Basketball Schedule Still an Enigma
College basketball's preseason officially began on Wednesday. The actual season is scheduled to begin on Nov. 25.
Anything else concerning who, when and where the coach Kevin Keatts and his NC State Wolfpack will be playing in 2020-21 is still a mystery.
Even to Keatts.
"We’re continuing to work with our schedule," the fourth-year coach said during his team's virtual media day Tuesday. "I know a lot of you guys are going to want to know where we are with scheduling. Obviously, when the NCAA moved the date back when we can start, it’s kind of thrown us off a little bit. We’ve had to reschedule and do some different stuff."
The season was originally supposed to start on Nov. 10, but was pushed back to the day before Thanksgiving because of questions surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and the extension of football season into mid-December.
In addition to adjusting the schedule, the NCAA Division I Council also changed the maximum number of games a team can -- reducing it by four to to 24 plus one multiple-team event. The minimum number of games allowed to be considered for postseason play was reduced by 50% to just 13 games.
State was supposed to play in the high-profile 2020 Empire Classic at New York's Madison Square Garden along with Baylor, Michigan and Villanova on Nov. 19-20, with at least one premiliary game played at home.
But the Wolfpack opted out of the event when it was moved to the Mohegan Sun resort in Connecticut on November 25-26. State was replaced in the field by ACC rival Boston college.
The only other known nonconference games on the Wolfpack's original schedule were a matchup against Radford on Dec 12 and one against American University on an unspecified date.
State's ACC 20-game ACC slate will include home-and-home games with North carolina, Wake Forest, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Virginia, home games against Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami and Virginia Tech, and road contests at Clemson, Florida State, Louisville and Notre Dame.
Obviously, we know these are different times. I think we all have had to adjust to it," Keatts said. "That being said ... I’m really excited about our guys.
"We ended up getting our guys in the second part of summer school. We’ve been working since then. I like our potential. I love our guys. I love the fact that we’ve got an older group on the back end, and then we’ve got some younger guys; five new guys and then [Dereon] Seabron, that makes six.
"We’re working extremely hard. I finally got a team that I really like, that we can play at least nine or 10 guys and then play guys at multiple positions. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to see us at full strength. Obviously, we know that there could be some challenges throughout the year."
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