After BYU’s historic season, the best in nearly a decade, was cut short before the start of the NCAA Tournament due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems the sports world is finding some normalcy. At least college sports seem ready to start picking up at some capacity.
On Monday, the West Coast Conference announced the 2020-21 men’s basketball conference matchups. The 16-game slate opens Dec. 31.
For the Cougars, the schedule features home and away games with Gonzaga, Pacific, Pepperdine, Portland, Saint Mary’s, San Diego and San Francisco. BYU will also play Santa Clara and LMU just once, at home and on the road, respectively.
The matchups for the upcoming season were based on a conference formula including the 2018-19 and 2019-20 team NET rankings, last year’s West Coast Conference tournament seedings and a spring survey of the league’s 10 head coaches.
In coach Mark Pope’s first season, BYU made its return to the AP Poll in February for the first time in nine years, since the “Jimmermania” era, and was ranked as high as No. 14. The Cougars were one of three WCC teams (Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s) to receive votes in both the AP and USA Today Coached Poll.
Those same teams were also in Joe Lunardi’s final 2020 Bracketology report: BYU (No. 6 West), Gonzaga (No. 1 West) and Saint Mary’s (No. 8 South).
