Cal Basketball: Golden Bears to Face Dixie State in MTE, According to Report

Cal will co-host the four-team event with Oregon State, bringing two opponents to Haas

We have our first glimpse into the 2020-21 Cal men’s basketball no-conference schedule.

The Bears will face Dixie State University — a program transitioning to Division I — in a multi-team event (MTE) they will co-host with Oregon State, according to Jeff Goodman.

We don’t have a date for the game or the still-to-be-determined fourth team that will fill out the two-game MTE event. But we know Cal will host Dixie State and another opponent as part of this event, scheduled sometime between the start of the college basketball schedule on Nov. 25 and the starting date of Pac-12 play, which still has not been announced.

Cal has not made any announcements related to its basketball schedule.

Dixie State, located in St. George, Utah, has re-classified from Division II to Division I and will play this season in the Western Athletic Conference, competing against the likes of New Mexico State, Seattle, CSU Bakersfield and Utah Valley.

Dixie State was a junior college until 2006-07 when it became a four-year school and began playing at the Division II level in athletics. The program has played just one game ever against a current member of the Pac-12 Conference, losing at Utah 83-64 in 2007-08.

The Trailblazers were 23-7 last season, advancing to the semifinals of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. The team’s top returning players are Hunter Schofield, a 6-foot-8 senior forward who averaged 16.4 points and 6.0 rebounds last season, and Dason Youngblood, a 6-2 senior guard who scored 10.1 points per game and had a 2.9 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Cal was originally scheduled to participate in the 2020 Hall of Fame Classic at Kansas City. The Nov, 23-24 event also featured Northwestern, TCU and South Carolina. But Cal dropped out and has been replaced by Tulsa.

Here is Goodman’s list of college basketball events scheduled for this season.

Cal was recently picked ninth in the Pac-12 in the league’s annual media poll. The Bears are entering their second season under coach Mark Fox, who directed the team to a 14-18 record last season after they won just eight games in each of two previous seasons under coach Wyking Jones.

The Bears have eight returning lettermen, led by top scorer Matt Bradley, plus five newcomers.

The NCAA announced in mid-September that the start of the college basketball schedule — for both men and women — would be moved from Nov. 10 to Nov. 25.

No exhibition games or closed scrimmages would be permitted before that date and the maximum number of games allowed was reduced by four. But that number is fluid, depending on whether teams participate in MTE events.

For instance, by participating in an MTE that includes up to two games, teams are allowed 25 regular-season games.

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Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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