The womens basketball schedule has been released. While apparently not yet up on the official site, the team was at a Sparks game this week passing out copies of their schedule to the fans, in an on-going attempt to increase fan support between the UCLA womens basketball and LA Sparks crowd. Schedule and thoughts after the jump.
11/12: @ SDSU
11/14: UCSB
11/18: @ Notre Dame
11/21: UC Davis
11/28: Temple
12/3: Montana St.
12/12: @ St. Mary's
12/19-21: @ Hawaii Tournament
12/19: vs. Hawaii
12/20: vs. East Carolina
12/28: LSU
12/31: @ Washington
1/2: @ WSU
1/8: u$c
1/13: OSU
1/15: UofO
1/20: @ Stanford
1/22: @ Cal
1/27: ASU
1/29: UofA
2/6: @ u$c
2/10: @ Oregon
2/12: @ OSU
2/18: Cal
2/20: Stanford
2/24: @ UofA
2/26: @ ASU
3/3: WSU
3/5: UW
3/9-12: Pac-10 Tourney
3/19-22: NCAA First & Second Rounds
3/26-29: NCAA Regionals
4/3-5: Final Four
The biggest non-conference game is @Notre Dame, a 2 seed last year in the NCAA tournament. SDSU, Temple, and LSU finished last season ranked in the top 50 RPI. This really is a favorable non-conference schedule. UCLA only leaves California to play Notre Dame and a tournament in Hawaii. It shouldn't be unreasonable to expect UCLA to get past the non-conference phase with only 1 loss at most, but as we saw last season UCLA had some growing pains early on before really catching fire during the pac-10 season. I'm not too sure how these teams will be this season, but based off of last season's performances, LSU and Temple may be the two top non-conference home games to try and catch this year.
Interestingly, I see there is no Big XII team on the schedule, which means that the Pac-10/Big XII challenge has maybe come to an end. UCLA had played Kansas and Texas Tech the last two seasons and I thought it was a great part of the schedule for UCLA to have, it's a shame not to see it anymore.
As we get closer to the season, i will post a season preview.