Big Ten Announces Basketball Scheduling Format

Big changes are in store in just a few months for the Big Ten. The summer additions of Oregon, Washington, USC, and UCLA will shake up the conference in a way never seen before. Today the Big Ten released its proposed scheduling format for basketball going forward.

The first key is that the men’s and women’s conference schedules will remain at 20 and 18 contests, respectively, for each school. The conference states that this, "allows for non-conference scheduling flexibility, is consistent with peer schedule formats and maximizes opportunities for NCAA postseason berths."

Second, the Big Ten tournament is expanding by one team to 15 for both the men and women. There will now be three Wednesday games to kick off the five day event instead of two. That means the bottom three teams in the league standings will not qualify for the tournament at all.

That is all that has been announced to date. There is no word about protected rivalries, and the sites of the 2025 Big Ten Tournaments have not yet been announced.

By keeping the schedule at 20 games you run the risk for a pretty severe imbalance of schedules. If each school is playing every other school once that allows for only three home-and-home sets each season, as you need 17 of the 20 games just to play everyone once. If there are any protected rivalries that makes a fiercely competitive series like Purdue and Indiana a much tougher look than, say Nebraska-Iowa.

Keeping the conference tournament at 15 is fine with me. If a team finishes in the bottom three it has no realistic chance of making the NCAA Tournament as an at large team. In the 14 team era only once, with Ohio State last season, has a team even successfully made the semifinals after starting on Wednesday. Nothing of value basketball-wise is lost by eliminating three teams, and I would argue that a 15th team being added is unecessary.

As for where the tournaments will be played, I would speculate that Indianapolis and Chicago will remain as hubs, but the league has shown it is willing to move the events around. They have already been played in New York and Washington DC, and this season the men's event will be in Minneapolis for the first time. I would not be surprised to see a future Big Ten Tournament in Los Angeles or the Bay Area.

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