From professional leagues to high school leagues, all sports levels have looked different throughout 2020, especially the scheduling aspect. SXU sports are no strangers to these schedule changes, either. In addition to the SXU fall sports schedules moving to the winter and spring of 2021, the SXU basketball schedules recently changed. On Tuesday, October 6th, the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference (CCAC) altered the number of conference games for men’s and women’s basketball.
According to the CCAC, “After playing a record 22-game league schedule one year ago, the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference men’s and women’s basketball season will transition to a single round-robin, 14-game schedule for the 2020-21 academic year, it was announced by the league office Tuesday morning.”
The SXU men’s and women’s basketball teams were planning to play 22 CCAC games this season, the first one on November 11th against Trinity Christian College for both teams. For COVID-19 reasons, the CCAC presidents cut the 22 game schedule down to 14 games and pushed the first game back that counts towards the league to the beginning of January.
Based on the new schedule that the CCAC put out, the first CCAC games for both the SXU men’s and women’s teams will take place on Saturday, January 2nd, on their home court against Cardinal Stritch University. Both Cougar teams will compete every Wednesday and Saturday, playing each team in the CCAC once.
In the following order, after their games on January 2nd, the SXU basketball teams will play Saint Ambrose University, Lincoln College, Roosevelt University, Governors State University, Olivet Nazarene University, Judson University, and Calumet College of St. Joseph in January. Throughout February they will play Trinity Christian College, Indiana University Northwest, Trinity International University, Holy Cross College, University of St. Francis, and Indiana University South Bend.
The Cougars’ bye games are on Wednesday, January 20th, and the last CCAC regular-season games, against Indiana University South Bend, will be played on Saturday, February 20th.
The SXU basketball teams then have a few days to prepare for their single-elimination CCAC Tournaments that start the following week. For both the men’s and women’s teams, there is a quarterfinal round, a semifinal round, and then the championship. If the Cougars make it to the championship, the men’s team will play on Saturday, February 27th, and the women’s team will play on Monday, March 1st.
What remains the same for the SXU men’s and women’s basketball teams are their non-conference games. According to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the Cougars are capable of competing in 30 games, which leaves them approximately 16 other games for the season.
The CCAC also mentioned that conference teams can still play their games against other conference teams planned for November and December. Both CCAC teams have to decide to play those games for them to take place still, and they will not count towards the league play that starts in January.
Despite these changes, SXU fans can still expect to close out 2020 and ring in 2021 with some competitive, high-energy Cougar basketball games. If there is one thing that SXU sports teams have learned this year, it is how to be resilient and successful when faced with changes and challenges.