UVU Women's Basketball Announces its 2010-11 Schedule Add Comment    Sep 19, 2010

OREM, Utah - Utah Valley University head women's basketball coach Cathy Nixon released her 2010-11 season schedule on Wednesday. The schedule includes home dates with four of the five Division I in-state rivals, a Preseason WNIT appearance and culminates with the hosting of the Great West Conference Championships.

"We are thrilled with the schedule this year," Nixon said. "To be able to start the season with a Preseason WNIT bid is a real tribute to our kids and what they have been able to accomplish in the past. We have a young team this year so it will be a challenge for us to be measured up against that level of competition on the road so early in the season but it will be a landmark tournament for us to see where we are at as a program and a university."

The 2009-10 GWC Champion Wolverines will host two exhibition contests against Dixie State (Oct. 30) and Fort Lewis (Nov. 3) before officially beginning the season on the road at South Dakota State on Nov. 12, as part of the Preseason WNIT. UVU will have two more Preseason WNIT games on Nov. 14-15 and Nov. 19-20 with teams and sites to be determined depending on outcomes.

"The schedule is well-suited for our team. We have quite a few home games, which will be good for us. I feel confident that our schedule that we have set up will prepare us for the conference season and the conference tournament. We are excited for the season and I think people will want to come out to the home games we have as we are hosting every in-state DI school other than Utah this year."

Following the Preseason WNIT, the Wolverines will come home to the newly-named UCCU Center for a four-game home stand with games against Weber State (Nov. 23), Southern Utah (Nov. 26), Northern New Mexico (Nov. 27) and Utah State (Dec. 1).

UVU's next game will be on the road on Dec. 4, when the Wolverines will travel north up I-15 to play at Idaho State. On Thursday Dec. 9, UVU welcomes the BYU Cougars to Orem, for a much-anticipated game that will be televised live on BYU-TV. Two days later (Dec. 11) the Wolverines will head down to Cedar City to face SUU for the second time on the year.

UVU will then play two more home games before Christmas when they welcome Cal State Bakersfield and Boise State to the UCCU Center on Dec. 18 and 20 respectively. Following the Christmas holiday, the Wolverines will travel to Missoula, Mont., to play at the University of Montana's Lady Griz Holiday Classic on Dec. 28-29. There, UVU will play host Montana and Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

On New Year's Day, the Wolverines will be back at home welcoming Montana State to Orem. UVU's final non-conference game of the year will come on Jan. 15, when it welcomes Seattle University to the UCCU.

One week before the Seattle contest, the Wolverines will begin their 12-game conference slate. The first GWC game will be played at Chicago State on Saturday, Jan 8. UVU will then head to the Dakotas on Jan. 20 and 22 to take on North and South Dakota respectively.

UVU will play its first conference home games of the year when it welcomes Chicago State on Jan. 27 and the NJIT Highlanders on Jan. 29. The Wolverines will then hit the road again for their annual Texas trip, when they play at Texas-Pan American on Feb. 3 and at Houston Baptist on Feb. 5.

One week later (Feb. 12) the Wolverines will begin a four-game conference home stand when they play UTPA again. The other three contests will be against USD on Feb. 17, UND Feb. 19 and HBU Feb. 24. UVU will then make the cross-country trip to Newark, N.J., to play at NJIT to conclude its regular season.

Utah Valley will then look to repeat as conference champions when it hosts the GWC Men's & Women's Basketball Championships on March 9-12 for the second consecutive year.

"People weren't expecting us to win the tournament last year. As the host, I'm sure some teams will be looking forward to taking their punches at us so to speak. It's way down the line and we lost some key players from a year ago so it will be a challenge for us to repeat," Nixon added.

-Utah College Sports News staff and wire reports

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Utah College Sports Wire