BURNSVILLE, Minn. – The Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference has announced its basketball and wrestling schedules for the 2020-21 academic year. The schedules were approved by the NSIC Board of Directors with the health and safety of student-athletes, coaches, and staff as the top priority. Both the basketball and wrestling schedules will begin in January and schools will follow NCAA Sports Science Institute (SSI) guidelines for competition.
 
To mitigate COVID-19 exposure, schools will only compete against one opponent each week of the season.
 
The NSIC Men's and Women's Basketball schedules will be 16-games played over 8 weeks with teams playing the same opponent at one site on back-to-back days. The season will start with two non-conference games against one NSIC out-of-division opponent. The conference schedule will then consist of 14 games with teams playing each member of its division twice. For this season, the NSIC will only crown a North Division and South Division Champion.

The men's basketball program will start off their season hosting Winona State University on Jan. 2 & 3. They will continue their home stand into the next weekend against Minot State University. The Bulldogs will then travel to the University of Mary before coming back to host Minnesota State University Moorhead. UMD will then take to the road two straight weekends, first against Northern State before heading to the University of Minnesota Crookston. The Bulldogs will then play at home one final time, hosting Bemidji State University before finishing out the regular season on the road against St. Cloud State University.

The Women's schedule will consist of the same travel schedule, playing their games two hours ahead of the men's teams.

For the winter sports of men's and women's indoor track & field and women's swimming & diving that do not operate under a conference schedule, schools will continue with the development of their schedules and with competition beginning in January.
 
Enhanced preseason reveals will be announced in mid-December for all winter sports via the NSIC Network and at NorthernSun.org. The reveals will include preseason coaches' polls, preseason players of the year, preseason student-athletes to watch, team previews and quotes from coaches. 
 
The conference will continue to monitor the landscape and conditions surrounding the pandemic, locally, regionally, and nationally, and make any decisions or announcements, at a later date, as necessary.