UNLV basketball building NCAA Tournament-caliber schedule for 2022-23

By Mike Grimala (contact)

Thursday, July 28, 2022 | 2 a.m.

UNLV’s non-conference basketball schedule isn’t finalized just yet, but rest assured Kevin Kruger is working on it.

And when the official slate for the 2022-23 season is announced — likely sometime in the next two weeks — Kruger believes the fans are going to be happy, because it’s a schedule with quality opponents and, therefore, high stakes.

NCAA Tournament stakes, according to Kruger.

The second-year head coach said the plan was to put together a non-conference schedule capable of earning UNLV an at-large berth to the tourney, and he thinks he and his staff have achieved that goal.

“We wanted it to be a challenging schedule,” Kruger said. “You want to have good competitive games and you want to put together a schedule so at the end of the day, when season is ending, its seen by the committee and appreciated and hopefully enough to — if you don’t win the conference tourney — to get into the field.”

Heading into the offseason, UNLV already had a couple opponents locked in as the back end of home-and-home deals from last year. Kruger’s task was to build around those games and find a dozen or so opponents whose availability lined up with the rest of UNLV’s open dates.

Kruger said finding a willing opponent who lines up with an existing open date can be tricky, with travel, venues, timing and other minutiae taken into consideration.

“There’s a ton of factors that go into it. Something as simple as conferences — a lot of times we were talking to coaches and having conversations, and they weren’t sure if they were going to move to 20 conference games or when or how it might play out. Because if you’re talking about a home-and-home, then you’ve got to start talking about the following year and what that schedule might look like as well.”

Kruger credited director of basketball operations DeShawn Henry and video/recruiting coordinator Will Saxon with handling much of the behind-the-scenes work on the non-conference schedule.

About half of UNLV’s non-conference schedule is known, as some games have already been announced separately or reported by various sources.

The preseason will begin with an extended road trip to Canada, where UNLV will play a series of three exhibition games against the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary and the University of Fraser Valley from Aug. 16-19.

UNLV will host Incarnate Word on Nov. 11 in what may very well be the regular-season opener, and follow that up with a home game against Dayton on Nov. 15. The Scarlet and Gray will then head west for the SoCal Challenge, a multi-team exempt tournament where they will take on Southern Illinois (Nov. 21) and then play either Minnesota or Cal Baptist (Nov. 23).

In December, UNLV will travel for a return game at San Diego (Dec. 3) after hosting the Toreros last year. Kruger’s squad will also host San Francisco on Dec. 17 after playing at the Dons in 2021-22.

That adds up to six games, leaving seven open slots if UNLV plays 13 non-conference contests (as the team did last year).

Kruger said the rest of the schedule is mostly in place, with the need to “cross some T’s and dot some I’s” before announcing it.

It sounds like the coach is satisfied that all boxes have been checked.

“I like it,” Kruger said. “I think it’s very competitive. We’re in a good MTE. We’ve got some good games here in Vegas, we’ve got good road games that are going to be very challenging. I think it’s a really good, solid schedule.”

Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.