MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — The starts to the WVU men’s and women’s basketball season will have to wait until Nov. 25.
That information came down Wednesday from the NCAA Division I council, which voted to delay the start of the season by 15 days because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The WVU men’s team had originally been scheduled to open its season on Nov. 10, with a home game against Fairleigh Dickinson.
Preseason practices, which had been scheduled to begin on Sept. 29, will now be moved to Oct. 14.
The Nov. 25 date for the WVU men had been slated for the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas.
It is expected that tournament will change its venue to the Pentagon in Sioux Falls, S.D., according to published reports.
No start date has been announced yet for the tournament that also features Duke, Creighton, Ohio State, Utah, Memphis, Wichita State and Texas A&M.
In a conference with athletic directors last week, NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said the Nov. 25 date was being looked at, because the majority of schools across the country will have released their student bodies for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“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 during the conference.
As for other rules set down by the council on Wednesday: Teams will not be able to play more than 27 regular-season games in 2020-21 and must play a minimum of 13 games against Division I opponents to be eligible for the 2021 NCAA tournament.
The council also eliminated any preseason scrimmages and exhibition games and also recommended schools schedule at least four nonconference games.
Currently, Big 12 teams play 18 home-and-home regular-season conference games that generally begin in early January.
If the WVU men were to remain in the Battle 4 Atlantis, as well as keep a date with rival Pittsburgh, that would be 22 games.
There are also the annual SEC/Big 12 Challenge and the Big 12/Big East Battle games, but it’s possible they could be eliminated this season under the pandemic.
The Mountaineers are also under contract to play Purdue in Brooklyn, N.Y. in the Hall of Fame Invitational on Dec. 13, but there is a clause in the contract that would allow that game to be canceled by the Hall of Fame without penalty due to the pandemic circumstances.
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