Kristensen: UE and USI should be playing in basketball. Why isn't it happening?

EVANSVILLE — Picture this.

It’s a Saturday afternoon in early November at the start of the college basketball season. Fans clad in purple and orange or red and blue are filing into Ford Center or Screaming Eagles Arena. The city is buzzing with anticipation. For the first time as Division I opponents, the University of Evansville and University of Southern Indiana are facing each other in a men’s and women’s basketball doubleheader.

While not to the level of Indiana versus Purdue or Cincinnati versus Xavier — at least not yet — the excitement surrounding the Evansville community is palpable.

Perhaps there’s a big-time local sponsor or maybe there’s a charitable element to the matchup. There could even be a trophy. Fans on both sides are generating ticket revenue, concessions and merchandise sales as one of the most anticipated days in local sports history gets underway.

Previously: The UE-USI rivalry is budding, but there's still one glaring absence: Basketball

This is instead a fantasy, a seemingly longshot dream as the city's two D-I universities have yet to schedule one another in their flagship programs.

It’s disappointing, yes, but even more so when seeing the success of the matchups in other sports. Large crowds have graced UE-USI games in men’s and women’s soccer (albeit a spring exhibition for the latter), volleyball, cross country and softball since the Screaming Eagles made the jump to D-I. The baseball teams have played in the past and could again in the future. The men’s soccer home-and-home series has been played for years.

Despite that success and fans' hunger for it to happen, the basketball teams aren’t playing.

“It has to make sense on both ends,” UE men’s coach David Ragland said. “This year, it definitely wasn’t gonna happen. I get it, that people want it to happen, but it has to make sense on both ends.”

The only potential downside would be hurt feelings for those on the losing side. But so what? Xavier and Cincinnati play every year, as do Nebraska and Creighton. Missouri and Kansas split for a decade when the Tigers went to the Southeastern Conference but have renewed the rivalry.

There’s little-to-no travel cost. You don’t need a hotel. Fans and players alike will sleep in their own beds the nights before and after the games. The atmosphere would likely be the best these teams see in town all season.

“It’s a process, and I get where he’s coming from with it,” USI men’s coach Stan Gouard said. “Hopefully next year, if we have to, we’ll get it done but it is in the works.”

Why UE and USI haven't scheduled each other in basketball

There are reasons they won't meet on the hardwood. It’s not that there’s no desire to play or that there’s a fear between the two schools. In fact, there has been progress. Athletics directors Kenneth Siegfried and Jon Mark Hall recently had lunch to discuss the possibility. Ragland and Gouard met at “an undisclosed location,” Gouard said, to talk things over.

“I left there feeling great about it and I cannot wait until it happens,” he said.

The pair of coaches were put in the same group at a golf outing recently, with Evansville Regional Sports Commission director Brandon McClish jokingly saying, “We finally got USI and UE together to play a game. A game of golf.”

“I think that was a good thing because after that golf outing we had a meeting,” Gouard said. “That was something we couldn’t get done last year.”

Gouard said he and Ragland’s staff met with McClish about the possibility of the game happening, with the USI lead man saying, “We’re closer than we were last year.”

Those are all good things.

Scheduling can be difficult, particularly when dealing with a Division I transition like USI’s. The Missouri Valley Conference wants its teams to schedule in a way that, should results go their way, the league is in a position to be a multi-bid conference for the NCAA tournaments. The Ohio Valley, barring something unforeseen, is not in that position. There’s an argument to be made that the MVC may be a little ways away still, but there was a time last season when Bradley was getting some far and distant at-large shouts.

With USI amid its second year of the four-year transitioning postseason ban, games against the Eagles don’t count towards RPI — the main ranking factor in determining at-large berths. That reasoning, flawed or not, is part of why the game is not happening this season. That comes despite UE hosting NAIA University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy, Valparaiso hosting Trinity Christian and a variety of other MVC-vs.-non-NCAA matchups.

UE has four OVC opponents on its schedule while USI has two MVC teams slated for the upcoming season.

USI hasn’t released its non-conference schedule, but it’s expected to include multiple games against non-D1s. Those don’t get people excited. A crosstown rivalry? Bragging rights between siblings, neighbors, spouses, alumni and anyone with a connection to the schools?

That gets people going.

The good news for local basketball fans? The game will happen 'in due time'

Ragland said the biggest hurdle on UE’s end is the contracts left over from former coach Todd Lickliter’s tenure — “Once we get rid of the contracts we inherited, we have to make it make sense,” he said. “It takes some time for stuff like that to come together and, in due time, it will.”

Gouard also said USI has some contracts that need to be completed.

“I think we’re a lot closer than what people think,” Gouard said. “I know people are complaining about it a lot. At the same time, I get their frustration, but we’re gonna figure it out at some point.”

Gouard also wants it to be a home-and-home arrangement, something he said he thinks Ragland understands given his USI playing days. There’s the issue of money, which is why both schools have to leave space for guaranteed games against the likes of Duke, BYU, Michigan State and Cincinnati.

Scheduling is filled with complex issues that make it difficult. That’s a well-known fact in college athletics. Both staffs say it will happen eventually, which is a good thing. The game not happening this year is disappointing, particularly with both teams having at least one non-D1 on their respective schedules.

“It should happen,” Gouard said. “I feel like both programs are in a good enough place to make it happen, it’s just a matter of those guys pushing the button. … I’m glad we listened to each other and tried to make it all work.”

But until that button is pressed and the teams come together, this whole thing is a figment of our imagination. The Evansville community will wait, soaking in the thought of what a crosstown rivalry could do for both programs and the city as a whole. When that hypothetical becomes reality, the excitement will be as loud as the current groans.

In the meantime, though, at least some NAIA schools will walk away with heavier wallets.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Kristensen: It's time for UE, USI to play each other in basketball