The upcoming schedule for the West Virginia basketball team is a tad out of the ordinary.
When the Mountaineers take the court against Youngstown State Saturday, it will have been exactly a week since the last game, a home win over Nicholls.
But following that game, the team will take a break for the Christmas holiday for a few days before reconvening to prepare for Ohio State in Cleveland. That game won’t take place until Dec. 29, which would be eight days after the match-up with the Penguins.
Those type of layoffs are far from ideal, especially with the conference slate looming but is that is how the schedule lines up over the next two weeks and will force some adjustments to the practice routine.
“We’re going to have to get in here and run and do a lot of transition stuff to stay in shape,” West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins said.
But that isn’t the only interesting items when it comes to scheduling as the Mountaineers will open Big 12 Conference play at the turn of the new year and as the league has done in the past that means back-to-back road games to start things while school is not in session.
Because of the round-robin nature of the league, teams are required to make nine road trips throughout the year and often due to the distance it puts the Mountaineers in a difficult spot on the travel front. Banking two of those nine road games while the athletes aren’t in school is a way to cut down on some of those concerns that arise with travel and missing class time.
“You can’t understand it until you do it,” Huggins said.
Now, the program has taken charter flights and avoided some of the smaller planes which cram athletes of that size up but still it is a difficult task to ask out of the team.
But even that is now becoming somewhat complicated as the Jan. 4 game at Kansas has yet to have a time set which is a product of the new arrangement with ESPN+.
“You name your start time basically with this new ESPN+ deal,” Huggins said.
That can lead to complications with hotel and travel arrangements, which are unintended consequences according to the veteran head coach.
“It’s bad enough waiting for start times from ESPN now we’re waiting on what time the (Kansas City) Chiefs playoff game is,” he said.
One thing for sure is that the travel schedule for the Mountaineers is never boring.
WATCH: Musings from the Mountains | WVU Football and Basketball Q&A | Episode 52
----------
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @PatrickKotnik
•Like us on Facebook
