Date(s) w Kansas?

From Gary Bedore on KUSports.com

KU vs UCLA?: Adam Zagoria of zagsblog.net writes that KU will begin a home-and-home series with UCLA in 2009-10.

KU senior associate athletic director Larry Keating, who is charge of the Jayhawks’ scheduling, said if that series happens, it’d be part of the Big 12/Pac 10 Hardwood Challenge series.

“We’d like to play them,” Keating said of the Bruins. “We’ve talked in general about it with them in the past. We play Arizona this year (in the challenge) and will get a new opponent the following year (in Challenge). The schools talk, the leagues talk, and TV is involved (in making attractive matchups).”

Before going to the main point of this post we should note that Larry Keating is the father of Coach Kerry Keating (former Howland super assistant who is now the head coach of Santa Clara).

Anyway,I am all for this. UCLA-Kansas home and home series would be awesome. Despite the annual concern trolling (such as ‘hoop analyst’ named Steve Lavin) I have never had a problem with the way Coach Howland sets up his regular season schedule. The way he sets up his schedule is designed around teams that play the style of basketball that gets a young team ready for the conference season and the early round of tournament games. And the method of Howland’s scheduling seems to have yield results last few years. Moreover, members of BN have routinely dispelled the charges of Howland taking the easy way out when it comes to his scheduling.

That said, it is not a bad idea to schedule a home and home with opponents such as the caliber of Kansas (or North Carolina, Indiana, Duke). I do not subscribe to the theory that we shouldn’t be scheduling these games to protect our turf in Southern California. If teams like KU want to come in here they can easily schedule home and home series with programs like San Diego State, UC Irvine or Southern California.

This kind of game are incredible to gin up already high fan interest and put the nation’s spotlight squarely on our program. Moreover, since Coach Howland has rounded up our program as one of the unquestioned elite programs in the nation, we should have absolutely no fear in playing in this kind of game.

GO BRUINS.