Gamecocks close to finalizing 2020-21 hoops schedule

In a weird year for college basketball, scheduling can be a mess, but it looks like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for South Carolina.

Frank Martin said Tuesday the Gamecocks are putting the final touches on their non-conference schedule as early as this afternoon and a full non-conference slate could be revealed no later than next week.

“We’re in deep conversations with a school to solidify the Nov. 25 start date here at home. As soon as that name is on the contract, the schedule is done. I’m pretty sure that will happen today. Our schedule has to go through legal before we can publicize it,” Martin said.

“I would anticipate because of the proximity to the start of the season all that will take place faster than what it has in the past. We should have something out by the latest early next week. That would be my guess but I don’t work in the other departments that have to approve the schedule.”

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The NCAA pushed the start of college basketball back to Nov. 25, effectively making all of the contracts for games scheduled before that date “null and void,” Martin said.

The Gamecocks lost two reported games—home games against Radford and Western Carolina—and their MTE (multi-team event), the Hall of Fame Classic, was moved to a later date.

According to Stadium’s Jeff Goodman, the HOF Classic will be played Nov. 28 and 29 in Kansas City with Northwestern, TCU and Tulsa making up the field.

Scheduling has been tricky now with different leagues having their own protocols.

“It’s not just the travel or the hotels or the busses or the planes. You have to make sure you’re going and playing against people that are getting tested too,” Martin said. “The last thing you need to do if we’re spending a gazillion dollars testing our athletes and we play a school that doesn’t test anybody—which, by the way, does happen—now our guys get affected. Now we pop on our testing and are withheld because of who we played. It’s a little more complicated.”

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The Gamecocks will start their conference season Dec. 29 and 30 on the men’s side of things giving teams 20 play dates to get in their 18 conference games, effectively adding in two open dates in case a game gets postponed.

“I thought what our league did was tremendous. They’re allowing us to play a game in December, which opens up a window for makeup games at the end of the year. I thought that was a great decision because we’re dealing with an unknown,” he said. “If we play all 18, we get to rest a little at the end of the year. If you played 16, now you have to figure out a way to get two makeup games in at the end of the year. It gives us flexibility to control our league schedule, which is the one thing we can control.”

Teams this year are allowed no more than 27 games on the schedule that includes an MTE, which means room for nine non-conference games.