1. I like that we don’t play a road game until December. It will give this young team to find itself and settle the rotations before it’s thrown into the fire. Last year’s early schedule probably proved to be too much for the team to overcome once we had all the adversity.

2. It’s nice not having any non-conference games after New Year’s Eve. That always felt weird. I imagine the extra two Big 12 games will be played in place of the games we usually had that first week or two of January, since the Big 12 Tournament is on the same week it’s always been.

3. Although it’s a less heavy schedule than the past couple, there’s still some really good tests. We could lose to Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Alabama, and it wouldn’t shock me. But it should toughen us up to make a run against a weaker field in the Diamond Head Classic. That Alabama game will be huge — they could be top 10 this year.

Now we wait to see what the Big 12 slate looks like. I just hope it’s a slightly easier start to the schedule than we’ve seen the last three years, but with Colorado and Nebraska gone, there’s probably no sequence of three games they can assemble that won’t see us ether playing in a tough road venue or facing a Top 25 team at home.