by Joe Yeager for Inside the Red Raiders
College sports is slowly crawling out of its Covid shell. After the response to the disease’s advent wreaked havoc on the end of last college basketball season, and threatened to do the same to the current football season, football season began in an abbreviated format and with drastic reduction in attendance, the Big 10 reneged on its pledge not to play football this year, and today, the NCAA announced that college basketball will happen, although with certain provisions.
This is not perfect, but it is progress.
The specifics of the NCAA’s announcement are as follows. The season will begin on November 25, which is a bit later than usual. Practice commences on October 14. The minimum number of games a team can play is 13, and the maximum is 27. Presumably, the vast majority of teams will shoot for the maximum. The NCAA recommends teams play four non-conference games, but obviously that number will vary according to how each conference’s schedule shakes out. And conference schedules have not been announced. Additionally, teams will not be allowed to play any exhibition games or scrimmages.
The NCAA’s announcement is clear enough, but it certainly leaves many crucial questions unanswered. We do not, for instance, know if teams will be allowed to play a traditional home-and-away slate, or whether games will be played in bubble formats. Additionally, we do not know whether fans and media will be allowed to attend, and if so, under what restrictions, if any. The status of the NCAA tournament is also unclear. There seems to be little doubt that it will actually happen, but what form it takes is not known.
Although official announcements have not been made, it does seem pretty clear that Orlando will host several early-season tournaments in bubble formats. Texas Tech is expected to participate in the Preseason NIT along with St. John’s, Cincinnati, and Arizona. Specific matchups have not been announced.
Given that the season starts in a little over two months, we should soon be hearing about schedules. If the Big 12 brass has been earning their money, they’ve already got several mock-ups for conference slates, each one designed for a different scenario created by whatever the NCAA announced. Now it should simply be a case of selecting the appropriate schedule and figuring out the television packages.
After the conference schedule drops, the non-conference slate should follow quickly. We can be quite certain that Texas Tech’s Chris Beard has already been in contact with numerous of his colleagues about game possibilities, so he probably has a pretty good idea of who the Red Raiders will play. Now that he has a rough idea of how many non-conference games he can play, it should be a case of narrowing it down to his preferred opponents. Of course, not knowing whether any games will be played in the USA is a complication.
The other remaining loose end for Texas Tech is the status of transfers Mac McClung and Jamarius Burton. Both have applied for waivers to play immediately, and both remain in limbo. Fortunately, the NCAA is making progress on this matter despite furloughing hundreds of employees, and it seems like the vast majority of applicants are receiving waivers. Most recently, Jamal Bieniemy, a transfer from Oklahoma, was granted immediate eligibility at UTEP.
If McClung and Burton are cleared, the Red Raiders will be ready for all comers.
