For the first time as an 18-school entity, the Big Ten unveiled its men’s and women’s basketball schedules. Each school’s opponents were announced in early May, and the conference revealed the dates of those matchups Thursday.
The league will maintain a 20-game schedule for men’s basketball. Every school plays 14 teams once and three teams twice. The league selected each teams’ three double-play opponents based on multiple factors, including rivalry status, geography and national prominence.
Each Eastern and Central time-zone school will take one trip to the West Coast where they will play two games over a four-day period. To ease travel, each of those 14 schools travel to either Oregon and Washington or USC and UCLA.
For the West Coast teams traveling east, three of the single-play trips include back-to-back games within close proximity. Washington and Oregon, for instance, bundle games to Ohio State-Penn State, Michigan-Michigan State and Iowa-Wisconsin. Both schools’ only one-game trip east takes place in Minnesota. USC and UCLA bundle trips to Maryland-Rutgers, Illinois-Indiana, Purdue-Northwestern while both take single trips to Nebraska.
None of the West Coast schools will play outside of the Pacific time zone in December.
In women’s basketball, there are 18…
