Baker High School basketball fans might feel deprived.

And not without reason.

Their chances this season to watch the Bulldogs in person, without making a relatively long drive, can’t reasonably be called abundant.

This is particularly so with the boys team.

The defending Class 4A state champions have 23 games on their schedule, not including potential playoffs, and just five are at BHS.

It’s quite likely, though, that the Bulldogs will play six or seven home games. Baker has an excellent chance of hosting both a league and a state playoff game, as the Bulldogs did last year. The Baker boys played nine home games last season, two more than were originally scheduled.

(The boys played nine home games in 2022-23, and 10 the previous season.)

The ratio for the girls is a bit more fan-friendly, with eight of their 23 games this season scheduled on Peacock Court, also not including potential playoff games.

The girls have already played twice at home, on Dec. 4 against Burns and on Dec. 10 against Vale.

The boys make their BHS debut on Saturday, Jan. 4, at 11 a.m. against Crook County.

Several factors contribute to lack of geographic balance in Baker’s hoops schedules.

Baker is a member of the Greater Oregon League, the only Class 4A conference with just four teams, the three others being La Grande, Ontario and Pendleton. Three conferences have five members, and two have six.

The Bulldogs, with just three home games against league opponents each season, have one or two fewer home games compared with schools in the other conferences.

Moreover, there is a scarcity of Class 4A schools statewide— just 31, according to the Oregon School Activities Association. Just six of those (not including the four GOL schools) are east of the Cascades, and of those six, half are in Klamath Falls, a distance of 378 miles (your mileage may vary depending on brief detours to avoid jackrabbits). The non-GOL, Class 4A school closest to Baker is not exactly in the neighborhood — Crook County, 195 miles away in Prineville. The two other eastside schools are The Dalles and Madras, both of which are close enough to the Cascades that in each case a volcano dominates the horizon (Mount Hood from The Dalles, Mount Jefferson from Madras).

The 31 schools in Class 4A is the fewest among the six classifications, which are based primarily on enrollment. In order from largest to smallest, there are 50 schools in Class 6A, 32 in 5A, 49 in Class 3A, 41 in Class 2A and 96 in Class 1A.

Baker’s geographic isolation can also combine with winter weather to wreak havoc on the Bulldogs’ schedule, a problem less likely to afflict schools in the comparatively temperate lands west of the Cascades.

The boys had two games against Class 4A teams canceled in December 2022, and the Baker girls four such games, because teams were concerned about getting stranded by a blizzard on Interstate 84.

Baker boys coach Jebron Jones, who is in his seventh season, said geography, weather and the lack of Class 4A schools aren’t the only factors at play, however.

Jones, who has turned Baker into one of the top Class 4A teams, with three straight berths in the state tournament capped by the championship last March, said he works with the BHS athletic director to craft a schedule that helps prepare the Bulldogs for the rigors of the state tournament.

And there is no better preparation than playing in a tournament.

A tournament schedule, which typically includes three or four games on consecutive days, mimics the state tournament, where the champion has to win three games in as many days.

Another advantage to tournaments is that they require less travel compared with making three or four separate trips for individual games.

But unless, or until, Baker starts its own tournament — an expensive proposition — the Bulldogs, boys and girls, have to travel to other events to round out their schedule.

The boys have played in top Idaho tournaments the past few Decembers.

The boys and girls have competed in a tournament in Stayton during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and this year the girls, who have won two Class 4A state titles recently, in 2019 and 2023, traveled to Seaside for a three-day event the week before Christmas.

The boys were extended an invitation they could hardly turn down — playing four games in the Les Schwab Invitational at Portland State University the week after Christmas.

Baker lost all four games — the first to an Indiana team that is nationally ranked, the three others to Class 6A schools from the Portland area. The Bulldogs were without their leading scorer, senior Isaiah Jones (one of Jebron’s two sons; Rasean, a junior, is also a key member of the team), for all four games.

Despite the losses, the experience was valuable. The Bulldogs, as they seek to repeat as state champions, benefited in a way they would not have had they routed four overmatched opponents, which might have been their only option had they eschewed a high-level tournament in favor of home games.

(Not that there is any guarantee the Bulldogs could have found four schools, of any size, that had vacancies on their schedules and were willing to travel to Baker to fill one.)

Jones told me he understands that Baker fans can be frustrated by the relatively few chances to watch the team.

I suspect that for some the disappointment is amplified because the Bulldogs, in addition to being the defending champions, play a particularly entertaining style. At its best the Bulldogs’ performance is almost balletic in its fluidity, as players move, dribble, pass and shoot with what can seem, to spectators, a nearly effortless ease but which is inevitably the product of many hours of toil in a quiet, empty gym before dawn.