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Mountain West Basketball: Non-Conference Games Affected By PAC-12 Postponement
Non-Conference games that won’t happen this year given the PAC-12’s decision.
Contact/Follow @HardwoodTalk & @MWCwire
A look at the non-conference games around the Mountain West affected by the PAC-12’s decision to cancel all sports for the rest of 2020.
Well, it’s starting folks, after a month-long waiting game for college basketball fans around the country watching conference after conference make their own call in regards to the upcoming football season, normally set to kick off this month.
We finally have some news regarding games taking place on the hardwood. Though as expected, it follows the trend we are currently seeing around the college football world, no games anytime soon or at least not until the turn of the calendar year.
As of yesterday, the Pac-12 is the first conference to essentially postpone all sports for the remainder of the 2020 calendar year. Although other conferences such as the Ivy League made their own pioneering announcements back in early July, the PAC-12 is the first to include winter sports by not directly mentioning any change or postponement for any sports in particular. But by pushing back any further discussion surrounding the key words “all sports” until at least 2021.
This announcement should be the first of many in the coming days, with basketball beginning to mirror football around the country. With conferences taking the future of their upcoming seasons into their own hands and making difficult decisions across the country to either push back their seasons into the new year or going on as planned as we’ve seen with the ACC, Big 12 and SEC.
We’ve seen the scheduling fallout Group of Five conferences have encountered recently with Power Five conferences opting for conference only seasons along with FCS and FBS independent programs shutting it down completely and now high major conferences pushing all sports back to possibly the turn of the new year.
Conference Commissioners have gone on the record stating that college sports cannot be played in a bubble-like professional sports have demonstrated this summer and it seems that no such attempts will be made come 2021 either. At least, given what we know and are seeing happening around the country at the moment. Where smaller conferences don’t have the resources to begin their seasons at the moment and even some bigger ones don’t see the reward outweighing the risks should they decide to play in the coming months.
It’s still very early and I’m sure the ongoing pandemic halted some further discussion between athletic departments. But there is some previously published non-conference games out there to review (Via the D1 Docket’s Twittter account). But at first glance we only have four officially announced games and three possible ones listed at the moment between the Mountain West and PAC-12 in jeopardy.
That probably isn’t a true representation of how badly schedules were affected around the conference yesterday. Since Mountain West schools took the floor against PAC-12 schools sixteen times last season, with four of those contests coming from San Jose State alone.Though in reality, I’m not entirely confident we would have seen a season that even slightly resembled what we are used to on opening night anyway.
Nonetheless, some highly anticipated matchups will be missed by local fan bases who were probably not going to be allowed inside the proposed venues anyway, or at least not in the volumes or traditional seating arrangements we’ve come to know and love.
Anyway, below are the games we can guess are canceled this winter, while also keeping in mind some games that are expected to happen annually like rivalry matchups between the Buffaloes and Rams not reflected below.
Nevada
A possible matchup against Oregon State in the Cayman Islands Classic, originally scheduled for late November.
San Diego State
At Arizona State on Dec. 10th, 2020
A possible rematch against Arizona State in the Diamond Head Classic, originally scheduled for late December.
San Jose State
At Stanford TBD
UNLV
California on Nov. 14th, 2020
UCLA on Nov. 17th, 2020
A possible matchup against Stanford in the Maui Invitational, originally scheduled for late November.
Wyoming
At Arizona on Nov. 20th, 2020
Make sure to check back on updates to the upcoming season (whenever that may be) right here, as we at Mountain West Wire will be keeping track all fall and winter for updates with you.
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