Mountain West to modify conference basketball schedules, emphasizing safety amid pandemic

The Mountain West Conference on Monday announced it would modify men’s and women’s basketball schedules, playing 20 games over an 11-week period to emphasize the health and safety of student-athletes, coaches and staffs.

The teams in the conference will play each other in a two-game series in the same week with a one-day break between games, with each getting five home and five road series. The modified schedules, which will be released at a later date, will reduce travel schedule and costs and should reduce potential exposures to the coronavirus.

Conference games will start in December, end the final week in February and will have more built-in flexibility certainly than in the Mountain West football schedule should a game or series have to be postponed due to positive COVID-19 cases or quarantines.

The Mountain West is playing an 8-game football season in eight weeks, with a conference championship game scheduled for Dec. 19.

The conference last month had announced its basketball programs would play an 18-game schedule this season that included nine road games, pending approval from state, county and local officials.

It included some substantive changes, with the men playing on a Tuesday-Saturday schedule rather than Wednesday-Saturday and the women will play in a tighter scheduling window.

The Fresno State women’s team, the defending regular-season champion, was to play a stretch of five games in an 11-days in January, with three on the road.

Fresno State had to suspend team activities with its men’s program after two team members tested positive for the coronavirus. The Bulldogs are back, but were quarantined for 14 days.

Fresno State has not released non-conference schedules for either program, but the men are to open on Nov. 25 against NAIA William Jessup at the Save Mart Center and play Nov. 27 against Pacific at the Spanos Center in Stockton.