In a nod to its four West Coast newcomers, the Big Ten will hold its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in Las Vegas one time each in the next four years, the league office announced Wednesday.

The news comes eight days after Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti announced that Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium will remain as host of the Big Ten football championship game through 2028.

Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena will host the 2027 women’s and the 2028 men’s basketball tournament. The Pac-12, the former home of new Big Ten members USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, staged its men’s basketball tournament at T-Mobile Arena from 2017 to 2024; its women’s tournament had been held at other Las Vegas venues since 2019.

Other men’s basketball tournament future sites includes Indianapolis’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse in 2025 and ’27 and Chicago’s United Center in ’26. Gainbridge Fieldhouse also will stage the ’25 and ’26 women’s basketball tournaments, while Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena will host for the first time during the 2028 tournament.

“I’ve been really pleased in the interest from cities across, not just from the football side, but men’s and women’s basketball was just really good,” Petitti told The Athletic last week.

It’s a similar move to the…

Oregon women’s volleyball coach Matt Ulmer admits he was nervous but hopeful when the Big Ten announced the upcoming volleyball schedule.

“I had no idea what it was going to look like for the four West schools,” Ulmer said. “But at least at the end of the day, I think they did a really good job of keeping in mind not missing class.”

With Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA entering the Big Ten in August, the 18-team Big Ten stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and across four time zones. Strategic scheduling and travel were more imperative this year than ever before for the Big Ten staff, especially for Olympic sports like women’s volleyball, of which each school has 20 conference matches.

To ensure the West Coast members avoid hardships beyond on-floor competition, the Big Ten office solicited feedback from its coaches on double-play opponents. In collaboration across the athletic departments, there was a goal to bunch together as many trips as possible and limit missed class time.

2024 #B1G Conference Volleyball Schedule Announced https://t.co/2hgUQ9gdq2

— Big Ten Volleyball (@B1GVolleyball) June 12, 2024

The West Coast schools all face one another home-and-home and split matches with the other 14 schools home or away. Those seven road trips east are…

RANCHOS VERDES, Calif. — Palm trees, a Pacific Ocean view and courtyard dinners at the Terranea Resort provided the backdrop this week for one of the Big Ten’s most important group of meetings in the league’s 128-year history.

More than 100 administrators, university leaders, faculty representatives and head coaches from the Big Ten’s 18 members and league office gathered at this plush, picturesque location to discuss an upcoming legal settlement that fundamentally will change college athletics. Those officials were sequestered with security for every function, ranging from outdoor meals to friendly mixers.

The topics weren’t limited to what’s known as the House v. NCAA case, which will cost the NCAA and its member schools $2.7 billion should it be approved. The league added a four-school West Coast wing starting this year, and the spring meetings were as much of a networking event as an opportunity to explore a path forward as a league and an industry.

“I think that we have a chance at this moment right now in college athletics to really reshape the model in the most meaningful way in our lifetimes and maybe the most meaningful way that has ever been,” said Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman, the new Division I Council chair. “How can we build this new…

EUGENE, Ore. — Somewhere in those 6.5 hours of perpetual pain, Dan Lanning’s phone lit up. But he didn’t see it. He was wincing. He was breathing deeply. Alec Turner, the artist tasked with completing the massive tattoo on the left side of Lanning’s chest, saw the name on the screen, and his eyes bulged.

The incoming call? Phil Knight.

So Turner removed the needle piercing the ribs of Oregon’s gregarious football coach and deadpanned: “Hey, man, you should probably answer this.”

When Phil Knight calls, you stop what you’re doing. Lanning sat on the table, swiped his phone screen and took a respite to talk to the founder of Nike and Oregon’s most famed alumnus and donor. Lanning told Knight where he was and what he was cramming into one session.

The permanent portrait of Lanning’s wife, Sauphia, is sprinkled with various homages to their journey through life —and football — together.

Before Turner dipped the needle in ink on Jan. 4, 2023, he offered Lanning numbing cream. Lanning declined but now admits that, as the hours dragged on, he regretted that decision. He thought to himself: I’m a football coach, right? I should be able to handle this.

“I just didn’t have a big window of time,” Lanning says. “Pain is weakness leaving the body. Let’s go….

LAS VEGAS — At halftime of the Utah-Arizona State first-round conference tournament game, the Pac-12 mascots engaged in a game of musical chairs. As the mascots started to get eliminated — Tommy the Trojan, Wilma the Wildcat, then Puddles the Duck — it was hard not to think of the state of the conference as a whole, especially when Benny the Beaver was the only one left with a chair (or rather, inflatable donut).

Some PAC-12 mascot musical chair fun pic.twitter.com/ldRYc7SMDG

— Malaina Humphreys (@mmalainaa) March 7, 2024

 

In the chaos of conference realignment, most of the Pac-12 schools grabbed any available chair they could find, no matter what league it came in. Ten schools jumped ship, leaving Oregon State and Washington State clinging to the remnants of a once-proud conference, like Benny holding onto that inflatable for dear life.

In Las Vegas during the Pac-12 tournament, the conference’s cloudy future dampens the mood of the festivities. Even as teams celebrate big wins, they’re left lamenting the fact that these opponents won’t be on their schedule next season, that the coaches they’ve formed lasting bonds with won’t be making the trip to their arenas anymore. There are still resumes to build and a championship to win, but an undercurrent of sadness…

More than a half-dozen conference tournaments have already started, meaning the first bids for the 2024 women’s NCAA Tournament are just days from being claimed. As the action progresses and weekday gameplay turns into weekend competition and spots in the field of 68 are solidified, The Athletic will deliver a daily briefing to update you on the most important results.

We’ll bring you games to watch and analysis of key results, anecdotes from tournament sites and everything you need to know. Check back for updates from Thursday’s action. If there are things you, the reader, want to see during conference tournaments or as NCAA Tournament play begins, please let us know in the comments.

Keep a close eye on …

As conference tournament play continues, pay particular attention to what’s happening in the Pac-12 and Atlantic 10. Last March, seventh-seed Washington State ran off four consecutive wins to claim the school’s first conference title. The Cougars’ run was undoubtedly a surprise. But it wouldn’t be shocking to see Colorado or Utah, two programs that won their conference tournament openers Wednesday, go on similar runs and win four straight — though doing so would involve upset victories Thursday.

Pac-12 high stakes

Five Pac-12 schools ranked in the AP top five…

INDIANAPOLIS — Engraved on the inner side of Sabrina Ionescu’s debut signature sneakers, the Sabrina 1, are two words written in capital letters: ANYONE, ANYWHERE.

The message serves as a reminder to Ionescu and those who wear her shoes that dreams are limitless, no matter where someone comes from or what they look like. But even Ionescu, who once just dreamed of being the best player in her basketball-crazed family, wasn’t dreaming something this big.

She now is one of the best basketball players in the world, and her dominance on the hardwood with the New York Liberty has manifested into history on her feet. Ionescu’s signature sneakers are designed for men and women, marking the first time Nike has ever made a unisex shoe for one of its female basketball players.

Ionescu’s sneakers have been a hit among her WNBA counterparts and the young girls who look up to them. They’ve become one of the most popular sneakers in the NBA, as well.

“It was obviously something that we targeted,” Ionescu said. “Going in, it was just understanding the versatility of the shoe and what it is that we were trying to accomplish.

“Bridging the gap between women’s and men’s sports, and being able to do that by creating a unisex line that was available for everyone, that was…

IOWA CITY, Iowa — With Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten in August, the league has already finalized new scheduling models for football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball that prioritize competitive balance, geography and rivalries. The next scheduling phase involves Olympic sports with the same key tenets steering the process as their higher-profile colleagues, but cost and travel have an even greater impact.

On Feb. 19-20, Big Ten officials and school athletics administrators will meet at league headquarters in Rosemont, Ill. to discuss and perhaps finalize scheduling principles for fall Olympic sports. The spring sports likely will settle plans in May. With different priorities guiding each sport, scheduling ideas have ranged from true rotations to regional preference to even some sports on the same campus traveling together to save costs.

“In terms of some of the efficiencies, I don’t think that has been discussed as much because you’re talking about principles right now and not dates,” Iowa athletic director Beth Goetz said. “So if you’re going to figure out if there can be shared travel, you’re going to have to have the actual schedule in front of you to do that.”

GO DEEPER

Big Ten to invite 15 teams to conference hoops…

MINNEAPOLIS — Tony Petitti’s six-month anniversary of his hiring as Big Ten commissioner comes Wednesday, and that half-year has consisted of significant change across the college sports landscape.

From adding Washington and Oregon to finalizing media rights contracts to working with fellow commissioners on a 12-team College Football Playoff, Petitti hardly had time for a honeymoon period after his May 15 start date.

“I feel absolutely privileged to have the job. I really do,” Petitti said “It’s an incredible responsibility. You see it and feel it every time you’re on campus.”

Petitti spoke with The Athletic as part of the Big Ten men’s and women’s basketball media days at the Target Center, which will host the women’s tournament for the second straight year and the men’s tournament for the first time. There were plenty of items to discuss, ranging from the 2024 football schedules to current and future basketball plans to locations for future postseason sites. With that, here are 10 big topics that Petitti addressed on Monday.

Future football schedules

The Big Ten unveiled conference football opponents from 2024 through 2028 last week, and Petitti basked in the way it was arranged. For him, the confluence of implementing an equitable conference-wide…

With the advent of the transfer portal, it’d be fair to assume there are fewer opportunities for freshmen these days. And that might be true. But when I sat down to put together my list of the 10 freshmen I’m most excited to see play this season, the group quickly expanded to 15 … and then 20. Some of these players will have opportunities to impress because of the roster churn at their program and others are going to be good enough to leapfrog over older, more established players.

These 20 players — for a variety of reasons — are the 20 I’m most intrigued to see this season as they make the jump from high school (or international) ball to the NCAA.

1. JuJu Watkins

USC guard, 6-2
Sierra Canyon High School, Los Angeles

In working on this story, I talked with a bunch of college coaches. At first, my question was: “Which freshmen are going to have freshman all-American-type seasons?” I quickly needed to add: “Other than JuJu.” There seems to be a solid consensus that Watkins — the No. 1 player in the 2023 class — has the potential to live up to the hype, and many expect her to do just that. Coach Lindsay Gottlieb can, and should, give Watkins the keys to the car as they work to rebuild the Trojans into a West Coast (soon to be Big Ten?) powerhouse. Watkins will…