The allure of competing in the Big 12 Conference was something that was obviously attractive to Ross Hodge when he took the head coaching job at West Virginia.
The Big 12 is a gauntlet with 16 teams and will present plenty of opportunities for Hodge and his team to stack their resume with quadrant one matchups.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s what we all want to do, right? You want to play against the best, you want to compete against the best, you want to play in the best venues.” Hodge said.
And now, Hodge knows which teams he’ll be facing in his first year leading the basketball program. While the dates haven’t been announced, he at least knows the opponents.
West Virginia will have home games against Baylor, BYU, Colorado, Kansas, Texas Tech, and Utah. The Mountaineers will have road games at Arizona, Arizona State, Houston, Iowa State, Oklahoma Stat,e and TCU. And finally, will have home and road games against UCF, Cincinnati, and Kansas State.
There are some benefits to the slate getting Kansas, Texas Tech and Baylor at home while avoiding the road trips to Utah against the Utes and BYU. But on the flip side, games at Houston, Iowa State and Arizona will prove rather challenging, and Oklahoma State, TCU and Arizona State won’t be walks in the park either.
West Virginia did get a break with the three teams that they will play twice, as the Mountaineers get both of the eastern time zone teams in Cincinnati and UCF, along with Kansas State. That certainly could have been worse as this league is full of challenges but now it’s about finding a way to have success.
The more success that West Virginia is able to have in the league it puts the Mountaineers in a better position to be selected for the NCAA Tournament. It goes without saying that it’s impossible to have success in the tournament without qualifying for it and that’s when good things can happen.
Which only reinforces the benefits of playing in a league as challenging as the Big 12.
