West Virginia basketball moving toward opener

How does Thanksgiving Turkey and West Virginia basketball sound?

That could be the reality after the Division I Council approved moving the first contest date in Division I men’s and women’s basketball to Nov. 25 for the 2020-21 season. That is the day before Thanksgiving.

There will be no exhibition games or closed scrimmages allowed before that date and moving things back from the Nov. 10 date was done to help provide a more controlled and less populated campus environment. That can be accomplished because at least three-quarters of division I programs will have concluded their fall terms or moved instruction online.

For West Virginia students are currently online but were set to move to online instruction during dead week and finals at Thanksgiving break.

Because of the date being moved back 15-days later, teams can now schedule 24 regular season games along with one multi-team event that includes up to three games or 25 regular season games and a multi-team event that includes up to two games. If a team does not participate in any multi-team event, that club can play 25-regular season games total.

There is a recommended minimum of four non-conference games for teams.

For West Virginia that multi-team event would be the 2020 Battle 4 Atlantis, which was recently reported to be moved to The Sanford Pentagon in South Dakota. Along with the Mountaineers the rest of the field is set to include Duke, Ohio State, Memphis, Creighton, Texas A&M, Wichita State and Utah.

Those teams finished last year in the NET and their final records at Creighton (11, 23-7), Duke (6, 25-6), Memphis (59, 21-10), Ohio State (16, 21-10), Texas A&M (113, 16-14), Utah (85, 16-15) and Wichita State (41, 23-8).

The date has yet to be determined.

The Mountaineers also had previously scheduled non-conference games against Pittsburgh in Morgantown, at Georgetown as part of the series with the Big East and a neutral site game against Purdue that was set for New York City although it remains to be seen how it will be affected. The opponent for the Big 12/SEC Challenge has yet to be determined.

Teams are able to start practicing six weeks prior to the initial start date Oct. 14 and the NCAA will allow basketball programs to have eight hours of on-court work each week instead of four beginning Sept. 21.

Some critical decisions have been made and now West Virginia, which is coming off a 21-10 season and returns a bulk of their production including both of their big men in Derek Culver and Oscar Tshiebwe can begin the process of gearing up toward the start of the year.

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