There's a revealing story in Flagstaff's Thursday's Arizona Daily Sun newspaper on the brutal impact of this year's extra early tipoff of conference play.
Though the early conference games will have an impact on every team except Idaho State, which won't play a conference game until Dec. 31, the article details the negative impact the schedule will have on the last week of fall semester and final exams.
The schedule was juggled so that the March Big Sky Conference championship could be televised by ESPN.
An additional impact will be the change from Thursday-Saturday games to back-to-back Friday-Saturday games on three of the conference road swings, including the Montana-Montana State games.
Northern Arizona University coach Mike Adras, for one, is not happy. He and his Lumberjacks face one of their longest road swings the weekend before final exams are scheduled at NAU.
Montana players and coaches can identify. Last season the Grizzlies were one of two Big Sky teams to hit the road early, with a mid December game at Portland State.
