https://www.cbssports.com/college-basket...n-2020-21/

Quote:The Atlantic 10 Conference and the Mountain West Conference will formally announce later Thursday that the two leagues have agreed to start a Mountain West/Atlantic 10 Challenge in the 2020-21 season, a source told CBS Sports. It's a two-year agreement with an option to extend another two years through the 2023-24 season.

The Mountain West/Atlantic 10 Challenge will, according to a source, feature 10 games each season in late November/early December with each league hosting five games a piece. The source said matchups will be determined by the league offices based on a number of factors -- among them the anticipated strength of teams for the upcoming season. The goal is to alleviate the growing challenges of non-league scheduling while providing possible at-large candidates for the NCAA Tournament an extra opportunity to secure a victory that might help their at-large resumes.

Kind of an interesting idea to work around the death of the BracketBuster matchups, to take the current conference challenge fad and use it as a way to give your top teams a little more sizzle for the committee. The two conferences are a great match in this regard, even if they're trending in opposite directions.

Should have been done years ago! Two major conferences separating themselves from the pack.

I said something at the VCU board but the issue you run into here is that once you get past the top matchups, you're looking at mediocre teams criss-crossing the country to play mediocre schools in front of fans that know little about you.

For argument's sake, if you take the preseason top 10 teams from both conferences and match them 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2 and so forth, this season's challenge would look like this:

1. St. Louis vs. Nevada
2. St. Joseph's vs. San Diego State
3. Davidson vs. New Mexico
4. George Mason vs. Boise State
5. Rhode Island vs. Fresno State
6. Dayton vs. UNLV
7. VCU vs. Wyoming
8. UMass vs. Colorado State
9. St. Bonaventure vs. Utah State
10. Richmond vs. Air Force

I'm not sure any of those games are going to draw a lot of interest outside Nevada-St. Louis. It doesn't sound like they're going to use preseason polls exclusively but they're not going to create matchups the week before game day. Obviously if both conferences have multiple good teams, you'll have multiple good games, but there's still going to be a lot of flotsam, especially with the MWC only having 11 teams and thus matching their worst non-San Jose State teams against average-ish A-10 teams.

That's a good deal for both conferences.