Big Sky Conference

Big Sky moving to 20-game basketball schedule

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The Big Sky Conference announced a move to a symmetrical 20-game round robin schedule for women’s and men’s basketball on Tuesday afternoon. The new scheduling format will begin during the upcoming 2018-19 season. The league said a new schedule will be released “at a later date.”

Since Idaho’s return to the Big Sky in all sports besides football, the league has sported 12 non-football full-time members. Because of the number of teams, the league schedule has included each team playing seven other Big Sky teams home and then away for the first 14 games of the 18-game league slate. The final four games of the regular season doubled as the final four games of the conference season and included matchups against the other four teams each respective school had not played.

For example, men’s Big Sky champion Montana only played Idaho one time last season — an overtime win by the second-place Vandals on a tip in at the overtime buzzer. Montana only played traditional regional rivals Eastern Washington, Idaho, Idaho State and Weber State one time each last season, as did Montana State.

With North Dakota’s departure from the Big Sky to the Summit League, the conference now has 11 full-time basketball members for men’s and women’s hoops, allowing for a true round robin with home and away matchups for every school against every other Big Sky member.

This story will be updated. 

About Colter Nuanez

Colter Nuanez is the co-founder and senior writer for Skyline Sports. After spending six years in the newspaper industry with stops at the Missoulian, the Ellensburg Daily Record and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the former Washington Newspaper Association Sportswriter of the Year and University of Montana Journalism School graduate ('09) has cultivated a deep passion for sports journalism during his 13-year career covering the Big Sky Conference. In August of 2014, Colter and brother Brooks merged their passions of writing and art to found Skyline Sports.

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