Cal basketball 2013-14 schedule released: Maui Invitational the big highlight

The highlight of Cal's 2013-14 schedule will be their trip to Hawaii in the days before Thanksgiving for the Maui Invitational. They will get the chance to play some pretty impressive opponents to bulk up their non-conference resume. Three of these seven teams will be on their schedule: Arkansas, Baylor, Dayton, Gonzaga, Minnesota, Syracuse (REMATCH!) and Chaminade (hopefully we avoid that one, since there's no upside to winning this one).

The rest of the schedule should be a cakewalk.

• Four home games against Coppin State, Denver, Oakland and Southern Utah to start 2013. Denver should be competitive, but the other three teams went a combined 35-61 last season.
• Four home games in December against UC Irvine, Nevada (no Pistol this time), Fresno State, and Furman. They went a combined 51-78. Also a road game against 11-20 UC Santa Barbara.

The biggest contest will be on the road against Creighton and Doug "Children of the Corn" McDermott. That will be difficult. So we have nine games we should win handily, and hopefully four chances for resume-building leading into a rising Pac-12.

The conference schedule now features two matchups with the Arizonas and the Washingtons while the Oregons and the Mountains get only one matchup each (thankfully no trip up to Boulder, a house of horrors for the Bears). It's hard to say if that makes the schedule more difficult, but it's safe to say this conference is far from being a picnic anymore. All teams should play us competitively this year and there will be plenty of contests that should go down to the wire. I'm really looking forward to Pac-12 hoops this season from a competitive and quality standpoint, which is something I haven't been able to say with conviction for several years.

Here's the schedule. All dates tentative.

Oct. 31 (exhibition): Humboldt State
Nov. 8: Coppin State
Nov. 12: Denver
Nov. 15: Oakland
Nov. 18: Southern Utah
Nov. 25-27: Maui Invitational
Dec. 2: UC Irvine
Dec. 6: at UC Santa Barbara
Dates not announced: Nevada, Fresno State
Dec. 22: at Creighton
Dec. 28: Furman

Jan. 4: at Stanford
Jan. 9: at Oregon
Jan. 11: at Oregon State
Jan. 16: Washington
Jan. 18: Washington State
Jan. 23: at USC
Jan. 25: at UCLA
Jan. 30: Arizona State
Feb. 1: Arizona
Feb. 8: Stanford
Feb. 13: at Washington State
Feb. 15: at Washington
Feb. 20: UCLA
Feb. 22: USC
Feb. 27: at Arizona
Mar. 1: at Arizona State
Mar. 6: Colorado
Mar. 8: Utah
Mar. 12-15: Pac-12 Tournament, MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas

What are your first impressions of this schedule?