Grading the 2025-26 Big Ten Men's Basketball Non-Conference Schedules: the Bs

This conference has too many teams. Eighteen schedules is too many to review. For those of you in the daily thread Wednesday that saw MNW's comments about class sizes at universities being too large, let's just say I completely agree. Being expected to educate 18 Big Ten basketball programs and help them grow into better, wiser schedulers is a lot of work. Too much work. The stupid commissioner that keeps growing this conference needs a talking to.

Anyway, this edition of the non-conference schedule grades contains 7 miscreants. There's a lot to like for most of these schedules, but still valid complaints. We can do better. We should do better. Schedule an A-grade schedule next year. Make me proud.

Grading the 2025-26 Big Ten Men’s Basketball Non-Conference Schedules: the Cs

We talked last week about why non-conference scheduling matters. I’m not going to repeat those reasons in today’s article (if you missed last week, feel free to check out last week’s article below). Grading the 2025-26 Big Ten Men’s Basketball Non-Conference Schedules: the Ds and FsThere are more games

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Grading Criteria

These grades are highly subjective but in general there are things I want to see more of and things I want to see less of.

One day when I'm in charge of the remnants of the former United States, here's what I'll demand:

• More games against rivals. This one should be self explanatory. IU should play Kentucky. The people want to see Wisconsin/Marquette, Nebraska/Creighton, UCLA/Arizona, and Illinois/Mizzou. Play your rivals, stop ducking them.
• Games against quality competition. There are 365 Division 1 programs this season. Not all of them are of equal value. More games against top 100 caliber programs is a good thing. I judge quality competition fairly liberally around here: any program from a ACC, Big 12, Big East, SEC, or MWC (ie: multi-bid conference) qualifies. Outside of those conferences, any team that finished last season in KenPom's top 100 or begins this season in Torvik's top 100 should count.
• Games against in-state or regional programs. Do we need Florida A&M to bus to Minneapolis to play a college basketball game? Or for Le Moyne to travel to Washington? The answer is no. Play your in-state foes. If you don't have any, play regional teams. Stop being scared of taking a loss to a program that they will never forget. That's part of the magic of college basketball. Chicago State can defeat Northwestern right after the Wildcats defeat #1 Purdue..

What I want to see less of

• Neutral site games. Let me be clear. Neutral site games have their place. That place is Feast Week and during winter break when the students are gone. Teams should not be regularly playing 4+ neutral site games. It robs students and season ticket holders of opportunities to see your marquee games. College sports should still involve the student section.
• Games against the bottom of the barrel programs. Think anyone below the 300 mark. Do your walk-ons really need to play 10 times this season? They do not.
• Avoiding quality mid-majors, in-state opponents, and rivals. Stop it. Play a MVC, A10, or good MAC team. Play several. Play the school located a couple hours down the road from you that is filled with players whose dream school was your program. Invite your crosstown team over for dinner. If you duck opportunities to lose to good in-state schools, I'm going to call you out. It's cowardly and you should be ashamed.

On to this week's grades.

Southern California Trojans

Rivals played: 1 or 2
In-state teams played: 2/25
Neutral site games: 4
Road games: 1
Quality competition: 3-4
Sub 300 competition: 0

The schedule doesn't have any guaranteed quad 1 opponents on it. The Maui Invitational features one of the weakest fields in recent memory, but provided USC gets past Boise State, USC should still get three quality games out of it. Of course if they lose to Boise State, this schedule probably becomes a D.

After Maui, things get interesting and here's where you can debate USC's schedule grade. Illinois State is the only other projected top 100 team per Torvik. That's a "neutral" site affair in Inglewood. However, Washington State, Troy, San Diego all find themselves in the top 150 and the San Diego game is on the road.

The biggest question mark on the schedule is Washington State. When I was reviewing which schedules I would put in the C tier, I assumed the Cougars would be a solid team this year and therefore USC would be playing 5 solid opponents plus a road game at a decentish San Diego. After all, Washington State was fine in the non-conference last season. What I apparently missed after December was them getting pummeled in the WCC included two losses to Pacific. Call it a mistake and drop USC to the C+ tier if you want but otherwise we will say USC is getting bonus points for traveling to San Diego. It's rare for a Big Ten team to travel to an in-state mid-major (yes, the WCC - or at least the tier of the WCC San Diego regularly competes in - is a mid-major). There's a healthy amount of risk there.

The other thing I really like about this schedule is the absence of cupcakes. Even the "easy" games (UTSA, Brown, Cal Poly, and Manhattan) are against teams projected to be top 250 caliber programs this season. The top flight teams may be lacking but this schedule isn't full of gimme games.

Another note on Washington State: USC could actually play the Cougars twice this non-conference. It's possible they play once in Maui and once in Los Angeles. It's really not far fetched either. Despite being on opposite sides of the bracket both will probably win their first game (Boise State for USC and Chaminade for WSU) and it's not unlikely that both lose their second (likely NC State for USC and either ASU or Texas for WSU). It's unusual for non-conference matchups to happen twice in a single season, but it does occasionally happen - just not to Big Ten teams.

Ohio State Buckeyes

Rivals played: 0
In-state teams played: 0/12
Neutral site games: 3
Road games: 1
Quality competition: 5
Sub 300 competition: 2

Games against UNC, Pittsburgh, Virginia, West Virginia, and Notre Dame are all good. All enter the season with reasonable hopes of earning an at-large bid and should avoid the bottom of their respective conferences. There's even a true home game (Notre Dame) and a true road game (Pittsburgh). These five games should on their own should contribute to a better grade than a B-.

But after those five games, things fall off for me. There are zero in-state opponents.

Ohio State has three good in-state programs in the southwestern corner of the state that are crazy about basketball: Dayton, Cincinnati, and Xavier. What's more - OSU should be better than all three this year and next year. There is no reason to be scared of scheduling a home/home or neutral site game against any of them right now. But while Cincinnati plays Xavier and Dayton plays Cincinnati, Ohio State avoids all three much like they have for the majority of the past 60 years. My favorite college basketball games as a "neutral" fan in the past decade occurred when OSU was forced to play at Xavier in 2021 (Gavitt Games) and the 2018 game at UC that was part of a home/home series. Also because I'm a petty asshole, I'll note that OSU's website lists the OSU/UC basketball series as only containing five games from 2006-2023. Guess they are ignoring the two losses in the 1961 and 1962 NCAA championship games. Misleading, cowardly athletic department.

While it's bad enough that OSU avoids Dayton, Xavier, and UC like the plague, there's really no excuse for ducking the six in-state MAC programs or three Horizon League teams especially when they scheduled multiple games against the MAC and Horizon but worse caliber opponents (Western Michigan and IU Indy are significantly worse than any of their Ohio based conference peers).

It's the same thing every year with Ohio State basketball. They are willing to challenge themselves against the cream of the crop, but are terrified of risking a loss to an in-state program. In-state rivalries build attention. They build fan support. I'll be back next year complaining about the same freaking issue.

Oregon Duckst

Rivals played: 1
In-state teams played: 2/3
Neutral site games: 4
Road games: 0
Quality competition: 4
Sub 300 competition: 0

Not sure why I couldn't find a graphic for just the non-conference schedule from Oregon. Normally it's just Penn State's basketball media team that doesn't create one.

The heavy lifting on Oregon's non-conference schedule is done by the Players Era Tournament. While I hate this tournament and what it's doing to Feast Week MTEs (seriously, Vegas can go to hell Tennessee), Oregon should play three good opponents starting with Gonzaga and Auburn.

A fourth neutral site game against San Diego State takes place in Paradise, Nevada - seriously guys, stop going to Nevada to play basketball games, beaches have better sand - which is unfortunate but at least it's a game against a MWC favorite.

Then comes the large collection of games against teams projected to finish outside of the top 100 by Torvik but within striking distance: Oregon State (109), Hawaii (120), South Dakota State (147), and Omaha (154). Coupled with the lack of any terrible teams on the schedule, the continuation of the Oregon State rivalry, and the game against Portland, Oregon's schedule gets a B despite my assumptions about the quality of the mid-tier WCC teams being incorrect once again. Blame it on me preferring to watch Big Sky tournament games late at night in early March. Joe Cravens is an entertaining listen.

Washington Huskies

Rivals played: 2
In-state teams played: 2/4
Neutral site games: 3
Road games: 2
Quality competition: 4
Sub 300 competition: 2

Okay, this is the likely the most controversial grade. I get it. Looking strictly at the talent level of opponents, this isn't the most challenging slate. Outside of Baylor, there aren't any probable NCAA tournament caliber teams. I like San Francisco's chances but the Huskies aren't even guaranteed to play them (they could play Colorado in the second round of their MTE instead). And as has already been established when I talked about USC, Washington State might just be bad this year.

However, Washington plays TWO ROAD games. The conference as a whole has just 14 road games. Six Big Ten teams have zero non-conference road games. I can't stress this enough. Teams need to be willing to go on the road in non-conference play. Not just neutral site games in enemy territory either. I'm talking about road games with fanatic student sections. Washington's grade gets a big plus for playing these road games.

In addition to traveling to in-state foe Washington State, the Huskies also play cross-town Seattle at a neutral venue in the Battle for Seattle. Seattle U's not a pushover and will be up for this game. Credit to Washington for playing Seattle. While it's good they play two of their in-state foes, we should also mention that it's a shame that Washington backed out of the Gonzaga series. I know Sprinkle wants to get the program up and running before facing the premier in-state basketball team, but playing Gonzaga would have been a fantastic opportunity to put Washington basketball back on the map in the Pacific Northwest.

All in all, the schedule isn't the toughest but it does a lot of things right. Most importantly they didn't screw up the scheduling process and won't be playing a Division 2 team during the regular season.

Wisconsin Badgers

Rivals played: 1
In-state teams played: 2/3
Neutral site games: 4
Road games: 0
Quality competition: 5
Sub 300 competition: 1

At first glance, Wisconsin's schedule looks a lot like Ohio State's. 5 quality opponents, most of them on the road and then 6 games they should win without any problems. But the Badgers did this scheduling model better.

There's the possibility of two preseason top 10 opponents in BYU and - if they meet in their MTE - Florida. I somewhat expect Wisconsin to get run out of the building in both of those games, but the non-conference is for challenging yourself and figuring out what you need to work on and if you win a surprising game you put a major statement win on your resume. Greg Gard isn't scared and that needs to be recognized even for those of us that dislike the trash pandas.

Games against a trio of Big East opponents give Wisconsin more realistic opportunities of building a tournament resume. Marquette, Villanova, and Providence aren't likely to win the Big East but all three should be in contention for at large bids into at least late February barring a major collapse.

There's no true road game on the schedule and I think the absence of any home/home series (outside of Marquette) is unfortunate. I'd rather Wisconsin play BYU in Provo instead of Salt Lake City and Villanova in Madison instead of Milwaukee. I understand that isn't as profitable, but this is college sports - it shouldn't be about maximizing profit (he says shouting at the clouds).

The big separator for this schedule is the inclusion of in-state opponents. Wisconsin continues their long standing tradition of playing Marquette (please never stop doing this) and also grabs a home game against the better UW-regional D1 campus team in Milwaukee. This is much appreciated even if Green Bay and Doug Gottlieb would have been a more entertaining story line for MaximumSam and I to write about.

Illinois Fighting Illini

Rivals played: 1
In-state teams played: 0/11
Neutral site games: 4
Road games: 0
Quality competition: 5
Sub 300 competition: 0

Honestly, I'm surprised Illinois managed to avoid any teams projected as sub-300 . I don't consider Long Island, Jackson State, Southern, Texas Rio Grande Valley, or Florida Gulf Coast and then think to myself that those are good basketball programs.

Despite my notions about low major basketball teams, Illinois put together a pretty decent schedule that will definitely challenge them. Neutral site affairs with UConn, Tennessee, and Alabama will all be really tough. Getting Texas Tech at home is a major opportunity and should see the Orange Krush hopping during mid November. One also has to love the continuation of Braggin' Rights with Missouri.

Illinois gets held back from the A-tier for two reasons: 1) the A-tier teams managed to schedule seven quality opponents compared to the Illini's five. 2) Why is Illinois bringing in teams from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York and Florida to fill out their buy games? There are perfectly fine mid and low majors available to play in the state of Illinois. We could have introduced the Eastern Europeans to so many fun intrastate feuds... on second thought maybe that's why they aren't doing that.

Maryland Terrapins

Rivals played: 2
In-state teams played: 2/8
Neutral site games: 3
Road games: 2
Quality competition: 6
Sub 300 competition: 3

Maryland was really close to getting an A-. There's a lot to like about this schedule. The Georgetown rivalry is back! There's two road games including one at former ACC foe Virginia! The buy games are mostly against in-state/neighboring state programs! I don't like the Vegas MTE but it is what it is and UNLV, Gonzaga, plus a third team TBD is a decent enough non-conference tournament.

I can't justify giving a team with three opponents projected to be sub 300 an A-tier grade though. I might have overlooked one or even two, but including all three of Alcorn State, Coppin State, and Wagner was a bridge too far.

Despite my misgivings about the bottom of the schedule, I have to say I'm loving the overall change in approach to scheduling under Buzz Williams compared to last year's embarrassing slate that would have made Jim Boeheim blush. Well done Maryland.