next couple of years - I don't know if it's next year.

This sounds like hoops piggybacking off the football team's upcoming series with USC (2013 away, 2014 home) and Notre Dame (2012 home, 2015 home, 2016 away, 2018 away, 2019 home). Personally I'm a big fan of both of these series. If Donahue wants to continue to build up a southern California pipeline, then it behooves the program to continue to travel out there to remain relevant locally (as they did this year with the 76 Classic).

I'm also a big proponent of scheduling Notre Dame in hoops. With Big East basketball likely to take a hit after the departures of Syracuse, Pitt and West Virginia, going head-to-head with the Irish could prove beneficial to BC down the line. If Donahue gets this program to where we think he can take it, the Eagles just might start turning a few recruiting comparisons BC's way.

Interregional games like Notre Dame, USC - most likely Auburn next year too.

Auburn? Yeah, Auburn does nothing for me.