Northern Illinois' season-opener against Grambling State tips off on Monday morning at 3 a.m. Eastern Time. But in head coach Matt Majkrzak's mind, it's a Sunday game.
The Huskies are taking part in the Field of 68 Tip-off Marathon
in Rock Hill, S.C., taking the graveyard shift against the Tigers as part of an eight-game event split between two venues. Majkrzak, like most coaches, has never coached a game at 3 a.m. before, so he had to consider all possibilities in terms of altering his team's practice schedule to prepare. He landed on not changing too much.
Advertisement
With another game looming on Thursday against Tulsa, he can't afford to throw off the schedule long-term. So he opted against setting a whole week of practices for late nights. Until NIU lands in South Carolina on Friday, everything is business as usual.
The flight is scheduled for noon, which Majkrzak says means that the team has to be up at 8 a.m., ready to go. They'll land in South Carolina later that evening. Then, it's a late-night practice at 11:30 p.m.
Once the Huskies run through practice on Friday night into Saturday morning, Majkrzak wants the players to stay awake for a few more hours.
"We're going to room check at 4 a.m.," Majkrzak told Mid-Major Madness.
"And they have to be awake."
Advertisement
After the checks are complete, he wants the players to go to bed, trying to adhere to a 4 a.m. to noon sleep schedule – sounds like a normal college kid sleep schedule on a Friday night if you ask me. There are no team activities on Saturday until 1 p.m.
"If we can sleep in until noon on Saturday, and then sleep until noon on Sunday," Majkrzak said. "All of the sudden it just becomes kind of a normal later game night."
There's only one night of late-night practice for the Huskies, as Majkrzak wants to keep everything as simple as possible. Practice on Saturday will be at 5 p.m.
NIU's assigned shootaround time is also set for 5 p.m. on Sunday evening, so they'll walk through final preparations for Grambling State then.
Advertisement
"The biggest thing is not overthinking it," he said. "Not putting doubt in their minds."
The Merrimack Warriorsare all about rhythm, routine, and consistency. So what happens when head coach Joe Gallo agrees to play a game against App State at 6 a.m.?
He thought he was going to do a dry run during the lead-up to the season, but went away from it as to not change his players' sleep patterns more than once. But he will be changing up the sleep patterns.
Merrimack is set for a 9:30 a.m. practice on Saturday morning before catching a 2:30 p.m. flight from Boston to Charlotte. The Warriors have the 9:25 a.m. practice slot on Sunday morning in Rock Hill. But the real challenge, Gallo says, is to get his players to go to sleep at around 7 p.m. on Sunday night. Sorry, Philly native Rocco Westfield. You're not watching the Eagles/Commanders game.
Advertisement
The day-of schedule looks a little different as well. Gallo says that Merrimack would usually have its pregame meal four hours before the game. But he's gunning for a 3 a.m. wake-up and 3:15 or 3:30 a.m. team meal. Instead of being on the floor for warmups two hours before tip, the Warriors might not be able to get on the floor until 5:15 because of the NIU-Grambling game.
"We'll probably have guys taped at the hotel," Gallo told Mid-Major Madness.
"I don't think we'll get to the arena until 4:30 or 4:45."
On Sunday afternoon, the team will run through the final preparations "ballroom style."
Merrimack is scheduled to take an afternoon flight back home. Gallo is planning on giving the Warriors Tuesday off, despite a game against rival UMass Lowell on the schedule for Thursday.
Advertisement
"I try to keep to a similar rhythm regardless of results," Gallo said. "Hopefully it works out in the long run."
High Point has it much easierthan NIU and Merrimack. The Panthers are just a 90-minute bus ride from Rock Hill, and also had their pick of game times, choosing the midnight start. HPU opens the season against Liberty in what will be the first game to take place stateside of the entire Division I season.
Flynn Clayman said that the team will bus down to Rock Hill on Saturday night and sleep there, not worrying about exactly when his team gets to bed.
"I think it's all about just getting enough hours of sleep," Clayman told Mid-Major Madness.
"They'll be fine in terms of their energy as long as they don't lose hours of sleep the nights before. So I just think if we try to change that… and stay up until 2 a.m every day, I think that would do more harm than good."
Advertisement
The Panthers didn't change practices around over the summer to try to prepare. He trusts that his team's adrenaline will kick in as game day activities start at 9:30 p.m., about six hours after High Point's shootaround slot will end.
"They're going to be wide awake at 9:30, and then we're going to be warming up for a game," he said. "They're not going to get sleepy at that point."
The team will bus back right after the game, and get back to High Point not much later than it normally would after, say, a 7 p.m. road game at Charleston Southern. A few weeks later, High Point takes on LSU in Baton Rouge, and Clayman says that following the team's charter flight ride back, they won't be situated until around 4 a.m.
Had the Panthers been offered the 3 a.m. or 6 a.m. slots, Clayman says that he wouldn't have taken the game.
Advertisement
"I wouldn't have done that to our guys," he said. "I think we're too high-profile a program to have to take one of those spots."
And he's right. High Point is an extremely talented and deep roster with at-large aspirations after winning the program's first NCAA Tournament game last March against Wisconsin.
Despite that, Clayman understands why programs like Merrimack and Northern Illinois are flying in for those undesirable game times.
"I was at Southern Utah for a while," he said. "And early on there, we probably would've done something like that to try and get some eyeballs on our program. I get why those teams are doing something like that. They'll be the only game on, and even though it'll be late, where a lot of Americans will be asleep, just worldwide on YouTube, it's probably going to be their most watched game of the season unless they make the NCAA Tournament."
Advertisement
NIU leaves Rock Hillto fly back home just "four or five hours" after the Grambling game, and Majkrzak wants his players to go to sleep at a normal hour on Monday so the team can get back to work, preparing for Tulsa, on Tuesday.
He views the 3 a.m. tip as an extension of Sunday, and Monday as the team's off-day, even if they won't sleep between the game day and the end of the off-day.
Majkrzak, who scripts every offensive possession of every game, says that he had the Grambling State script tentatively finished before NIU's first exhibition, but made adjustments based on the exhibitions. He finalized the script on Tuesday.
The final variable for Majkrzak was the possibility of his beloved Brewers playing in Game 7 of the World Series on Saturday. Fortunately for him, he won't have to schedule around it. Milwaukee won in five on Wednesday night.
