BYU basketball: Why Cougars won’t play in Big East-Big 12 Battle

Matchups for next season’s Big East-Big 12 Battle were officially released Thursday.

For BYU fans, there is one glaring omission — the Cougars won’t be participating in the Big East-Big 12 Battle in their first season in the Big 12.

Part of the reason is simple math. The Big East has 11 teams while the Big 12 will have 14 teams, so three Big 12 programs were left out of the made-for-TV event — BYU and fellow league newcomers Cincinnati and UCF. 

This is not necessarily bad news for the Cougars, who posted a 19-15 record in their final campaign in the West Coast Conference and are preparing to join the nation’s top basketball league.

Because of all the Quad 1 games that will be part of BYU’s new conference schedule in the Big 12 — with 18 regular-season contests — coach Mark Pope is figuring out a new strategy when it comes to nonconference scheduling. He explained that he won’t have to worry about scheduling Quad 1 games during the preseason like he has the past three seasons.

“Scheduling is going to be a whole new endeavor for us next year. It’s so interesting. We have been trying to give away three-for-ones to get Quad 1 games. Or taking a game on the road because it turns a Quad 2 at home into a Quad 1 on the road,” Pope said last fall. “We’ll take the one-off on the road. Now, as we make this transition, we’re going to have three times as many Quad 1 games as we used to build into our schedule. We’re going to have to relearn how to construct a schedule and manage a schedule. It will be a big challenge for us.”

As far as next year’s nonconference slate, BYU is scheduled to host San Diego State, which is fresh off playing in the NCAA Tournament championship game, and travel to rival Utah. The Cougars are also expected to play in a multi-team event. 

So another game against a Big East opponent might have been superfluous. 

Here is the Big East-Big 12 lineup for next season: UConn at Kansas; Texas at Marquette; Houston at Xavier; Villanova at Kansas State; Saint John’s at West Virginia; Creighton at Oklahoma State; Providence at Oklahoma; Iowa State at DePaul; Texas Tech at Butler; TCU at Georgetown; and Seton Hall at Baylor.