Women's Basketball | 08/29/2016
MOSOW, Idaho—The 2016 Big Sky Champion Idaho Vandals will rack up plenty of frequent flyer miles on the road to Reno in the 2016-17 season. Head coach
Jon Newlee announced a 30-game schedule on Monday, featuring 18 games on the road.
Idaho starts its title defense on Nov. 5 at home in Memorial Gym with an exhibition against Multnomah. The team will play its first eight regular season games on the road, before returning home more than a month later against Central Washington on Dec. 17.
"That is just how scheduling goes at times," Newlee noted. "We get a lot of home-and-home games. This is just one of those years where we have to return games and get out on the road. I wish had more games in front of our fans, but that is how it goes sometimes."
Included in the first eight games is a matchup with Washington (Nov. 22) in Seattle. The Vandals will also take part in two tournaments at the Grand Canyon Thanksgiving Classic and the Maui Wahine Classic, hosted by Grand Canyon and Oregon State, respectively. Over Thanksgiving Idaho will head to the desert to take on Northern Iowa (Nov. 25), a 2016 WNIT team, and Grand Canyon (Nov. 26). The Vandals will play UNLV (Dec. 2) and Oregon State (Dec. 3) in Hawaii. Washington and OSU both advanced to the Final Four last season. The final road test in the opening stretch will be at Wyoming (Dec. 9).
"As always I have scheduled us a tough non-conference schedule," Newlee said. "You see two Final Four teams from last year in Washington and Oregon State. We also have Oregon, who is really rising fast in the Pac-12. Certainly those are the marquee games that people will look at. That trip to Wyoming is always tough. They will be well coached and playing well too."
CWU will be Idaho's first regular season game in Memorial Gym on Dec. 17. The Vandals will hit the road and head to Oregon (Dec. 20), before returning back to close out the non-conference slate with Lewis-Clark State on Dec. 27.
Idaho will travel to Eastern Washington on Dec. 31 to open the Big Sky season. The Eagles will visit Cowan Spectrum on Feb. 18. The Silver and Gold will play home-and-home series with Montana, Montana State, Weber State, Idaho State, Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.
Portland State (Feb. 2), Sacramento State (Feb. 4), Northern Colorado (Feb. 9) and North Dakota (Feb. 11) fill out the remainder of Idaho's conference games.
The Big Sky Tournament returns to Reno, Nev., for the second consecutive season. The 12-team tournament is set for Mar. 6-11 at the Reno Events Center.
"Reno was a great experience last year," Newlee commented. "We had the ultimate experience last year being able to win and go to the NCAA Tournament. It is a long road to get to Reno, but certainly there should be a lot of excitement around the tournament again this year."
For more information on Idaho Athletics, visit GoVandals.com. Fans can also follow Idaho women's basketball on Twitter, @VandalsWBB.
