Big 12 releases each team's opponents, double-ups for 2025-26 season

The Big 12 was arguably the second-best conference in all of college basketball last season, with seven berths, one going on to play for a national title, in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Now, for their second season of this edition following their expansion, the league has announced the conference matchups for each of the sixteen programs in 2025-26.

The Big 12 posted its opponent matrix for each team’s next season on Thursday. It includes each of the opponents that all of the programs will match up with during conference play, with games designated for home, away, or both.

“The Big 12 announced the Conference scheduling matrix for the 2025-26 men’s and women’s basketball seasons. Each school has a home-and-home with three other Conference opponents, and faces the other 12 opponents once, with six at home and six on the road for an 18-game Big 12 schedule. Opponents were selected to best balance the schedule in terms of travel and competitiveness,” read the release this morning by the Big 12. “A full Big 12 schedule will be released at a later date.”

In year one as a 16-team league, the Big 12 had 11 teams finish at .500 or better overall, with nine teams ranked at some point in the AP Poll. That led to those seven teams making the NCAA Tournament, which was the third-most berths by a conference behind the SEC (14) and the Big Ten (8).

That list included Houston, Texas Tech, BYU, Arizona, Iowa State, Kansas, and Baylor. Arizona and BYU would make the Sweet 16, Texas Tech would make the Elite Eight, and Houston, a No. 1 seed who won both conference titles in the Big 12, would go on to make the Final Four and were up as much as a dozen in the national championship before losing in a comeback by Florida.

In 2025-26, the Big 12 is expected to be competitive again per preseason projections. Both James Fletcher and Jamie Shaw at On3 have seven teams from the conference ranked going into next season, with those selections being the ones who made it into March Madness in the Cougars, Red Raiders, Cougars, Wildcats, Cyclones, Jayhawks, and Bears.

The Big 12 has been in a great place the past few years, both pre- and post-expansion, having made four of the last six national title games, going on to win two. They’ll now try to continue that trend come league play with this schedule of opponents, which will be expected to start around the turn of the new year.