SI Report: NCAA Considering Starting 2020-21 Basketball Season Early
Since early March, the American sports world has been overcoming the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. With both major and collegiate sports put on delay, schedules for upcoming seasons have been shifting left and right.
While the NBA and MLB are preparing for a hopeful return and inevitable backwards schedules within the month, college basketball appears to be moving towards the opposite direction of delaying the 2020-21 season.
Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde has reported that the NCAA is considering starting the basketball season two weeks early to make up for the probable of school closings between Thanksgiving and January due to another possible surge of coronavirus in the winter.
NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt told Forde that he’s presented conference commissioners with a plan to move the start of the season from November 10 to October 27, with an add up to four games to the front end of the schedule. The motion would accelerate the start of practices - which is currently scheduled for a start date of September 29.
It's a change that would offset a scenario that Gavitt calls “almost a certainty” - that games in December and January are cancelled when students are not on campus during an adjusted academic calendar. The proposed plan would allow games scheduled during that winter period to be rescheduled to the new October/November window.
Georgia Tech is one of many schools with a compressed academic schedule for the fall. Classes are scheduled to end at Thanksgiving with final assessments ending shortly after in a hybrid format.
The Yellow Jackets' men's basketball team are currently scheduled to open the season on November 12 vs Mount St. Mary's at home. This proposition would move the projected home opener to October 29 and all other games theoretically two weeks.
Related Links:
Report: Elimination of Non-Conference Games for 2020 College Football Season a Possible Scenario
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