NCAA Oversight Committee Proposes Nov. 25 Start to Season

The NCAA oversight committee of both men’s and women’s basketball have both agreed to propose the 2020-21 season start on Nov. 25, CBS Sports reported on Wednesday.

As of now, the season is “scheduled” to start on Nov. 10, but considering that no one has any idea what anything will look like in November, that date is soft—at best.

The proposal from the oversight committees will be send to to the Division I Council, who will make the final decision about delaying the start of the season. If the idea is to provide as much time as possible for the nation to “normalize,” a Nov. 25 start date means teams can begin the season at their holiday tournaments and go from there.

For the Zags, a start date of Nov. 25 would mean they would miss their home games against North Carolina Central and North Florida, as well as an away game against Texas. A Nov. 17 neutral-site game against USC is already off because the Pac 12 has canceled all athletics until the start of the new year. Gonzaga and Baylor also agreed to play each other on a TBD date at some point this year.

There are still a lot of basketballs in the air, as expected. College hoops hasn’t decided if non-conference games are even a go, if it will be in a bubble, or really how anything might happen. Rules involving the maximum amount of games or the minimum amount of games still need to be decided.

However, the reason why the start date is of utmost importance is that determines when players can officially start practicing as a team. NCAA rules state preseason practices can begin as early as 42 days before the season starts, which, if the start date moves to Nov. 25, would mean Oct. 14.