ACC Basketball has itself a westward expansion scheduling problem

Listening to UVA Basketball coach Ron Sanchez talk about his team’s week-long West Coast swing makes it clear: the ACC needs to do something about this stupid scheduling idea, now.

“We’ve discussed this since the summer, if I’m, you know, really thinking correctly,” said Sanchez, whose team plays at Cal on Wednesday at 11 p.m. ET, and then at Stanford at a more reasonable time, 4 p.m. ET on Saturday, discussing the internal planning for the week on the other side of the continent.

Sanchez, the interim head coach, who was, of course, around back in the summer as Tony Bennett’s top assistant, said the staff “spent a lot of time trying to figure out, you know, not only this week, but what we did in the weeks leading up to this.”

“You know, how much energy that we spend, how much time that we, you know, how do we, you know, adjust our clocks? You know, when do we start practice? How do we get at what time are we going to go to bed? At what time are we going to get them up? So, there’s been a lot of meetings and a lot of time invested into trying to make sure that we can perform at the at the best level that we can,” Sanchez said.

The way the ACC is inserting Cal and Stanford into the league schedule is, eight ACC schools, beginning with Virginia and Virginia Tech this week, are making the week-long trip out West, and eight – you’re not surprised to learn that Duke and North Carolina are among these eight – get the West Coast schools at home back to back.

No doubt, we’ll reverse the order on this for next year.

(Eye roll.)

The idea of having teams spend a week out West to play Cal and Stanford, and then having the California schools returning the favor with a week on the East Coast, is being done, we can presume, to save money on travel, but it’s also being done at the expense of any pretense that it’s college basketball that we’re talking about here.

For Virginia and Virginia Tech, at least, it’s not going to lead to missed classes, but for everybody else, on both sides of the equation, it will, going forward between now and the end of the regular season.

So, there’s that issue, but we’re way, way past pretending that college athletics are about kids going to class and playing sports on the side.

How about a midweek 11 o’clock tip for an East Coast team? That’s not a huge advantage at all for the West Coast teams.

Stanford gets the screwjob on the trips back East, with two pre-noon PT tips, at North Carolina (Saturday, Jan. 18) and at Louisville (Saturday, March 8), neither of which make sense, since they’re weekend games.

Cal doesn’t have a pre-noon PT tip on its East Coast trips this season.

The impact isn’t just on the weeks involving cross-country travel, which, to be fair, the Cal and Stanford teams will be making these trips four times each, so, we should feel sorry the most for their kids.

“The weeks prior, the week of travel, and the weeks after, like, that was really where the time was invested. It wasn’t just on the travel yesterday or today, as it was scheduled, but it was, you know, last week, the week before, and then what we will do once we arrive back at home,” Sanchez said.

What Sanchez is alluding to there is, we’ll need to be on the lookout for a post-West Coast week hangover effect.

Virginia, for instance, will be getting back home sometime late in the evening of Jan. 11, on a Saturday night, with Sunday blocked off for sleeping in and beginning the reacclimation to East Coast time, before getting ready for a home game on Wednesday, Jan. 15, with SMU.

The schedule-makers then give Virginia another road trip, the following Saturday, Jan. 18, at Louisville.

At least Virginia Tech returns late Saturday night from its game with Cal to a pair of home games – NC State on Wednesday, Jan. 15, and Wake Forest on Saturday, Jan. 18.

It is, of course, what it is.

Sanchez is trying to take the positive from having a week with the kids on the road.

“I think you get time to bond, you know, you get time to spend more time to get to know each other,” Sanchez said. “You know, we do have a lot of new players, and, you know, we are, you know, kind of in a unique situation, so for us to just have time to dialogue, you know, watch more film, not have to travel, you know, kind of get guys back into the arena, but we’re all together in one space, is definitely beneficial.”