The unveiling and grand opening of the Atlantic Union Bank Center is up next.

With no fall football season or any other fall sports on the docket at James Madison – due to the school's to suspend those activities Monday – the start of an important basketball campaign looms.

“We hope that the season starts on time and it goes,” Dukes athletic director Jeff Bourne said, “but if it has to be adjusted, then a plan has to be built for that as well. This is a big year for us.”

No change to the NCAA basketball calendar, on either the men’s side or the women’s side, has been determined yet. Though the Pac-12 Conference announced on Tuesday it was suspending all sports through the end of the calendar year, which essentially eliminates non-conference basketball for its member schools.

The cancellation of this past season’s basketball conference tournaments and NCAA tournaments in mid-March initially put college sports on hiatus and games haven’t resumed since.

But the Atlantic Union Bank Center, a $140 million project, is set to debut this November as construction on the facility that sits on the corner of Carrier Drive and University Boulevard has continued through the pandemic.

The new venue will seat 8,500 spectators for basketball games.

“We have a lot of opportunity to showcase who we are as an institution and not just our sport teams,” Bourne said. “Our facility can offer a tremendous opportunity for our donors and fans. What that’s going look like and how it’ll be impacted, right now, those are the things that are right there at the very forefront of my mind.”

Bourne said both of the Dukes’ hoops teams are on campus and working out in preparation for the coming winter.

The JMU women’s program is coming off of a 25-4 campaign and last year captured at least a share of the Colonial Athletic Association regular-season title for a third straight season under coach Sean O’Regan.

And the men’s team is preparing for its first season under new coach Mark Byington, who Bourne hired in April. JMU already released its non-conference schedule, which features 2019 national champion Virginia (Nov. 19) as well as in-state foes Longwood (Nov. 14), Radford (Nov. 27), George Mason (Nov. 30) and Old Dominion (Dec. 7) all visiting Harrisonburg.

“I think everybody, in the back of their minds, is holding out hope that you can get basketball to come along on a normal schedule,” Bourne said. “But you have to be realistic, look at it and say that may not be the case without a vaccine and without having people immunized.”

Bourne said the idea of beginning the college hoops season with teams in a bubble hasn’t been discussed.

“What there has been is some preliminary discussion and thought given to what that season may look like if it started after the first of the year,” Bourne said. “And what would a conference-only season look like for us?

“And the important thing, and anybody in NCAA sport today would tell you, the important thing is you want to see the NCAA tournament be able to be played, because the financial impact of that and what it means to member institutions across the board is really important. You don’t do it at the expense of student athlete well being, but you hope to find ways to navigate that.

“But there’s not been a lot of thought or dialogue given to, ‘do you do that in a bubble and not have fans?’ But not anything would surprise me when we deal with that sport because of the revenue numbers behind it.”

JMU is allowing its fall athletes to stay on campus and train with strength coaches, according to Bourne.

All workouts are voluntary.

“Certainly, right now conditioning for our student athletes,” Bourne said, “and keeping them in shape, keeping them healthy and making sure that we’re surveillance testing them for the virus. Those are important steps. I think we’ll see a more elevated practice schedule come back in the fall, for hopefully, the majority of our sport teams, so they can really be in good shape.”

Football players arrived back at JMU on July 6, and the other fall sports teams have returned to the school since.

With many athletic departments across the country searching for ways to save money, some have elected to cut one or more of the sports it offers to do so.

Old Dominion cut wrestling. Appalachian State got rid of men’s soccer, men’s tennis and men’s track and field. East Carolina eliminated four of its teams and Stanford discontinued 11 varsity sports.

But that won’t happen at JMU, according to Bourne.

“There have been no discussions about that,” he said. “We’re in a really good position with the sport programs that we sponsor and we’re able to take care of those teams and do the right things for them, so at this point I don’t think it’s impacting anything we do from an organizational standpoint with regard to offerings. We’ll work through this year.”