There will be a bit of a new look in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference basketball landscape this season.
The NSIC will feature multiple weeks of games played on Thursday and Saturday instead of the traditional Friday-Saturday doubleheaders.
“There was a couple of pieces to it,” said Northern State athletic director Nate Davis.
He said one of the reasons for the switch is to allow teams to rest up for the second half of their doubleheaders.
“The games on Saturday are just not as competitive, because they’re tired,” Davis said.
While not all games will be Thursday-Saturday, if the teams are close enough in proximity, the NSIC will give those teams a day in between to rest up. Northern will have six weeks of Thursday-Saturday games this winter.
“It’s trying to create a day of rest in there, create some rest opportunities throughout the season so it’s no so many back-to-backs,” Davis said, “and to put a better product on the floor on that second half of the weekend doubleheaders.”
There is also one other key element of the Thursday-Saturday format.
“The other benefit of moving off of Friday is you’re not competing with high school competitions,” Davis said.
The new schedule will also allow high schools to have their own spotlight, plus help to somewhat alleviate an officials shortage.
Davis, who came to Northern from the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association, has experience with games being separated by multiple days.
“Coming from the MIAA, we were a Wednesday-Saturday or a Thursday-Saturday league for the most part. That was very familiar to me,” Davis said. “The Friday-Saturday was not. That was a new adjustment.”
The NSIC used to have a Wednesday-Saturday format at one time before switching to weekend doubleheaders.
Davis said the NSIC sets a 22-game conference schedule and then schools have six additional games to select as they want.
“The conference builds the schedule and then the membership approves it,” Davis said. “They’ll lay it out and they’ll put it in front of us and say do you guys approve? We get to have influence on the parameters on how they build it and help guide that.”
Davis said he lets the head coaches determine who they would like to play in their non-conference games.
“A lot of time I leave it to them,” Davis said. “I’ll help if they ask. It’s there’s to go find.”
Davis said it can be tricky finding a date that works for both schools, along with other considerations like upcoming games and adequate practice times.
“It doesn’t seem like it should be this convoluted,” Davis said, “but it gets pretty complex when you start trying to mix and match different coaches.”
This year the Northern men will host Black Hills State on New Year’s Day.
The other factor when it comes to finding non-conference foes is convincing them to come to Aberdeen to play.
“The trick to it, and this is for any sport, people told me this when I came up here and I really didn’t believe it at first and it’s proven to be true,” Davis said, “coaches will be like schools won’t come up here. (I said) what do you mean schools won’t come up here? Yeah the MIAA schools won’t come up here. (I said) I know those people, they’ll come up here. They won’t. They don’t have to.”
Last year the Wolves played a men’s and women’s doubleheader at the Aberdeen Civic Arena.
“We’d like to do that again,” Davis said. “Right now, we have to play them as exhibition games, because of the shorter court and all that kind stuff. That will be just kind of a logistical, making it work out. … It was fun.”
