TULSA – While the start of the USL Championship regular season on the horizon in March, the most historic Cup competition in the U.S. is gearing up for a much earlier start in 2020. The 107th Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, a soccer tournament featuring all divisions of amateur and professional soccer, will feature its largest number of teams ever in its modern era – 100, and a slightly altered format that includes a late March opening round.

Like in previous seasons, FC Tulsa and the rest of the USL Championship will begin in the Open Cup in the Second Round. This year, that match will fall between April 7-9, a break from past years when that round was played in May. Matches being further apart in the tournament will give teams time to prepare for each matchup and lengthen the competition to span most of the calendar year.

Jumping into the tournament in the Second Round means that FC Tulsa will play either a First Round winner or a team from a different league that also enters the tournament in the Second Round. This is also a new tweak from previous seasons where FC Tulsa could face a fellow USL Championship club in the Second Round, like it did last season when it saw Austin Bold FC.

U.S. Open Cup Second Round pairings are typically decided based on geographic matches, so the First Round matchups fans should be looking out for is the March 24 matchup between NPSL sides Fort Worth Vaqueros and Tulsa Athletic. The winner of this game could be paired with FC Tulsa for the Second Round. Second Round pairings will be announced on January 29.

If FC Tulsa were to win its Second Round match, it would likely see a club from Major League Soccer (MLS) in the Third Round, another alteration from previous seasons. MLS has been split into two halves, with 11 lower-seeded clubs entering the Cup competition in the Third Round and the other 12 U.S. based higher-seeded MLS teams waiting until the Round of 32 to enter.

While it would need to win and advance, FC Tulsa could see teams like Sporting Kansas City or FC Dallas in the Third Round and possibly LA Galaxy or Atlanta United in the Round of 32. Tulsa has advanced to the Round of 32 once time in club history, in 2017 when it fell to FC Dallas on the road in Frisco, Texas by a 2-1 scoreline.