Innovative and Thoughtful
(St. Louis, MO) – Missouri Valley Conference schedules have been released and give the league office credit. This is an innovative and thoughtful way to conduct the season. Teams will play games on back-to-back days, but will have plenty of time between weekends to recover and to test for coronavirus.
Each Valley team will have a ‘travel partner’. That term is slightly misleading. They aren’t traveling together, but they will play those partners in a home and home schedule. The rest of the 18-game schedule will see teams play four road series and four home series.
While the bulk of the schedule is carried out during the weekend, the ‘travel partner’ games will be played mid-week. The weekend following those mid-week contests will be ‘off weekends’. The weekend travel and the two weekends off, allow teams and the league to save money, be more efficient about testing and contract tracing and the two empty weekends provides a window to make up any games that may be postponed from earlier in the Valley schedule.
Testing & Contract Tracing
While working on testing and operational standings the Valley has employed KINEXON SafeZone technology. KINEXON utilizes lightweight, wearable devices called SafeTags which will be used across the league. SafeTags can calculate the proximity between individuals to collect accurate information for contact tracing.
Indiana State players and staff have been wearing the SafeTags for weeks.
Competitive Balance
League schedulers achieved competitive balance. While no team will have a perfect schedule when looking at who they play when and who they play at home or on the road, the result was innovative and thoughtful.
The top three teams in the league’s preseason poll play a round-robin of sorts. Each plays one of the other two at home and one on the road. Since fan participation will be at a minimum, there seems to be less of a ‘home-court-advantage’ in either case.
Every team has one series at home and one on the road during the opening two weeks. Three teams will finish the season with three straight games on the road and three finish with three at home. Missouri State is the only team with a stretch of five straight home games.
The conference season tips off December 27 and concludes February 27, 2021. Arch Madness is scheduled for March 4-7, 2021.
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As we near the closing of the portal window, we've reached 1900. Some of them never to play college basketball again, earn a college degree and some to play at a much lower level than they did last season.
I guess we'll be seeing this in a @RacersHoops uniform this year. Glad AJ is staying in the @ValleyHoops.
