SBC basketball games will be held on Fridays and Saturdays this season.
You will play the same opponent twice on a weekend on the same court.
There will be only divisional play in the regular season. We will play Texas State, UTA, Little Rock, and Arkansas State four times each (twice at home and twice away). We will play ULM only twice, once home and once away. My thought was we should go to 20 conference games rather than 18. However, only 25 games are allowed this year and some schools had too many non conference games set to allow for 20 conference games.
At last Friday's fund raising golf tournament, coaches mentioned this to players and volunteers. It was not official at that time and still may not be official. However, someone who covers the SBC tweeted this yesterday so no reason not to share this now. Our coaches have some reservations about this. First of all, it competes with HS basketball on Friday nights. While attendance may be limited, we sometimes get the HS players themselves at games on Thursdays. Also, since Saturday games will start no later than 4 PM, there is a concern about body recuperation time for players. Reason for that time requirement is to minimize hotel overnight stays as teams will leave for home immediately after the Saturday game. It is understood that this is a cost saving move and and may help battle the COVID pandemic. Attendance is limited everywhere so not much attention was given to the issue that people will not want to go to games that close to each other. Every team is in the same boat so we will all learn to deal with this for hopefully only this season. What has not been determined is how the conference tournament will be handled. At this stage all 12 schools are supposed to go to Pensacola. Our coaches feel it is unlikely that stance is maintained. More likely only the first and second place teams per division qualify for the post season conference tournament. This will be an unusual conference basketball season from a schedule perspective to say the least. I imagine it is possible the diamond sports will have similar changes made to their conference schedule.