Pac-12 makes a pair of changes to women’s hoops

The Pac-12 conference announced a pair of changes to women’s basketball on Monday afternoon. Beginning this next season, the conference will now have a permanent open date in the conference tournament and will play a 20-game conference schedule beginning in 2022-23. These changes were recommended by the Senior Woman Administrators Community and announced by the Pac-12 Council.

The first of the two changes that will take place immediately is adding in an open date during the conference tournament. Prior to last season, the conference had been playing the tournament in consecutive days beginning on Thursday with the conclusion coming Sunday. Last season the conference decided to start the tournament a day earlier and add in an open day giving the two teams in the championship game an additional day of rest before the game instead of having them play 3 games in 3 days or 4 games in 4 days depending on their seed.

This change was originally implemented this past season with a focus on student-athlete welfare. After the positive feedback the conference received from the student-athletes, they decided to make this a permanent feature of the tournament. This change in the tournament now means that the regular season will end the Saturday before the tournament begins in order to give the players enough rest before the tournament begins.

The second change, which will take place after this upcoming season, includes a 20-game conference schedule. Each school will have 10 home and 10 away games during that schedule. The conference will play an 18-game schedule next season to finish off a 10-year rotation of conference games. That was originally scheduled to end last season but was pushed back due to the pandemic. This past season the conference played a 22-game schedule over 12-weeks.

The final year of the 18-game conference schedule is listed below. Washington will play the same home and away schedule as well.

Home: UW, Arizona, ASU, California, Oregon, OSU, Stanford, UCLA, USC

Road: UW, Arizona, ASU, California, Colorado, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Utah

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Basketball:

Pac-12 women’s basketball scheduling changes approved by Conference Council

The Pac-12 announced a pair of women’s basketball scheduling updates on Monday, changes which were approved by the Pac-12 Council following recommendations from the Senior Woman Administrators Committee.

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