GREAT FALLS, Mont. – The Frontier Conference officially announced the schedule for the 2020-21 women's basketball season Thursday morning.

The University of Providence will begin their season Jan. 4 with a road game against Montana Tech. Their first home game will be Jan. 9 against Carroll College.

"It's going to be tough for us right off the bat," head coach Bill Himmelberg said. "It isn't going to be an easy road. I'm just happy we get to play."

In an effort to limit travel, most Frontier Conference games will take place as weekend double-headers. In most cases, the first game will take place Saturday night with a second game against the same opponent occurring Sunday afternoon. There are some instances throughout the year where games will be played on Wednesday nights. All teams will play each conference team four times throughout the course of the season for a total of 20 games.

Schools in the conference that have their students on-campus for the first semester will begin play on Dec. 5, and will play for two weekends before winter break. Since the University of Providence has gone to online school for the first semester, they won't begin play until January.

"We just talk about that we need to worry about ourselves," Himmelberg said. "Who cares that the other teams will have non-conference games before we get to play. We need to take care of the things that we can control. We can't control how much time the other teams have, we can only use the practice time we have for the best of our ability."

The Frontier Conference Tournament will take place from Feb. 25 to Mar. 2. The play-in tournament will take place on Mar. 12-13, and the 32-team tournament will take place in Sioux City, Iowa on Mar. 19-23.

The Argos have high expectations for the season. The Argos return two All-Americans (Parker Esary and Emilee Maldonado) from last year's team. The team, who finished with a 21-12 record (10-9 in the Frontier Conference), went on a legendary postseason run, winning three straight road games en route to claiming the Frontier Conference Tournament. They were awarded a 6-seed in the NAIA National Tournament, but the tournament was cancelled due to COVID-19 before any games were played.