Former University of Albany forward Tarique Foster now plays at Mississippi Valley State, which is playing each of its 14 nonconference games on the road. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)

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Mike Davis isn’t naïve. The first-year men’s basketball coach at Mississippi Valley State University knows his team is facing a challenging first two months of the season, maybe more so than any program in the nation. The Delta Devils are last among 365 Division 1 teams in analyst Ken Pomeroy’s ratings.

Still, MVSU is playing each of its 14 nonconference games on the road, starting with Friday’s opener at Oklahoma. The Delta Devils face five teams that were in the 2026 NCAA tournament and four that are ranked in the Associated Press preseason poll in No. 4 Connecticut, No. 12 Arkansas, No. 16 Michigan and No. 19 Texas Tech. KenPom projects MVSU will lose each of the nonleague games by at least 21 points.

And that doesn’t bother Davis. Not at all. In fact, Davis assembled the schedule soon after he took over MVSU in early May.

The reasoning is two-fold. MVSU expects to earn about $1.5 million in revenue by playing these games, a massive figure for a school of its standing in the low-major Southwestern Athletic Conference. The Delta Devils also can test themselves against high-major programs, which may help them in conference play.

During the 2024-25 school year, the most recent data available, MVSU’s athletics department generated $5.58 million in revenue, including $993,877 from the men’s basketball team, per the U.S. Department of Education’s database. By playing a difficult schedule, the men’s basketball team can add significant funds to the school’s financial coffers because major conference teams pay appearance fees to smaller schools that travel to their arenas. MVSU will receive an average of $110,000 per game for its nonconference games this season, according to athletics director Alecia Shields-Gadson.

For instance, UConn is paying MVSU $115,000 for the Dec. 8 game at the Huskies’ on-campus Gampel Pavilion and providing the Delta Devils 25 complimentary tickets behind their bench, per terms of the contract obtained via an open records request. Oregon is paying MVSU $100,000 and providing 50 tickets for the game on Nov. 11, per the contract between the schools. And Michigan, the reigning national champion, is paying MVSU $95,000 and providing up to 75 tickets for the game on Dec. 1, according to the agreement.

The money will help put the Delta Devils on more solid footing. Jerryl Briggs, MVSU’s president, has vowed that the school will share some of the revenue generated from the appearance fees with players, the first time that has happened.

“It’s a great opportunity to be able to go out and recruit top talented kids and ensure that we can create a winning atmosphere,” Shields-Gadson said. “This is an exciting time, but we won’t have such an aggressive schedule every year. We wanted to do it this year to give some great exposure for the young men, and it’s an opportunity to showcase Mississippi Valley to the world.”

Mississippi Valley State Continues Coach’s Philosophy

This is nothing new for Davis. When he coached at Texas Southern, another SWAC school, the Tigers played all their nonconference games on the road during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons. Texas Southern went 4-22 in those games. But both years, they ended up making the NCAA tournament. They also won the SWAC tournament titles and earned NCAA bids in 2014 and 2015 when they had a similarly difficult nonconference schedule.

“It’s giving you the opportunity to play against the best, so then when you come back to your league, you should be able to compete against them and get a chance to play for a championship,” Davis said. “That was my old approach at Texas Southern. It worked for me there. Why wouldn’t I do it now if it worked for me then?”

Still, MVSU is not expected to repeat what Davis accomplished at Texas Southern. The Delta Devils finished the past three seasons last in KenPom’s ratings, a stretch when they went 7-88 and won just four of 54 conference games. The league’s coaches and sports information directors picked MVSU to finish last again in the preseason poll released in October, as well.

The Delta Devils return no players from last season. Almost all of the players on the 12-man roster competed at the junior college or NAIA level or played overseas last season. Forward Tarique Foster (22 games at Albany) and guard Tory James Jr. (10 games at Cal Stat Bakersfield) are the only players who were on Division 1 rosters.

Davis, who has coached in Division 1 since 1995 and was Indiana’s coach from 2000 to 2006, assembled the roster by reaching out to high school and AAU coaches and other contacts he knew. None of the players visited campus before committing, which Davis said is common at this level. He remembers hosting only one or two recruits for official visits during his six years at Texas Southern. And yet, he said his scheduling philosophy helps in recruiting.

“Everybody that goes on the road in the mid-majors goes to get paid, no matter who you are,” Davis said. “But I also do it because I think it gives us a chance to play the best competition that you’re ever going to play…We’ve got guys who can tell their kids, ‘I played at UConn. I played at Michigan.’ Those are lifetime memories.”

Mississippi Valley State’s Peer Schools Have Similar Slates

Other SWAC programs have similar schedules, just not as overwhelming as MVSU’s slate. For instance, Bethune-Cookman, which the coaches picked to finish first in the league, plays 13 of its 14 nonconference games on the road, although on Nov. 15 it hosts Paine College of the National Christian Collegiate Athletic Association. Meanwhile, Southern University has 11 of its 14 nonleague games on the road, Arkansas-Pine Bluff has its first 11 games away from home and Alcorn State has 13 of 14 nonconference games on the road.

At MVSU, Davis worked with Shields-Gadson in making sure the team played games near each other to cut down on travel costs and time away from campus. Next week, the Delta Devils head to the West Coast and play at Washington on Monday, Oregon on Wednesday and Oregon State on Friday. The following four weeks, they only have one game apiece. They also play Texas Tech and Baylor on consecutive days in late December during the school’s winter break because those schools are both in Texas, albeit 350 miles from each other.

“We’re very strategic,” Shields-Gadson said. “The goal is not to just look at one bottom line number. It is to make sure that it’s put together geographically, so it’s not like we’re bouncing all over the country.”

She added: “There’s a lot that goes into it. Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, it’s just about the money.’ It is not. It has to be a lot of pieces that has to come together to make it make sense.”

Davis swears by his approach, and he’s seen it work. In December 2014, his Texas Southern team lost to Florida by 25 points and Gonzaga by 40 points in consecutive games. Five days later, the Tigers upset Michigan State in overtime. They then lost by one point to Auburn before defeating Kansas State by two points.

“My method is not madness,” Davis said. “My method is a plan. I say this all the time – David, he wanted to be a king. God didn’t give him a crown. He gave him Goliath. He got his crown by beating Goliath.”