BYU Schedules-Football and Basketball

BYU had two big scheduling announcements Friday.  First, the West Coast Conference announced their conference schedule.  Second, BYU football announced that it has scheduled its 11th opponent in 2012.  They will play Weber State at home on September 8th (which necessitates moving a previously scheduled home game with Hawaii either to late October or even into November, actual date is TBD).

Hoops' Big Week
With the announcement of the WCC schedule, there is one single week that will go a long way towards deciding how BYU fits into the NCAA Tournament picture.  On January 25th, BYU travels to Blacksburg, VA to take on perennial bubble team Virginia Tech.  They follow that up with the two biggest home games of the conference schedule back-to-back: Saint Mary's (Jan. 28th) and Gonzaga (Feb. 2nd)  Now that the entire schedule has been released, it seems fair to say that BYU should go around 12-3/11-4 in the non-conference schedule.  Games at Utah State and at Virginia Tech are the biggest roadblocks, along with a potential/likely showdown with one of the most boring teams in college basketball, Wisconsin, in my former hometown of Hoffman Estates, IL two days after Thanksgiving.  Along with that are games at Northern Arizona and Utah that could cause a young backcourt some trouble.  The biggest non-road contests will be against Oregon at Energy Solutions Arena in SLC (ESPN continuously touts the Ducks as being a year away....) and Baylor at the Marriott Center.  They will likely lose at least 3, but probably not more than 5 of those games.  Unless the program doesn't recover from the loss of Jimmer and Jackson as quickly as BYU fans would hope.

Conference play will be a slightly different animal.  BYU will assuredly win at least 6 of their 8 home games, probably 7, and winning all 8 wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities either.  As far as the road games go: BYU will certainly not be intimidated at any of the WCC venues after traveling to New Mexico, UNLV, and SDSU this past season.  However, games at Loyola Marymount, Portland, and Santa Clara may prove more difficult than BYU fans realize, and San Francisco seems like they could be slowly building a foundation to return to the prior glory days of the 1960's when they were one of the better teams in the Western US.  Add to that the more obvious games at St. Mary's and Gonzaga and there are a half-dozen potential losses in conference, though I would anticipate something akin to 12-4/13-3 for their first go-round in the WCC.  Initial feelings are that they'll be right around 25-8/26-7 after the WCC Tournament and probably just on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble around a 10 or 11 seed.

That prediction isn't based on some inside information as to how good some of these BYU young bucks are.  It is just my feeling as to where Coach Rose will have his team by the season.  The current trip to Greece will help guys like Martineau and Rogers step into the bigger roles they'll need to assume next season.  I think it'll give them a shot to upset Utah State on the road (without the trip it would certainly have been a blowout) and some continuity in a discontinuous situation.  The last time BYU made an overseas trip, they faded down the stretch of the season.  This team may be deep enough to avoid that, but maybe not.  It is certainly deeper than that previous team that took its game to Europe.

And Then There Was One
With the addition of Weber State, BYU now has 11 teams on the schedule for 2012, leaving just one more opening.  The game will almost certainly be played in Provo, with BYU already having 6 road games on the schedule.  My money is on a "name" BCS conference opponent on September 29th, or else possibly a Conference USA opponent somewhere in the first two weekends of November.  The schedule already has 6 teams that are either from BCS conferences or that have played in BCS bowl games in the past 5 seasons.  Before BYU fans go hoot and holler about the difficulty of the schedule, keep in mind that they may play only 3 ranked opponents (that is a MAXIMUM, not a minimum), and they still have that little issue of the 4 WAC schools that are typically in the bottom 40 FBS schools, plus an FCS school.  They do play at Utah, at Boise State, at Georgia Tech, and at Notre Dame, which can atone for a lot of issues at the bottom half of the schedule, but only if those teams turn in good years (Utah and Notre Dame should, though I'm more skeptical about Boise State and Georgia Tech).

Whomever BYU adds as game #12, it's going to be a "better" schedule in 2012 than it is in 2011 from an overall quality and depth standpoint.  I wouldn't anticipate the last team to necessarily be a big name, but I would guess, if it's for the September 29th game, it will be a recognizable BCS program, i.e. not a Big East or lesser ACC school.  If it ends up that BYU/ESPN cannot make that BCS game happen on September 29th, BYU will end up with a Conference USA school in November.  East Carolina, Houston, and Tulsa are the most likely possibilities there.

Of course, I may be dead wrong on that, but if I were in BYU's shoes, that's where I would look to go, and those are teams that have those openings.  If they can't get a BCS opponent to come to Provo in September 2012 (nearly impossible to get them to Provo, and to do it in November during conference play is even more impossible), then C-USA is definitely the most "schedule-friendly" conference for a late-season non-conference game.  Central Michigan of the MAC might not be a bad team to make a play for, as they don't hurt the computer profile nearly as much as some other teams might, and they still have an opening for a non-conference road game in 2012.  We will probably hear more/final news in the next 6 weeks on that front, I would guess.  BYU won't/shouldn't try to push the timing on that announcement to within 12 months of the game.