2024-25 Schedule: A First Look
Unofficial word is that Pacific is headed to Hawaii in early November
As most know by now, the 11 programs included in the 2024-25 WCC regular season schedule will play 18 conference games per team, an increase of two games from last season’s balanced home-and-home card. With the addition of “affiliate” members Oregon State and Washington State, the league built a schedule that had each of the 11 teams play 8 others home-and-home plus single games against two remaining opponents. I am simply speculating here however a twenty-game season would have cut into certain program’s non-conference scheduling. In what could be related news, Gonzaga has at least four pre-conference games scheduled against Kentucky (in Seattle), defending national champions UConn (at New York’s MSG), vs. UCLA in Inglewood and at San Diego State, all very likely lucrative games for the Zags. Gonzaga will also participate in the Battle 4 Atlantis (Nassau, Bahamas), one of the nation’s highest profile pre-season tournaments over the Thanksgiving Day holiday season. And deservedly so - Mark Few has built one of the nation’s finest programs and the Zags are worthy of the rewards that nationally televised, high profile non-conference games bring. Winning these games bring even more benefit to the WCC overall.
At first glance, the ‘24-’25 WCC schedule provides our Tigers with a bit of a break: Pacific’s single games are at home vs. Gonzaga (should be a fantastic draw) and at Saint Mary’s. While he has not been asked the question by this outlet, gut feel is that if Coach Dave Smart had a say in the schedule, at this point in the program’s evolution, he would want to play what many consider the top two programs in the conference not once but twice just to have more opportunity to test and compare his team against the best possible competition (taking nothing away from the other schools). It will be interesting to see how Commissioner Stu Jackson and team draw up the ‘25-’26 schedule with newcomers Grand Canyon and Seattle joining the WCC, making the conference for at least one season a 13 team league.
Non-conference schedules for WCC programs are slowing dripping out into the public domain: Pacific is apparently headed to the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu, HI for a very early season (November 8-10th) three-day, three-game event that includes host Hawaii Warriors (Big West, 20-14 last season), San Jose State Spartans (Mountain West, 9-23 last season) and a fourth, as-yet-unnamed team (as reported by Made For March on X: "Scheduling News: The Rainbow Classic MTE (“multi-team event”) will return to Honolulu after a year hiatus and take place Friday November 8th - Monday November 11th. San Jose State, Pacific & a fourth team TBA join Hawaii in the field. A true round-robin event as each team plays the other three." / X).
Santa Clara Broncos kick off the season on the first day possible (Monday, November 4th) with a non-conference affair against St. Louis at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, SD then travel to Nevada to face Steve Alford’s WolfPack on November 16th before heading to the Acrisure Invitational in Palm Desert, CA over Thanksgiving. The following week, Washington State participates in another Acrisure event in Palm Desert during Thanksgiving. The Toreros of San Diego will host their own MTE in late November with Idaho and Southern Utah visiting. USF Dons will travel across the country to Daytona Beach, FL for the Sunshine Slam Tournament in the “Beach Bracket” which includes Clemson (ACC), Penn State (Big Ten) and Fordham (A-10). In a Christmas event, Oregon State makes their way to Honolulu for the Diamondhead Classic, an eight-team tournament.
We hope to have more on the non-conference schedule although we are told we won’t get word on Pacific’s final calendar until the official release from the University’s athletic department.
Please consider following us on X @KatsPawInsider and on Instagram
The WCC’s single game scheduling (not home & home) of the bottom two teams versus the top two teams from the previous years’s standings has been going on for several years now. This was done to enable the WCC’s better programs to have in-season scheduling flexibility to be able to add a high RPI opponent mid-week instead of having to bring down their own RPI by playing a WCC bottom-feeder.
This scheduling policy was instituted at the same time as the change to the revenue sharing of NCAA units at a higher percentage to the teams that actually do the winning instead of evenly to each WCC member. Both of these moves were made to keep Gonzaga happy as they were being courted by the MWC and Big 12 as an affiliate member.
Hawaii is not in the Big Sky Conference....I believe they are in the Big West..