Big Ten releases 2024-25 men’s basketball conference matchups
The Big Ten is already gearing up for big changes in the world of college football and basketball in 2024 with the additions of Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington. After rolling out updated conference football schedules for the next few years, the next item on the agenda was figuring out how to pair up teams on the basketball court. On Wednesday, the Big Ten unveiled the conference matchups for the 2024-25 men’s college basketball season.
Despite having 18 members once the next round of conference realignment changes become official this summer, the Big Ten will operate with a 20-game conference schedule. Each school will face three teams home and away while facing the other 14 teams in the conference once. Those 14 games will be split evenly with seven home games and seven road games.
The Big Ten has not yet released confirmed dates for the next basketball season. Those details will come at a later time according to the Big Ten’s official release.
So, who will Penn State be facing in Big Ten play next basketball season?
Penn State’s three home-and-home Big Ten opponents next season will be Indiana, Minnesota, and Rutgers. These are not home-and-home matchups that will be locked in annually though, as it appears the Big Ten will rotate the home-and-home matchups over the years.
Penn State will play home games against Maryland, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Oregon, Purdue, and Washington. All home games will be played in the Bryce Jordan Center. There is no word at this time on any games being played in Rec Hall or in Philadelphia at The Palestra, as was the case last season for a couple of home games.
The Nittany Lions will play Big Ten road games against Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, UCLA, USC, and Wisconsin.
Keeping the Pac-12 schools together
One quick observation from the basketball matchup announcement is how the Big Ten handled the four incoming schools from the Pac-12. The Big Ten made the most logical move to pair the four schools (Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington) for the home-and-home matchup pairings. That seems to make the most sense and would seemingly be the most likely set of pairings to remain firm over the years while the rest of the conference could be rotated around a bit.
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