PROVO — During the summer, and even into the season, BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe has dealt with revamping the football schedule due to the pandemic.
Something similar is going on with Cougars basketball, as well as every other hoops program around the country, as official practices are set to begin Oct. 14.
“This is a very important time right now for college basketball,” Holmoe said.
The NCAA announced Sept. 16 that the start of the 2020-21 college basketball season would be pushed back to Nov. 25. That means several games on BYU’s schedule were wiped out, including the Junkanoo Jam, a multiteam event in the Bahamas.
“It’s kind of been topsy-turvy, just like in football,” Holmoe said.
Associate athletic director Brian Santiago is going “24/7 on basketball,” Holmoe added. “On a scale of one to 10, that’s a 9½ right now. … What we did in football is going on in basketball right now.”
“It’s all hands on deck at this point. It’s been a real team effort. The past few weeks we have devoted a considerable amount of time to communicating with the best multiteam events, the teams we had on the schedule and the changes that need to be made with those teams.” — BYU assistant coach Nick Robinson
Assistant coach Nick Robinson, who oversees scheduling, is working with Santiago, head coach Mark Pope and director of basketball operations Bobby Horodyski to rebuild the schedule.
“It’s all hands on deck at this point. It’s been a real team effort. The past few weeks we have devoted a considerable amount of time to communicating with the best multiteam events, the teams we had on the schedule and the changes that need to be made with those teams,” Robinson said. “That process has been pretty relentless and consistent for the past three weeks and will be until we get everything finalized.
“For example, the past two days, we’ve met as a staff in the morning before practice and after our workouts for about 30 to 45 minutes with phone calls in between in order to find the best solutions for our team heading into this year.”
Robinson said BYU saw seven of its 15 scheduled nonconference games drop off the schedule due to COVID-19.
“Our priority over the past three weeks has been to try to get into the best multiteam event possible so we could maximize the number of games that are now allowed, which is 27, or 11 nonconference games for us,” he said.
From the outset, the goal, Robinson said, has been “to provide the best and toughest schedule for this particular team. We feel like we’re working toward that every single day.”
Holmoe said BYU is trying to reschedule games with Oregon, Utah and Arizona State after the Pac-12 originally announced it wouldn’t be playing until January. The Pac-12 has announced that it will start play on Nov. 25.
Meanwhile, CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein reported Tuesday that BYU “has emerged as a primary candidate to replace Notre Dame in the Legends Classic at Mohegan Sun (in Connecticut).” Other teams in the field are UConn, USC and Vanderbilt.
“We’ve been speaking with 10 different multiteam events,” Robinson said of the report. “That is a possibility.”
Robinson said things will continue to be crazy with scheduling in the near future.
“We have a lot of moving pieces and solidification that will hopefully come within the next week that will help us finalize it,” he said. “It’s going to be a very fluid situation based on the situation we’re in.
“Similar to football, there might be changes that take place next week or three weeks from now or a month from now or after Nov. 25. Either way, we feel like we have a great scheduling team in place with Brian, coach Pope, Bobby and myself. We’ll adapt and adjust as we need to and we’ll keep moving forward relentlessly.”
Santiago has played a key role in the rescheduling process.
“Brian has been a crucial component to this scheduling effort. He’s been dealing with scheduling for a long time,” Robinson said. “As we’ve tried to navigate this process, the connections that he possesses at the administrative level and the event operator level in assisting us with all the nuances that we have to deal with at this stage from a health and safety component and compliance, Brian’s been great in that regard.”
There’s been a lot of talk about college basketball doing something similar to what the NBA has done with its bubble.
“In basketball, you’re looking at these bubbles that are kind of pseudo-NBA bubbles. Look, it’s nothing like an NBA bubble,” Holmoe said. “But they’re stealing that term. It’s a pseudo-bubble, for sure.”
Robinson said BYU has communicated with numerous multi-team event operators that have provided bubble scenarios featuring testing and health protocols in place.
“We’ve evaluated all of those potential options,” Robinson said.
When could BYU’s nonconference schedule be released?
“We would like to move as quickly as possible to find the right schedule for our team this season,” Robinson said. “I sure hope it doesn’t go into November but if that’s what’s necessary, that’s exactly what will happen.”