UA women's basketball's Pac-12 schedule pairings include departing USC, UCLA to McKale

The fact the 2023-24 season is inching closer is evidenced by the Pac-12’s announcement Wednesday of its women’s basketball conference pairings.

While specific dates and times for Arizona’s Pac-12 games are still to come — these details will most likely be shared next month — for now we know that know that all Pac-12 teams will again play an 18-game league season after coaches voted on condensing the schedule.

Many coaches like UA’s Adia Barnes, Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer, USC’s Lindsay Gottlieb and Oregon’s Kelly Graves wanted to play a 20-game schedule. It’s been difficult for these coaches to line up teams to come West to play games; at one point it took Barnes 17 months to complete her team’s schedule.

Yet while the conference’s coaches originally voted for a 20-game schedule, they came back together to vote again last summer and settled on 18.

We also know that the Wildcats will play UCLA and USC both home and away in 2023-24 — the final year both teams are part of Pac-12. The following season the Trojans and Bruins will move to the Big Ten. Meaning: it’s the last time to see these teams play in McKale Center for quite some time as some Pac-12 teams have indicated that they will not play USC and UCLA as nonconference opponents.

The Wildcats will not be undertaking that tough mountain school trip as Utah and Colorado are only coming to Tucson. On the flip side, Oregon and Oregon State will not be playing at McKale this season, but Arizona will be playing in Oregon, trekking to Eugene and Corvallis.

The full slate of home games for Arizona looks like this: Arizona State, California, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington State, Colorado and Utah.

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The away games are: Arizona State, California, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington State, Oregon and Oregon State.

Last season, UCLA and USC did not travel to Tucson and the Wildcats did not play at the Washington schools.

Also of note: Stanford and Cal are not playing at USC and UCLA this season. When UCLA decided to go to the Big Ten, the University of California system (which includes both Cal and UCLA) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom fought to block UCLA’s exit.

Arizona’s nonconference schedule hasn’t been released yet, but the Wildcats have signed to play in the Battle 4 Atlantis Women’s Tournament on Nov. 18-20 as well as Gonzaga on Dec. 20 as part of Jerry Colangelo’s 2023 Hall of Fame Series in Phoenix. Texas will come to Tucson to play at McKale Center to finish a home-and-home between the Wildcats and Longhorns.