MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the West Virginia-Pittsburgh men’s basketball rivalry game to be postponed this season, as well as eliminating a key nonconference game against Purdue.
The Mountaineers may also miss out on an early-season opportunity against Duke.
WVU head coach Bob Huggins confirmed the news Thursday during a Zoom call with media members.
“It’s been moved back,” Huggins said of the Pitt game. “That’s not going to happen this year.”
WVU and Pitt were scheduled to conclude a four-game series on Nov. 13, but the start of the season was moved back 15 days to Nov. 25 and the number of regular-season games was lowered from 31 to 27 by the NCAA Division I council over concerns caused by the pandemic.
The two schools signed a two-game extension in June that will now conclude during the 2023-24 season with the one-year postponement.
WVU will have 18 of its 27 games scheduled for Big 12 Conference play and two more taken up by the Big East/Big 12 Battle and the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
Three more games will come at the beginning of the season in a showcase tournament in Sioux Falls, S.D., which leaves WVU room to schedule just four more nonconference games.
One of those four will not be against the Panthers and another casualty will be a trip to Brooklyn, N.Y. to play the Boilermakers in the Hall of Fame Invitational. That game was scheduled for Dec. 13.
“As soon as the other conferences make their decisions in terms of nonconference scheduling, we will finalize those four games,” said Bryan Messerly, Associate Athletics Director of Communications at WVU. “In terms of the Big 12 schedule, we’ve been told by the league the schedule will be released by the end of (October).”
Messerly added that WVU’s first home game could come during the first week of Dec., and said the school would release more information in terms of the number of fans permitted in the WVU Coliseum once the NCAA and the Big 12 finalizes guidelines for home arenas this season.
As for the tournament in South Dakota, that is a revised format from the Battle 4 Atlantis, played annually in the Bahamas, the Mountaineers had been scheduled to participate in.
According to published reports, Duke has dropped out of that field and is interested in hosting its own tournament, while Utah is still awaiting word on whether or not Pac-12 teams will be permitted to play nonconference games this season. This summer, the Pac-12 said its basketball teams would not be permitted to play until after Dec. 31.
The other five projected teams in the tournament are Ohio State, Creighton, Memphis, Wichita State and Texas A&M.
No official word has been given on Duke’s status for the tournament, according to Messerly, but Huggins said, “As far as I know, there has been only one team that has dropped out and they have replaced that team, so I think they’re good to go. I think it’s a matter of waiting for television and the pairings that television wants to see.”
WVU, which is projected as a preseason Top 25 team, will begin practice on Oct. 15.
The Mountaineers will be permitted 30 practices over 42 days, but will not be allowed to play in any closed-door scrimmages or exhibition games.
“I think the most disturbing thing is they took away the scrimmages from us,” Huggins said. “Our guys are going to go play three games in three days (in South Dakota) without having played against anyone else. I think that’s unfair to our guys. I don’t know what’s wrong with playing games.”
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