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MBBALL 26-27 Griz Basketball Schedule Tracker

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Griz til I die

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The offseason is upon us, so with that, welcome to the 26-27 Griz Basketball Schedule Tracker! I will once again take the lead on uncovering our complete non-conference schedule. And next year, we have some changes to the schedule format! Here’s what to expect:

  • For the first time in College Basketball history, the regular season will expand by one game, bringing the total to 32 games. Nice to have an even number! This means that for Big Sky teams, the regular season will be comprised of 12 non-conference games (down one game from 25-26) and for the first time since 2022, we are back to a 20-game conference schedule (up two games from 25-26) now with the additions of Southern Utah and Utah Tech.

  • The Big Sky has already announced that we will be moving back to a 20-game conference schedule in 26-27. Since there is an odd number of teams (11) that means we are likely going back to the Lone Wolf scheduling format since one team will not have a travel partner. If I had to guess what the travel partners will be for next season, my guess is they will be UM-MSU, EWU-Idaho, Weber-ISU, NAU-UNC, SUU-UTU, meaning that Portland State will be next seasons designated lone wolf. This seems like the most logical solution, but I can’t say for sure that’s what they’ll do. I could see them making one of the Utah newcomers the Lone Wolf, but then they would have to shuffle around travel partners. With the move to 20 games, the Big Sky has also announced that every team will have to play 2 conference games in early December around the time that we have traditionally played the Big Sky – Summit Challenge. This is very similar to what the Big Ten and Big East do as well. The remaining 18 games will be played during the normal January-March window. How exactly will they decide who plays who in early December? And how that impacts your non-conference schedule? IDK, but that’s gonna be fascinating to see.

  • 12 non-conference games that will be comprised of money games, non D1 home games, home and home games, a 2-3 game MTE (likely at home again), and back to the old version of the Summit League Challenge.

  • The Big Sky-Summit Challenge returns once again but will revert back to the old format that we last saw during the 22-23 season. Only 4 teams, each from the Big Sky and the Summit League will participate in the challenge, and each team will play two games (one home, one road). The 4 teams for the Big Sky are Montana, Montana State, Idaho, and Idaho State. The 4 teams for the Summit League are the four Dakota schools. All matchups for the next four years have been pre-determined, so next year we will host South Dakota, and we will go to North Dakota (second straight year). Just like in the old format, the dates of these matchups will be determined by the schools and when they would like to play them, which gives a lot of flexibility when building your schedule.

  • As for money games, I would once again expect to see about 3-4 but I’ll say 3. This year Stanford, UNLV, Texas A&M, and Louisville were our money games. I would not expect any of these 4 to show up on our schedule again anytime soon. After taking a year off from playing Oregon, do we re-kindle things with the Ducks? I think that’s a possibility. Texas because of the Sean Miller connection is one that I’ll always watch closely as well. DeCuire has mentioned before that he likes to take his teams out East at least once to show them those environments. Who out there in the SEC or ACC could be an option? Maybe like an LSU or a Vanderbilt? Maybe like a Georgia Tech or a Florida State? I’m not entirely sure but I would expect to see one game against an SEC or ACC team out east. We’ve also traditionally played one Mountain West team a year, but now with the fracturing of the MWC and half of those teams going to the PAC12, what does that look like? That will be another thing to monitor.

  • As for mid majors, I’ve heard some rumblings that last season’s home game against Northern Iowa that was cancelled might actually be re-scheduled this season. I don’t have exact confirmation of that yet, but the Panthers may finally make their way to Missoula. As for the MTE, this years opponents came from the Southland and Horizon League. Will we return to a 3 game MTE as opposed to 2? I hope so. That makes life much easier when it comes to filling out the rest of the schedule. I’ll be fascinated to see if we get more teams from out east coming over to participate again.

  • As for road games, it’s my understanding that our home game against Cal Poly was the start of a home and home with the Mustangs that will require us to take a return trip to San Luis Obispo next season. So for now, expect a road game at Cal Poly and then maybe we will double it up with another road game in California. It’d be interesting to see if they would opt to do that. We did that this past season with Stanford and UNLV two days apart from each other, which is very similar to the travel in the Big Sky.

  • Finally, for non D1 games, I would be shocked if we played more than two of those next year. Now that there’s one less non-conference game to schedule, there is zero scenario I see that we will ever schedule four non D1 games ever again. I would also think it’s highly unlikely that we play Tech again after they beat us this year. Maybe Northern would like to come back into the mix next year? It’s been a while since we faced them. We always have NWIC in our back pocket if we need help nailing down the final few home games.
That’s all I got for now. I’ll do my best to keep everyone updated throughout the course of the offseason. Expect a full non-conference schedule by end of August, early September. If anyone hears anything at all, please feel free to pass it my way. Enjoy the offseason everyone!

As of June 4, here’s what we know:

November 14 @ North Dakota
December 5 @ Utah State
TBD @ Cal Poly
TBD vs. South Dakota
 
Last edited:
HelenaHandBasket said:
I don't think they will split UTU and SUU since they are less than an hour apart.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't think so either but it is the BSC and stranger things have happened. That's an easy trip cause there's an airport in St. George and if push came to shove you could always fly into Vegas and then just bus up as well. I wouldn't recommend that but it makes way too sense to split these two up.
 
Ok now that the offseason is officially underway, I wanted to give an update regarding the timeline of when I think we will receive some updates on the schedule:

- Big Sky Conference Play: There's gonna be two things to watch here. 1. The conference schedule and how they decide to do that. There will be two games played in early December (they've already confirmed they're doing this) and then the rest of the slate will resume in early January. Last year the Big Sky announced the conference schedule on August 4. I could see that being a similar timeline again this year since it's 20 games and 11 teams now. Perhaps it could be a little bit earlier then that since they've known for a while that we're gonna be at 11 teams and they've had to discuss over the last several months what they want the schedule to look like. Who plays who in early December? Who is the lone wolf team next year? How many Monday night games will every team play next year? These are all things they've likely discussed but maybe haven't formalized yet. 2. We're also gonna have a new conference tournament format. The current format won't work with 11 teams, so they will have to make changes to that. I suspect they will continue to use that Saturday-Wednesday window as it maximizes our national TV coverage. I think if there were ever a time to move to the WCC Ladder bracket format, this is the time. There were way too many top mid major teams that missed the tourney this year (including in the Big Sky) because they got knocked out in early rounds of the tournament. I'd like to think that these mid majors will get smarter and try to avoid that. The Big Sky absolutely needs to adopt this format. Will they? IDK, but I would hope they've learned their lesson. I do think we will likely hear about the tourney format change and what it is before we hear what the rest of the conference schedule looks like. So expect the format change to be one of the earliest schedule announcements we hear this offseason.

- Non-conference. So far we know three opponents: vs. South Dakota, @ North Dakota, @ Cal Poly. I wouldn't expect anymore game announcements until mid-late June if this year follows the trend of last year. The first thing that I think we will end up hearing is the dates for both of the Summit League games. I would imagine this will be one of the first thing they'll wanna get nailed down. I would expect both of those to happen in mid to late November. Same with Cal Poly. They may already have the date set for that one, but I've yet to hear what it is. After these three, the next announcements I would expect are first the money games, and then later on the MTE opponents and dates. Typically we will hear about some of our first money game opponents in June. Now with a complete roster overhaul, I think the odds are likely we're gonna play Oregon again this year. I'm also gonna keep an eye on Texas and then all of the PAC12 teams. Could we get Oregon State on the schedule now that Wayne Tinkle is gone? Who will be our east coast P4 game next year?

There probably won't be much to report on until we get to late May and into early June but if I stumble upon something in the meantime, I will share it! Enjoy the offseason everyone!
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/2042748438740361442
Big Sky Deputy commissioner Dan Satter was nice enough to provide an update on the conference schedule. Says they’re expected to release that in June (working on it now), and Starch Madness format will remain the same but they’ll add a 10 vs. 11 game on Friday night that will play into the 9 seed. So the tournament will start one day earlier now!
 
Will Montana have a full roster to play games? Just kidding but damn the transfer news has been slow coming. Do the Griz have a full roster yet?
 
I understand with more conference teams they will probably have to move up the conference start date but I really hope they "find" a way to avoid that awful start-conference-then-break-for-some-OOC-then-back-into-conference nonsense previously used...
 
DoubleNicks said:
Is the easiest solution to the tourney only having the champion/1 seed get a bye instead of top 2 seeds?
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Just move to the WCC ladder bracket. That’s the most logical solution. And there’s no way you’re getting around two conference games in December. That January-March window is too compressed to play 20 games. Way too much travel and quick turnarounds as is and it would make it that much worse.
 
AZDoc said:
A Grand Canyon plus UA/ASU road trip would be nice.
Click to expand...
That would be really cool and I'd love to see it. ASU under Bobby Hurley never showed any willingness to schedule us. Maybe now with Randy Bennett at the helm there could be a renewed interest but I'm skeptical of that happening this year. Same with Arizona under Tommy Lloyd. We used to play UofA all the time when Sean Miller was still there but there's been nothing since. Here's my current line of thinking on what we'll see for road games:

We have two confirmed road games so far against mid majors:
TBD @ Cal Poly (return of a home and home)
TBD @ North Dakota (Big Sky - Summit scheduling agreement)

With these two games already on the docket, that leaves about 4 holes to fill. I don't see us scheduling more than 6 total road games. Right now, I'm watching St. Mary's very closely with Chris Cobb now on staff, and the fact that he recently like a tweet of mine where I asked if they would get the Griz on the schedule. That would be a great game to pair with Cal Poly for a two game road trip in California. DeCuire has said before that he likes playing 2 game road trips in non-conference so that the guys can get a feel for what the travel is like in the Big Sky. DeCuire has also said he likes to take his teams out East at least once to show them those environments. I'll keep an eye on the SEC and the ACC and continue to brainstorm who might fit that criteria. That leaves two potential road games. One of those I'm kind of expecting to be against a PAC/MWC opponent. Not sure who exactly but DeCuire almost always schedules one of those mid tier west coast teams as well. Then the final non-conference road game won't shock me at all if it's Oregon just because of the connections with their staff. We took a year off from the Ducks but I bet we see them again this year, and if we do, then it will probably that first week of the season. So right now if I had to pencil it out, here's my prediction:

@ Oregon
@ Saint Mary's
@ Cal Poly
@ North Dakota
@ PAC/MWC
@ SEC/ACC
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/2052452950010978664
Ok so this is interesting. Today the Big Sky released the conference Volleyball schedule and there is something that I wanted to show you all that will likely be the case when the Basketball schedule comes out. As you can see, they have Portland State and NAU as travel partners and Northern Colorado is the lone wolf. It appears what they're doing is when you play your rival, you will also play Northern Colorado that same week. In the example of Griz Volleyball, they will play UNC at home on Wednesday and then play at the cats on Friday, the final day of the regular season. When we get to Basketball season, it does look like there's the possibility that we may have to play 1-2 Monday games, but that's nothing out of the ordinary from what we've been doing the last handful of years. Should be interesting to see it when it gets released.
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/2056928349180600675
Late night schedule news! For the second time in three years, the Griz will travel to Logan to take on Utah State! The Aggies advanced to the second round of March Madness after winning the MWC regular season and tournament title in their final year in the MWC before moving to the PAC!

The Aggies will be led by new head coach Ben Jacobsen, who comes over from Northern Iowa and in his final year with the Panthers, they won the MVC tournament and got a 12 seed at March Madness and lost to St. John’s in the first round! Jacobsen was able to retain two playmakers from last years team in Mason Falslev and Karson Templin. Both of those guys were on the team when the Griz faced USU two seasons ago. Jacobsen had one guy follow him from UNI in Will Hornseth who was a pretty good player for him last year.

This will be a tough test for sure. A veteran team vs. a mostly newcomer team. Should be a great early season test! TBD on the date but I’ll work to try and uncover that soon!

As of May 19, here’s what we know:
TBD vs. South Dakota
TBD @ North Dakota
TBD @ Cal Poly
TBD @ Utah State
 
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