Pac-12 Men's Basketball Conference Schedule Framework Announced

The Pac-12 has announced the "framework" for next winter's men's basketball season, identifying in each 5 day window which matchups will occur, and on what campuses.

All actual game dates and tip times will be announced later, many at some point this fall, as television sets the actual schedule.

The first thing of note is that all conference games are in fact withing 5 day windows, running from Wednesday thru Sunday each week, which means there will be no Monday conference games. While scarce, last year Tuesday was the only day of the week when a Pac-12 team wouldn't potentially wind up playing. It's a small step towards actual sane scheduling practices by the conference, and until we see what kind of start times, out-of-town layovers are mandated, and senseless conflicts with significant events, like, say NFL post-season games, we won't really know if the conference is actually thinking when they put together the schedule, but its something, at least.

There will be at least 1 day between games, but there could be more.

What we do know is the conference campaign for Oregon and Oregon St. will start with the first Civil War battle of the season, it will be at Gill Coliseum, and it will be somewhere in the stretch from Wednesday, Dec. 30 thru Sunday, Jan. 3. Sunday seems likely, as hopefully the conference will avoid conflicts with the busiest portion of the bowl season, including some of their own bowls. It will be the best day for the Beaver Dam, as the students won't be back on campus in any number until that day, just before Winter Term begins.

Other things we know is the Beavers will open the conference campaign with 3 home games, and 5 out of their first 7, which could help set up for another strong start such as coach Wayne Tinkle experienced in his first season.

But we also know that the Beavers will be scarcely seen down the stretch, with 5 of their final 7 conference contests out of town. The women's hoops schedule hasn't been announced yet, but its reasonable to conclude Oregon St.'s women will have a home court-centric late season stretch as they attempt to defend their conference title.

After the season opening Civil War battle, the Bay Area schools will visit the valley somewhere between Jan. 6 and 10.

The Oregon schools then make the Rocky Mountain trip, to play Utah in Salt Lake City and Colorado in Boulder in the Jan. 13-17 stretch.

The LA schools come to the valley somewhere between  Jan. 20 and 24, and then the Oregon schools make the desert trip sometime between Jan. 27 and Jan. 31 to take on defending conference champion Arizona and Arizona St. finish up the month.

February starts somewhere between the 3rd and 7th, with Utah and Colorado making the first return trip of the season. It will already be the next to last home weekend of the season for Oregon St.

Feb. 10 thru 14 will see the trip to the Bay Area for Stanford and California, and the second Civil War battle will be somewhere from Feb. 17 thru 21, this one at Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene.

Feb. 24 thru 28 will see the visits from Washington and Washington State to close out the home season.

The regular season will end with the trip to LA during the March 2-6 stretch, for games at USC and UCLA.

Of note, there will be no Washington trip this season, as the Pac-12 schedule rotation provides only single meetings between the northwest border rivals.

There will also be no visit from the Arizona schools, something the Wildcats and Sun Devils won't mind.

The non-conference schedule will be finalized in the coming weeks.

Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com