When the Pac-12 decided to postpone the fall sports season it wasn't only sports such as football and women's volleyball that were impacted as the league decided, in a bit of a surprise to many people, to also postpone competition in all sports until at least Jan. 1, 2021.
That meant Arizona's men's and women's basketball teams would be losing the orginally planned nonconference portion of their seasons.
It was a drastic move that was not something done by the Big Ten, the other Power Five conference to postpone its fall sports season. The NCAA is reportedly preliminarily focused on four dates to begin the college basketball season – Nov. 10, Nov. 20, Nov. 25, Dec. 4 – according to Matt Norlander from CBS Sports.
He specified that those dates are just a starting point with the NCAA hoping to finalize a decision on the basketball season start date by the middle of next month.
Even if it is decided that Dec. 4 is the most appropriate date for the college basketball season to begin, that will still leave the Pac-12 teams out of the mix by a month. Or would it?
Jon Wilner of The Mercury News is reporting that the conference could decide to revise its original planned start of the basketball season – most likely in January – if the NCAA ultimately decides to begin the season close enough to the start of the new year that presidents in the league are comfortable with it.
“If the (start) is moved closer to January, we would re-evaluate,” Wilner's source said.
The Pac-12 has received plenty of criticism for making such a drastic decision when it also decided to postpone the fall sports season. So far only the Ivy League has opted to move its basketball season to the spring. No other conferences have made that move as of now.
When speaking with media recently, Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke said he didn't anticipate any reversal of a decision by the league barring a significant change in course, but the focus has remained mostly on football when looking toward the spring. Although, he did not completely shut down the idea of revising the current plan.
"We're pretty convinced that we're moving towards January, but ... I’m not a person that would not consider something,” Heeke said. “Could something change that allows us to consider it? OK, I don’t see that but if there is an abundance of evidence and our medical advisory group was entertaining that, we could have that conversation. But I don’t see us working on that immediately.”
The Pac-12 had been set to move to a 20-game conference season this year with the Wildcats originally scheduled to play Colorado and Stanford in December. While the idea of a conference-only basketball season has been speculated about, it is clear leaders and coaches in the league hope to have some type of nonconference schedule even with the delayed start.
"Lots of unknowns still out there on how this will materialize going forward," Heeke said. "I'm very hopeful that we can continue to have some nonconference games going forward in January and develop a season that works for everyone because I think that would be in the best interest of college basketball."
UA women's basketball coach Adia Barnes is also in favor of having some nonconference games this season since it would give a team like hers the chance to ease back into play rather than jump right into a challenging league schedule.
“For me personally, we don’t want to go into the Pac-12 as our first game against UCLA or USC," she said. I’d rather it be a non-conference opponent.”
In addition to that the Wildcats had put together an impressive nonconference schedule that would be a good resume builder for the NCAA Tournament. Barnes added that having those games would also help her team build chemistry as she welcomes in a number of new players to the program.
For now the focus will remain on starting up in 2021, but the decision by the NCAA in the coming weeks is certainly something the Pac-12 leadership will have its eye on.
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