Arizona will open and close its 2019-20 Pac-12 basketball schedule at home, hosting ASU during the weekend of Jan. 1-5 while hosting the Washington schools during the weekend of March 4-7.
The league schedule also hands UA a surprisingly quick return game with the Sun Devils at Tempe sometime between Jan. 22-26, meaning the Wildcats will have to play two games each over the final six weekends of league play.
The Wildcats' backloaded schedule will have them facing the Southern California schools twice each in February, along with Oregon and Washington visiting McKale Center over the final three weeks.
But the Wildcats won't have to travel to face Colorado, a team heavily loaded with veterans that is likely to be one of the league favorites. Due to the conference's unbalanced schedule, Arizona won't make the mountain trip to Utah and Colorado and won't host the Bay area schools.
The league schedule format will change in 2019-20, when league teams will play 20 games each (exact details of how that will happen haven't been worked out yet, but will likely include some key November and December weekend dates.)
The exact dates (including the order of which team will be played first on a particular weekend) and times for the upcoming season won't be announced until the conference's television partners sort out what they want, probably sometime in September. But this gives fans a chance to start planning weekends around home games or to start considering weekends for travel.
The league's official release on the schedule pairs is attached as a PDF.
Here's how UA's schedule looks now:
Sept. 27. Red-Blue game (scrimmage)
Oct. 25-27 Closed scrimmage (exact date, time, location and opponent not announced)
Nov. 1 CHICO STATE (exhibition)
Nov. 10 ILLINOIS
Nov. 14 SAN JOSE STATE
Nov. 17 NEW MEXICO STATE
Nov. 21 SOUTH DAKOTA STATE
Nov. 24 LONG BEACH STATE (Wooden Legacy add-on game)
Nov. 28 Pepperdine, at Anaheim, Calif. (Wooden Legacy) 9 p.m. ESPN2
Nov. 29 UCF or Penn, at Anaheim, Calif. (Wooden Legacy) 7 p.m. (ESPNews) or 9:30 p.m. (ESPN2).
Dec. 1 Providence/Long Beach State/Wake Forest/College of Charleston, at Anaheim, Calif. (Wooden Legacy) TBA
Dec. 7 at Baylor
Dec. 11 NEBRASKA-OMAHA
Dec. 14 GONZAGA
Dec. 21 St. John’s (in San Francisco, Basketball Hall of Fame event)
Jan. 1-5 ASU
Jan. 8-12 at Oregon, at Oregon State
Jan. 15-19 COLORADO, UTAH
Jan. 22-26 at ASU
Jan. 29-Feb. 2 at Washington, at WSU
Feb. 5-9 UCLA, USC
Feb. 12-16 at California, at Stanford
Feb. 19-23 OREGON, OSU
Feb. 26-March 1 at UCLA, at USC
March 4-7 WASHINGTON, WSU
March 11-14 Pac-12 Tournament, Las Vegas
