Utes basketball schedule official for 2010-11

The Utah men’s basketball schedule officially came out today with all of the Mountain West Conference dates, times and TV assignments. The Utes have more Tuesday games than usual with three and will have five Wednesday games in addition to eight Saturday games. They start with Air Force on the road Jan. 5 and end with UNLV at home on March 5.
The Utes have little to complain about the schedule except I think they might be a little miffed that their home game against BYU is a midweek game for the second straight year (Tuesday, Jan. 11) and third time in four years. The Utes would have liked to get a Saturday home game against the Cougars.
As far as the preseason schedule goes, it had just one change from the one announced a couple of months ago. Instead of playing Oregon on Dec. 18, the Utes will play host to Boise State on Dec. 17. The change was necessitated because of the Utes’ inclusion into the Pac-10 Conference. The game with Oregon was supposed to be a home-and-home arrangement, but with the Utes entering the same league next year, a one-gamer in Salt Lake wouldn’t work.
The Utes will play road games against Michigan, Bradley, Utah State and Portland in addition to the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii over Christmas.