The West Virginia basketball schedule was going to need some adjustments after three games were postponed and now we have an idea of what at least a portion of that will look like.
The Mountaineers lost games on the road at Baylor and at home against TCU and Oklahoma State due to the program not meeting the Big 12 Conference COVID-19 thresholds. One of those games have been rescheduled, with the road trip to Baylor set for Feb. 18.
That means over that week West Virginia will open up with a Feb. 15 home contest against No. 2 Baylor before traveling to Waco for that Feb. 18 game against the Bears and closing out with a Feb. 20 road trip to Texas. That is a brutal week for the program in terms of competition considering those are two of the best teams in the nation over a three-game span in six-days.
That’s going to be quite the challenge, but it also is the reality of playing in a league as difficult as the Big 12 when you have to move pieces around to fill holes in the schedule.
The league did do the Mountaineers a favor though by pushing back the road contest at TCU a day to Feb. 23 as opposed to the original Feb. 22 date. That gives West Virginia an extra day of rest after a very difficult six-day stretch in the heart of the conference schedule.
The Mountaineers would then have four days off before the currently scheduled season finale against Kansas State in Morgantown. That obviously could still change as well but now the hurdle is going to be finding slots for the two remaining league games that have yet to be rescheduled.
Those home contests against TCU and Oklahoma State, could be slotted for some point during the course of the season as you saw with the makeup of the Baylor game although that could be tight. But it is much more realistic that the conference uses the ten-day window that will be open on the backend of the schedule ahead of the league tournament set for March 10.
That gives West Virginia plenty of time to set a pair of home games and space it out enough that the Mountaineers will enter the league tournament rested and ready to go.
Those games should be set in the coming weeks, and while it’s unclear exactly where they will end up, it was wise out of the conference to allow for the extra spacing given the uncertainty that comes with this year as a whole.
The Mountaineers are hoping to return to the court this weekend with a road trip to Kansas State as long as testing and everything else checks out to do so. Players unaffected have been able to continue practicing and using the facilities, but it's unclear how many that has been.
But with one of the three lost games now booked, there are only two more to get back on the schedule as we proceed forward.
It’s certainly a different year, but one that everybody is working through together to ensure that the games are played regardless how it has to occur.
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