Have conference, will travel

Many things are set to change for Utah Valley University in men's basketball when it begins a new season this fall.

For starters, the 2009-10 season will mark the first one in which the Wolverines are a full-fledged NCAA Division I team. Also, UVU will shed its independent status as it enters the Great West Conference.

One aspect that will not change is the amount of traveling the Wolverines will be required to do just to play their basketball games.

A small number of other formerly independent schools joined with UVU in the Great West after the conference decided to expand from football-only to all sports. Besides the Wolverines, NJIT, Chicago State, Houston Baptist, Texas-Pan American, North Dakota and South Dakota will take part in the new league.

Many of their new conference opponents got into the habit of playing home-and-home series with UVU when they were all searching for a league to join.

"We're making those same trips now," Wolverines athletic director Michael Jacobsen said. "These are the same independents we've been playing with all along, so we've been making those same trips for the last five years. So, really, nothing is going to change."

In an ideal world, UVU probably would like some changes.

Lengthy road trips will be a norm for the Wolverines in conference games. Playing their closest conference opponent, South Dakota, requires a 783-mile trip from Orem to Vermillion, S.D. Utah Valley will make at least four conference road trips of more than 1,000 miles each — with the longest being to Newark, N.J., where NJIT plays.

The distance between Orem and Newark: 1,957 miles.

Geographical placement doesn't concern Wolverines coach Dick Hunsaker. He admitted that trekking through multiple time zones can be challenging. But he said travel-related challenges can be found in just about any conference.

"What's the difference between a four- or five-hour flight and a four- or five-hour bus ride?" Hunsaker said. "When I coached at Ball State in the MAC, many bus rides were three or four hours. You just travel and play the game. If you want to make up some type of excuse or reason you can't play well, then you can do that."

While the conference alignment Utah Valley is part of offers an extreme example, it is far from an anomaly in the NCAA Division I basketball landscape.

Saint Louis bolted Conference USA for the Atlantic-10 shortly after the Big East raided C-USA to expand a few seasons ago. Denver, a school that once competed with BYU, Utah and Utah State in the Skyline Conference, joined the Sun Belt for the majority of its sports upon returning to Division I a decade ago. Louisiana Tech is separated by the state of Texas and is a time zone away from its closest WAC opponent.