The long awaited Iowa men’s basketball schedule was released on Thursday and it includes a very challenging schedule, particularly when conference play arrives.
Start times for the entire schedule remain unknown, but we now know the conference schedule after the non-conference portion was released a few weeks ago. As has been the case for several years, Big Ten teams will play a pair of league games in early December. Iowa will host Northwestern on December 3rd and travel to Michigan on December 7th.
There’s also some unique aspects to the conference schedule, like a trip to Los Angeles in the middle of January to play USC on January 14th and UCLA on the 17th. In fact, one of the interesting aspects of this schedule is that Iowa will play back to backs either at home or on the road seven times during the conference slate of games.
The toughest stretch of games might be the five games starting with a contest at Ohio State. Then two home games, one against conference favorite Purdue and the second hosting Wisconsin. That’s followed by a trip to face Rutgers and Maryland on the road.
The end of the schedule is also pretty challenging with three of four games on the road. That includes trips to Illinois, Northwestern, and Nebraska with a home game against Tom Izzo and the Spartans.
Iowa will only play one true road game before January 1st and they avoid playing on Super Bowl Sunday this year.
We will have more on the schedule in the coming weeks, including our prediction piece.
Exhibition: Oct 25th – MN-Duluth
Nov. 4th – Texas A&M Commerce
Nov. 7th – Southern
Nov. 12th – South Dakota
Nov. 15th – Washington State (at Moline)
Nov. 19th – Rider
Nov. 22nd – Utah State (at Kansas City)
Nov. 26th – USC Upstate
Dec. 3rd – Northwestern
Dec. 7th – @Michigan
Dec. 12th – Iowa State
Dec. 15th – New Orleans
Dec. 21st – Utah (at Sioux Falls)
Dec. 30th – New Hampshire
Jan. 3rd – @ Wisconsin
Jan 7th – Nebraska
Jan. 11th – Indiana
Jan. 14th – @USC
Jan. 17th – @UCLA
Jan. 21st– Minnesota
Jan. 24th – Penn State
Jan. 27th – @Ohio State
Feb. 4th – Purdue
Feb. 8th – Wisconsin
Feb. 12th – @Rutgers
Feb. 16th – @Maryland
Feb. 19th – Oregon
Feb. 22nd – Washington
Feb. 25th – @Illinois
Feb. 28th – @Northwestern
March 6th – Michigan State
March 9th – @Nebraska
March 12-16 – Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis