With just over six weeks to go before college basketball season begins, Pac-12 coaches are still meeting virtually once a week to collectively sort through some strategy.
Not on-the-court strategy, of course. More like survival strategy, about finding a way to play all 27 games somehow, and safely.
Among the questions: Whether to travel for a multi-team event or host their own? What to do about nonconference games scheduled before the NCAA's new Nov. 25 start date? How to squeeze seven nonconference games around the two conference games the Pac-12 added back into December in order to make up its expanded 20-game schedule?
Meanwhile, how to do all this in a way that allows for make-up games, with the smaller numbers involved in basketball meaning a single positive COVID-19 test could throw most, if not all, of an entire team into 14 days of quarantine.
Among the possible solutions: Scheduling all Pac-12 rivalry games for the same day, keeping alternate dates in the two "rivalry weeks" open for make-up games. Or even having all teams play both their rivalry games in the same week, which would keep an entire week open.
The Pac-12 could also move up more league games earlier over winter break, though doing so would push up against nonconference schedules and Christmas.
“There's been a lot of conversations on Zoom call meetings with all the head coaches in the Pac-12, really just talking about scheduling and scheduling philosophy and how are we going to get games in,” ASU coach Bobby Hurley said. “I found out quickly that no one really wanted to travel … and it was very difficult to convince some of the programs we were hoping to attract here closer to our footprint.”
Or, as Colorado coach Tad Boyle put it more succinctly to Buffzone.com, “scheduling for everybody is like the wild, wild West.”
ASU was originally scheduled to play in the Diamond Head Classic, which is moving from Honolulu to Orlando, but Hurley instead agreed to take the Sun Devils to Connecticut for the Nov. 25-26 Empire Classic, which will also involve Villanova, Baylor and Boston College.
Colorado, meanwhile, pulled out of the Fort Myers Tip-Off and into a multi-team event at Kansas State, while Stanford is sticking with the Maui Invitational even though it is moving to Asheville, N.C.
Overall, about half of the Pac-12’s teams are expected to hold their own multi-team event (MTE), including Arizona, which pulled out of the NIT Season Tip-Off. Ryan Reynolds, UA’s director of basketball operations, said he anticipated the Wildcats also would be able to keep their December home schedule intact as originally scheduled, meaning the Wildcats wouldn't have to travel at all until a Dec. 19 conference game at Stanford.
UA will still have an early season challenge, however, with Colorado scheduled to visit McKale on Dec. 2. While all signs point to Colorado and Stanford sticking with the originally scheduled dates to play the Wildcats, other Pac-12 teams are working to shift their December dates around if needed to accommodate changes in their nonconference schedules.
Of its other moves so far, Arizona has pushed a Nov. 20 game with Wyoming to the 2020-21 season, and may shift its canceled Nov. 16 game with LMU to a future season. Reynolds said the Wildcats are likely to keep their Nov. 10 opener with NAU but move it back to after Nov. 25, and could do the same with a scheduled Nov. 12 game against Northern Colorado.
Those two games could be moved onto or near the dates when the Gonzaga and Illinois games were to be played, while the Wildcats will likely invite three other teams to an MTE and play two of them. Those teams have not yet been lined up.
“There are so many scenarios, it’s crazy,” Reynolds said. “It’s almost like you have to go week to week.”
