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Sac State to Big West in 2026

SDHornet

SDHornet

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Staff member
This is deserving of its own thread as it was touched on in the realignment thread. Today marks the year long countdown until the Hornet Olympic sports depart the Big Sky Conference and arrive in the Big West Conference with like minded in-state institutions. There will be a significant step up in competition in most sports, so the Hornet coaching staffs will have their work cut out for them.




It will be interesting to see where the BW settles on travel partners, regular season and championship scheduling. JD, you're a purveyor of all things BW, what's your take on the scheduling?
 
SDHornet said:
This is deserving of its own thread as it was touched on in the realignment thread. Today marks the year long countdown until the Hornet Olympic sports depart the Big Sky Conference and arrive in the Big West Conference with like minded in-state institutions. There will be a significant step up in competition in most sports, so the Hornet coaching staffs will have their work cut out for them.




It will be interesting to see where the BW settles on travel partners, regular season and championship scheduling. JD, you're a purveyor of all things BW, what's your take on the scheduling?
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'arrive in the Big West Conference with hobo poor minded in-state institutions'

There, I fixed it for you. :poop:
 
Both opinions are correct, IMO. LBSU and Foolerton are fairly good in most sponsored sports, but Riverside is weak. Cal Baptist is improving, but in general the pulling up of D-IIs to replace schools that have left (i.e. those who joined the Mountain West and the WCC) have brought the overall quality of the Big West down quite a bit.

I don't like the indy route in football, though. It's going to be too hard to schedule without being overburdened on the travel end. I have a feeling (though I haven't seen any reports to this effect) that Cal and Stanford are going to come to their senses on the extended footprint thing in the ACC and go back to the Pac-whatever with their tails between their legs....
 
You guys are going to like being in the Big West for baseball..

It's a good conference in general, and should bring back football.

It's starting to become more Southern-California incestuous (they claim we can't host the regional playoff game because we're too far north) but you guys will help it spread north a bit.

Best of luck to you guys in the Big West and see you in SLO, and will try to make it up to Sacramento more.
 
The Big West is one the most most difficult conferences in the country in Baseball and gets zero respect from the committee that decides the final 64.

Usually one auto-bid team and a team that has to have a very high RPI.. It's going to be a harder road to getting a Conference auto-bid for Sac now.. You guys can do it, but again, the Big West is the Rodney Dangerfield of D-1 Baseball, we get no respect.. When it's a great Conference and one the hardest.. we're no SEC or ACC.., but they get almost their entire Conference in.. and what's worse- we are almost as good as them, and only one auto-bid usually.. it's a crime.

Hopefully we start getting more like two autobids in the future.
 
The Big West has been ranked well above the Big Sky in hoops for as long as I can remember.
(for whatever these are worth.....)

NCAA College Basketball RPI Rankings (updated today)

NCAA college basketball RPI rankings and ratings for 2025, updated daily for all teams and available historically for every day of the 2025 season.
www.teamrankings.com www.teamrankings.com

Conference NET Ranking - 2025 Men's College Basketball | WarrenNolan.com

2025 Men's College Basketball Conference NET - a ranking of conference based on the average NET Ranking of the teams in the conference.
www.warrennolan.com www.warrennolan.com

I agree, the BW is definitely a big step up in Baseball as well. I actually like this move for Sac, joining a CA conference.


The Mountain West is supposed to be better than both by far, but time will tell if the MWC is an improvement for Davis. I kinda like the Big West for Davis baseball and basketball.....but I 'ain't in charge. It's always about the $ though....
 
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I am really glad that we've landed the majority of our sports in the Big West, it's long overdue. The Big Sky was lacking quite a few sports that we offer, I always thought that Poly and Davis had the best of both worlds. It was also hard to form rivalries in the Big Sky with teams that we had little in common with. We've all had relatives, friends or coworkers that have attended Big West Schools, easier to relate to. I'm sure that with all the Big West alumni in Sacramento area and our alumni in Central and Southern California it will help boost interest and attendance. Football independence either FCS or FBS will be a challenge. Having our Olympic sports in a stable strong conference will give us a lot more flexibility to accept a football only invite offered even from a remote conference.
 
Interesting input. Men's hoops and baseball are by far the biggest winners in this move. With a new venue for hoops coming online, there is finally a reason to put meaningful investment into the program. We'll see what Bibby can do this season and into BW play. I am grateful that the logistics, money and time spent on flying into the mountain regions will be behind us after this upcoming year. I don't think people realise how big of a plus that will be for our programs.

Baseball is a big winner in this move. I'm excited to see how Coach Christiansen recruits now. He's done well assembling solid teams and getting players into the Show while a member of the soon to be defunct WAC. It'll be interesting to see how he fares recruiting to the Big West label and if the admin will boost funding to be on par with the better BW programs. Competition will be a big step up but if anyone is up to the task, it's Reg.
 
Super Hornet 2.0 said:
I don't like the indy route in football, though. It's going to be too hard to schedule without being overburdened on the travel end. I have a feeling (though I haven't seen any reports to this effect) that Cal and Stanford are going to come to their senses on the extended footprint thing in the ACC and go back to the Pac-whatever with their tails between their legs....
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We'll see how the FCS scheduling plays out, it will definitely be a chore though. Those BSC programs will need access to CA recruits and playing in CA to lure in those recruits is a large part of that. The current format enjoyed by the BSC allows for its 9 non-CA members to split 9 (3 home games for each CA member after the in-state games are accounted for) games in CA amongst themselves. Starting in '26, the 11 non-CA members will now have 6 CA games to split amongst themselves. If they keep it fair (they won't, the montuckies will get priority), that's only one guaranteed game in CA every 2 years.

Also the odd number of BSC FB members means there will be someone with an open week in the later part of the season which will be harder for us to find and schedule available opponents on. Those late season open BSC opponents are all potential games that can be scheduled as a single home game in Sac. Couple that with our usual home and home agreements with Southland & MVFC teams, FCS moving to a 12 game season, and an abundance of FBS opponents thanks to the survival of the PAC and I'm not overly worried about football filling out an FCS Independent schedule.
 
ES2X said:
You guys are going to like being in the Big West for baseball..

It's a good conference in general, and should bring back football.

It's starting to become more Southern-California incestuous (they claim we can't host the regional playoff game because we're too far north) but you guys will help it spread north a bit.

Best of luck to you guys in the Big West and see you in SLO, and will try to make it up to Sacramento more.
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We were already in the Big West for baseball previously... Obviously it was a different era. I will say, the teams of the Big West and their fans won't be happy to travel to The John. The lack of shade, restrooms, press boxes, et al. Will be brutal.
 
SDHornet said:
This is deserving of its own thread as it was touched on in the realignment thread. Today marks the year long countdown until the Hornet Olympic sports depart the Big Sky Conference and arrive in the Big West Conference with like minded in-state institutions. There will be a significant step up in competition in most sports, so the Hornet coaching staffs will have their work cut out for them.




It will be interesting to see where the BW settles on travel partners, regular season and championship scheduling. JD, you're a purveyor of all things BW, what's your take on the scheduling?
Click to expand...


I'll start with hoops. I can see the coaches taking the easy route with a full round robin, especially if the NCAA enacts a 32 game schedule. OTOH, given that UCI and especially UCSD were both knocking on the door of an at-large bid until Selection Sunday - both were 30+ win teams and UCSD had a NET in the 30s - it's possible the BW might want fewer league games. I'm hoping for fewer.

Baseball is also going to be a tough choice. I don't expect a 33 game league schedule happening now that the conference tournament is back. It would take away precious ooc opportunities to build at-large resumes and baseball is one of the few sports where the BW can expect to earn multiple bids every year (2 bids this year, last season and in 2021). There were four top-75 RPI teams in 2025.

With respect to softball, UCI doesn't sponsor it and it's largely a one bid league so expect the BW will have 11 teams and 30 league games. Besides, there was only one at-large bid awarded to somebody not in a power conference. Those extra opportunities are gone.

Men's soccer, there's 11 teams so I'm expecting the BW stays with 10 league games and a full round robin. Women's soccer has 12 teams so unless the league is cool with 11 games someone is getting skipped.
 
jdgaucho said:
I'll start with hoops. I can see the coaches taking the easy route with a full round robin, especially if the NCAA enacts a 32 game schedule. OTOH, given that UCI and especially UCSD were both knocking on the door of an at-large bid until Selection Sunday - both were 30+ win teams and UCSD had a NET in the 30s - it's possible the BW might want fewer league games. I'm hoping for fewer.

Baseball is also going to be a tough choice. I don't expect a 33 game league schedule happening now that the conference tournament is back. It would take away precious ooc opportunities to build at-large resumes and baseball is one of the few sports where the BW can expect to earn multiple bids every year (2 bids this year, last season and in 2021). There were four top-75 RPI teams in 2025.

With respect to softball, UCI doesn't sponsor it and it's largely a one bid league so expect the BW will have 11 teams and 30 league games. Besides, there was only one at-large bid awarded to somebody not in a power conference. Those extra opportunities are gone.

Men's soccer, there's 11 teams so I'm expecting the BW stays with 10 league games and a full round robin. Women's soccer has 12 teams so unless the league is cool with 11 games someone is getting skipped.
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Thanks for the input. Do you think baseball goes to divisions or just rotates one/two less conference matchup throughout the years?
 
SDHornet said:
Thanks for the input. Do you think baseball goes to divisions or just rotates one/two less conference matchup throughout the years?
Click to expand...


I think baseball rotates one/two less conference matchups.

The Big West only experimented with north and south divisions for two years in the late 90s when there were eight bb members (Boise, USU, Idaho and UNT didn't have baseball then and still don't today). While divisions can be done again in 2027 I don't believe it would work well with 12 members. In theory, if the BW sticks with 30 games AND splits up into a pair of six team divisions - where you only play h&h within the division - that could mean constantly skipping half the league.

My guess is divisions would look something like this

BW North: UVU, Sac, CSUB, Cal Poly, UCSB, CSUN

BW South: LBSU, Fullerton, UCR, Cal Baptist, UCI, UCSD
 
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