Photo by Russell Marwitz/True To The Cru/russellmarwitz.com
BELTON — The 2025-26 schedule for head coach Sam Patterson’s first season leading the UMHB men’s basketball program was released on Tuesday, with the regular season slate highlighted by numerous in-state non-conference matchups and an East Coast duel against the 2023 national champions.
The complete schedule can be found on cruathletics.com.
Here are five takeaways from our first look at the schedule ahead for UMHB men’s basketball, with the regular season tipping off in Belton in just 67 days.
The Cru’s highest-profile non-conference matchups will come on the road
Featured amongst 19 non-ASC contests are two opponents in particular: Christopher Newport and St. Thomas (TX). While previous success isn’t necessarily an indicator of what will happen this winter, both programs come into 2025-26 with remarkably strong track records, and that naturally raises the stakes on these two games in particular.
CNU, who will host UMHB in its state-of-the-art Freeman Center in Newport News, Virginia on Jan. 18, is coming off its 10th consecutive 20-win campaign, having gone 23-6 in 2024-25. The Captains have been a fixture on the national scene for the last decade, and head into this season aiming to extend their streak of NCAA Tournament appearances to double digits. In each of the last nine seasons (the 2020-21 Covid season excluded), CNU has not just reached the national tournament, but has won at least one game while there, including Final Four runs in 2016, 2019, and 2023. John Krikorian’s squad broke through with a title in their third trip to the season’s final weekend, winning the 2023 national championship in dramatic fashion on a go-ahead layup from Trey Barber in the game’s final second. That also completed the Captains’ second 30-win season since 2015.
St. Thomas has less Division III experience, having transitioned from the NAIA to D-III in 2019. But in the last five years, there has been no better program in Texas, and few others at the same level in all of Region 10. The Celts enter 2025-26 as the reigning champions in the SCAC, and earned their third consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance last season, making them one of only two teams in the region with an active NCAA Tournament streak of 3+ seasons. UST is 91-19 overall since 2021, and has won the SCAC Tournament in three of the last five seasons. UMHB travels to play UST in Houston on Nov. 29.
The pedigree of both programs is high, and they are UMHB’s only two opponents in 2025-26 to have been ranked in the Top 25 of the NCAA Power Index at the conclusion of last season (CNU at No. 12, UST at No. 15).
But why does it matter that those games are on the road? Under NPI, the system used for selection of at-large teams to the national tournament and seeding for the national tournament, different “weights” are given within the formula to non-conference results, depending on whether they come at home or on the road (other weights are used within the system for conference results). In other words, a non-conference road win will be weighed at 1.2 within the formula, while a home win over the same opponent would be weighed at 0.8. Why is this? If the system were to count all games the exact same, then UMHB beating CNU at home as compared to on the road would get the same Game NPI. But common sense tells us that shouldn’t be the case, considering it’s much more difficult to beat CNU on the road than in Belton. These weights are aiming to give real value to that line of thinking, giving a team more credit for winning on the road than at home because it’s harder to do. The road non-conference win doesn’t count once towards a team’s NPI; it counts 1.2 times. The same is true for road losses, for the reasons given above. A road non-conference loss is only counted 0.8 times, compared to a home loss in non-conference, counted 1.2 times.
It can be difficult to fully grasp the math behind what all of this means, but for UMHB, it really boils down to this: since teams only play 25 games a season (not thousands where all the math and “expected” Game NPIs would all equal out), UMHB has given themselves a larger potential range of NPI by playing CNU and St. Thomas on the road. They get higher Game NPI if they win, compared to if they win these games at home. But they have to accept the decreased Win Probability of playing on the road—UST and CNU were a combined 28-2 at home last season—which lowers the bottom range of their Overall NPI.No doubt The Cru will be well-prepared by the time those games roll around.
A special thanks to Scott Peterson of The D3 Stat Lab for his insight on this aspect of UMHB’s schedule and how it relates to their potential NPI.
A D1 exhibition is back on the schedule
It was no secret that after UMHB shocked the college basketball world in 2022 by upsetting Sun Belt title contender Texas State, most Division I opponents backed off from scheduling The Cru in exhibitions over the next two seasons. It was understandable, considering the criticism Texas State received in the aftermath, despite the fact that UMHB had opened the season ranked No. 2 in the D3hoops.com Top 25 and went on to make a second-straight Sweet 16 appearance.
But a Division I opponent is back on UMHB’s slate, as The Cru will play Lamar on Oct. 29 in Beaumont, Texas. It is the sixth time since 2020 that a D1 exhibition is part of the schedule, but the first matchup between the Crusaders and Cardinals since UMHB moved to D3 in 1998. Lamar is coming off a 20-13 campaign a season ago, the program’s first 20-win season since 2018-19. That success came along with a second-place finish in the Southland Conference, their best showing in league play since 2012.
Of note, Lamar has a UMHB connection on its coaching staff. De’Andre Miller, the program’s Director of Operations, spent two seasons coaching for The Cru from 2020-2022, and was part of UMHB’s Elite Eight run in 2021-22.
Multiple non-conference opponents will play UMHB twice, including a pair of former ASC foes
There are a handful of more regional non-conference opponents that will play The Cru only once, including former ASC member Belhaven, who visits The Cru on Nov. 22 in Belton. But you will also notice a fair number of non-conference home-and-home matchups, giving this schedule a similar dynamic to what was commonplace a half decade ago, when the ASC was made up of 11 basketball-playing schools.
UMHB is set to face four different teams twice between November 9 and January 5: Trinity (TX), Centenary (LA), Concordia (TX), and LeTourneau. The Cru has played three of those four within the last two years, though UMHB’s last matchup with Centenary came back in 2011.
Trinity is The Cru’s opponent for its Nov. 9 season-opener, as the Sunday afternoon duel on opening weekend marks the first time the programs have met in Belton during the regular season since 2019. However, the Crusaders and Tigers played more recently in the second round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, with UMHB pulling off a 98-82 win. UMHB is then scheduled to return the trip, facing Trinity in San Antonio exactly a month later on Dec. 9. Of note, both teams will be led by first-year head coaches in 2025-26, with Patterson guiding UMHB and former Schreiner head coach Marwan Elrakabawy at the helm for Trinity.
A similar turnaround of about a month separates the contests against Centenary, as UMHB hosts the Gents in Belton during Thanksgiving week (Nov. 25), before heading to Shreveport for the first time since 2001 on Dec. 19. Inside Centenary’s spacious Gold Dome, Patterson’s squad will aim for The Cru’s first-ever road win against the Gents, who were a Division I program up until 2011.
The home-and-home situation with Concordia is nothing new, as the programs have continued playing twice a year even after the Tornados left for the SCAC. Longtime rivals who are separated by just 57 miles in Central Texas, UMHB is scheduled to play in Austin on Dec. 14, before hosting Concordia in its first game of 2026, on Jan. 3.
Facing LeTourneau twice in a season might be the norm, but not in non-conference play. The Yellowjackets, members of the ASC since 1998, will be a first-year SCAC program this winter. UMHB and LETU have plenty of recent history on the hardwood, including facing off in the 2022 ASC Tournament final and in last season’s ASC Tournament semifinal. UMHB plays LETU on the road in its second regular season game on Nov. 13, then hosts the Yellowjackets nearly two months later as part of a four-game homestand on Jan. 5.
Combined with the six-game ASC schedule, The Cru will end up playing 56 percent of its regular season slate against seven programs. As one might expect, it means the performance of those seven teams in the season as a whole—not just against The Cru—will impact UMHB’s NPI to a significant degree. And while that is right along the same lines as most D-III programs across the nation, who traditionally play somewhere between 12 to 18 league contests, there is an advantage here.
In a 14-game conference schedule (like the ASC had years ago), you play everyone from top to bottom in the league, oftentimes twice, giving a team wins over conference members that are well below .500, which potentially drags your NPI number down. But in this instance, with just six ASC games, there’s a real possibility that all four ASC teams end up above .500 overall. Then you factor the non-conference opponents in. Concordia, Trinity, and LeTourneau were all at or above .500 last season, and Centenary, while considerably below that mark in 2024-25, is traditionally a contender within the SCAC.
All in all, that 56 percent could come against several teams at the top of their respective leagues and work out very favorably for The Cru, despite UMHB playing in what will be the smallest league in Division III.
What to know about the ASC schedule
As the ASC dwindles in size (before increasing back to 6 members next year), the league has been forced to re-evaluate the annual conference schedule for each of the last few years. Down to four this season—Hardin-Simmons, ETBU, Howard Payne, and UMHB—it resulted in just six ASC games, by far the fewest UMHB has ever had. But rather than go to a triple round-robin or play three weeks with the traditional double round-robin, two-games-per-week format, the ASC chose a different approach for this unique year. With the four schools spread entirely across the state from Abilene to Marshall, ASC teams, for the most part, will play just one conference game per week on Saturdays.
What does this look like for UMHB? For starters, the ASC schedule will begin well after the rest of Division III has begun league play, with UMHB’s conference opener against Hardin-Simmons in Belton coming on Jan. 24. The Cru has a quick turnaround—and a lot of travel—the following week, playing at ETBU on Tuesday (Jan. 27) before going the opposite direction to Howard Payne that next Saturday (Jan. 31). The final three games will come on three consecutive Saturdays, hosting ETBU (Feb. 7), visiting HSU (Feb. 14), followed by the season finale in Belton against Howard Payne (Feb. 21).
Ideal balance between home and road, No big gaps despite late ASC start
These are really two points, but I’ll sum them up into one final takeaway. As one might imagine, finding 19 non-conference games as a D3 program in a part of the country with significantly fewer D3s than in the Midwest and East is an incredibly tough challenge. But Patterson and assistant coach Uriah Hunter figured it out, and didn’t sacrifice home games or playing quality competition to do so. It is an exceptionally-balanced slate of games, with an exact 50-50 split between home and road contests (11 of each) along with three neutral court matchups against Ohio Northern and Redlands at the D3hoops.com Classic and Salisbury in Virginia. Sure, three of the 11 at home come against non-D3 competition, but that sort of balance between home and away in the schedule seems to put teams in good positions to maintain momentum over what can be a long season.
Along with that, another big question in regards to the ASC’s whittled-down schedule was how programs would handle such a late start to conference play when the majority of all other D3s were already weeks deep into their own league games. UMHB had a difficult time with that in 2024-25, and ended up going 17 days between beating ninth-ranked Illinois Wesleyan and traveling to UT-Dallas.
That won’t be the case in 25-26, as the longest they will go without playing a game in January and February is seven days. After hosting Dallas Christian College on Jan. 10, UMHB heads to the east coast, facing Salisbury and CNU on consecutive days. Six days after taking the court in Newport News, The Cru will be back inside the Mayborn Campus Center for their ASC opener. While the scheduling situation was far from ideal this season, UMHB made the most of it, and should be set up well for success once conference action finally tips off.
