Big Ten unveils 25-26 MBB Conference Slate

On Tuesday morning, the Big Ten revealed the men’s basketball conference opponents for next season. Oregon is still a ways out from having their schedule finalized (and roster), but now knows it’s opponents, home and away.
Each team will play a 20-game conference schedule, as it did last season, facing 3 teams twice, and 14 teams once. Oregon drew a few interesting matchups for next season, and will face several new coaches.
Oregon 25-26 Conference Opponents
Home:
The Ducks will host the following teams next season at Matthew Knight; Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Penn State, and Wisconsin. In their home matchups, Oregon will face two new faces, in Iowa’s Ben McCollum, and Minnesota’s Niko Medved. I see Michigan being the hardest game here, as they might be a top 5 team in the nation to start the season.
Away: Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue, Rutgers
I can’t say that I love playing at Illinois, at Indiana, at Maryland, or at Purdue. Those games are going to be incredibly difficult due to the environment, even though two of the teams have new faces as their Head Coach. Indiana brought in Darian DeVries from West Virginia, and Maryland got Buzz Williams from Texas A&M in a very odd, lateral move (which he has done before). Purdue will also likely be a top 5, even top 3 team to start the year next season. Illinois has an entire starting lineup of Balkans, yes I’m serious, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out.
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Home/Away: UCLA, USC, Washington
All three of these teams have high-profile transfers coming in and will be very difficult to defeat. I want to see how USC and Eric Musselman bounce back this upcoming season, as they’ve added a plethora of talent. UCLA is counting on Xavier Booker to have a rapid development this offseason and into next year. Without that progression, it will mostly just be Donovan Dent carrying the load for the Bruins. Danny Sprinkle and the Huskies had a rough year, but admittedly have a TON of talent on the roster, including depth. I think the Huskies may have a top-25 team next season, and may actually make the conference tournament this year (sorry, I had to).
I won’t be doing a schedule prediction at this time because Oregon isn’t done filling out their roster, while most of the rest of these teams have a full, or close-to-full roster at this point.