Because of preseason adjustments designed to cut down on travel during the pandemic, UTSA is now scheduled to play only nine C-USA opponents during the regular season.
UTSA (4-3) will play each opponent twice, starting with a pair of road games Friday and Saturday in Houston against Rice (6-2).
“We’re thrilled that we were able to get in seven non-conference games,” UTSA coach Steve Henson said Wednesday. “We made the decision to not play in a (multi-team event). We were able to get our games in. Now we’re hoping to get a bunch of conference games in and continue to play better.
“But, yeah, there’s going to be some weird situations. Not playing people in your own league is very odd, obviously. If there is cancellations or postponements, that’s going to throw in some more questions as we move along.
“But you just can’t waste energy worrying about those things that are out of our control.”
UTSA is set to play against all six of its C-USA West opponents, plus FIU, Florida Atlantic and Charlotte from the East.
It’s an open question as to whether UTSA has advantage in not having to play Western Kentucky, Marshall and Old Dominion. North Texas, for instance, will play two-game sets against Old Dominion and Marshall on the road and Western Kentucky at home.
“You know, if you start doing that, you drive yourself crazy,” Henson said. “I mean, we’ve had some pretty good success against … some of those teams. We’ve lost some (games) against teams in the bottom half. We struggled against some of those teams.
“The fact that we don’t have to travel all the way to those places is kind of nice. I know that. Those are some rough road trips. But our guys get excited to play some of those opponents.
“If we have a good season and then are denied an opportunity to play them, I think our guys, they’ll probably be disappointed that we don’t get to play them.
“But, I think the league is doing the best they can. They’ve tried to set up a lot of regional opportunities. Obviously, going all the way to Florida, there’s some things that don’t quite make sense.
“But again, it’s hard. You lay out the blue print, try to factor in 14 (teams), it gets really, really hard.”