Reports: College Basketball is set to begin the 2020-21 season on Nov. 25
As Utah fans eagerly await the upcoming college football season for the Utes, it appears they won't have to wait much longer for the college basketball season.
Reports from multiple national media outlets surfaced on Wednesday that the NCAA Division I Council voted to delay the start of the college basketball season until Wednesday, November 25 — the day before Thanksgiving.
The season was originally set to begin on Tuesday, November 10, but that date had long been considered a longshot considering the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the country right now.
Over the past couple of weeks, discussions with the decision-makers within the NCAA had been targeting a start date the week of Thanksgiving for multiple reasons.
According to reports, NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt spoke with athletic directors and college sports officials last week regarding the Nov. 25 start date, stating that it was under strong consideration due to the fact that that's when most of the colleges around the nation are ending their fall semesters.
"By Thanksgiving week, the date of Nov. 25, 76% of all Division-I schools will have either finished their fall semester completely or released the general student body for in-person instruction," Gavitt said on the webinar.
Official practices are set to begin on Oct. 14, six weeks prior to the start of the season. Teams will be permitted to play 27 regular season games (down from 31) and with scrimmages or exhibitions before or during the season.
Typically, college students are home for the entire month of December. So starting the season the day before Thanksgiving would give the NCAA six weeks of season with no students on campus to start the year off correctly.
The college basketball season typically starts in the beginning of November with multiple big-time preseason tournaments — such as the Maui Invitational and Puerto Vallarta Tipoff. But with the proposed change in time frame, it's unknown if those tournaments will still take place or be canceled altogether.
Utah's biggest preseason tournament was set to be the Battle 4 Atlantis, set to take place on Nov. 25-27 at the Imperial Arena at the Atlantis Paradise Hotel in Nassau, Bahamas. But reports have begun to surface that the tournament is being moved to a different location, most likely the Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Joining Utah is supposed to be Duke, Creighton, Ohio State, West Virginia, Memphis, Wichita State and Texas A&M.
According to a report by Jon Wilner of The Mercury News, the league is going to "re-evaluate its decision to postpone the basketball season until 2021 if favorable circumstances unfold inside NCAA headquarters and on the campuses" of the Pac-12.
Only time will tell if the Utes will be playing college basketball in November — but if any of the reports are a sign of things to come, it's a safe bet to assume so.
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