There have been a lot of examples the last couple years of how drastic home court advantage is. Nova has been a good (not great) team this year, but part of their tradition of playing away games at other Philly based schools has resulted in multiple losses.

The PAC made a horrendous competitive decision to have some of their teams play away games at HBCUs last year, resulting in some unforgivable losses against teams in cellar dwelling conferences, tanking their conference metrics.

You schedule a few tests, sure, but the schedule at this level is built the way it is with purpose. It sustains the credibility of the conference as a whole when 90% of your games your a huge favorite.

There will be more than enough tests in conference. No reason to push your guys in out of conference play and elevate the risk of injury and/or crushed confidence in the system before things even get started.