Report: BYU-Houston Basketball to play home-and-home series beginning in 2018-2019; more from 2018 non-conference schedule

With an increased emphasis on scheduling quality non-conference games to make the NCAA tournament, BYU is starting to beef up its non-conference schedule.

Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports is reporting that BYU will host the Houston Cougars as part of the 2018-2019 non-conference schedule.

This news is another confirmation from an earlier report that BYU and Houston will indeed play a home-and-home-series.

Houston is coming off a season where it advanced to the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament as a number 6 seed. They fell to national runner-up Michigan after the Wolverines hit a buzzer-beating three to give the deciding margin.

Houston finished the year at 27-8 and ranked number 22 in the USA Today Coaches Poll.

Houston is also the alma mater of BYU head coach Dave Rose, who played for the Coogs from 1980-1983.

With the addition of Houston to the 2018 non-conference schedule, here is what we know so far as to teams BYU will play:

• Utah (neutral, Vivint Smart Home Arena)
• UVU (Home)
• Utah State (Home)
• Houston (Home)
• Weber State (Away)
• Illinois State (Away)

Another potential team to keep an eye on is Oklahoma State. The Cowboys have been looking during the past month to schedule a home-and-home series with a top 100 RPI team. BYU has expressed interest in scheduling a series, but to my knowledge nothing has been officially agreed upon yet.

In a interview with BYU Sports Nation a couple weeks ago, Dave Rose mentioned OSU as a team that didn’t make the NCAA tournament this season because of lackluster non-conference scheduling.

With WCC teams now having an additional two games in non-conference, hopefully we continue to see more games like this Houston one.