The Big Ten Conference has confirmed reporting last week as it relates to the men’s basketball approach to scheduling and the postseason tournament once USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington join the league in July.
As reported last week, the league will keep the current 20-game regular season conference schedule. The conference did announce a few more details regarding how the 20-game slate will be constructed:
- Each school will play every other school once, while playing three schools twice.
- The single-play home and away locations will rotate on an annual basis.
- The two-play opponents will be determined annually by competitive balance, geography and rivalries.
The latter point would seem to protect the Indiana and Purdue rivalry as an annual two-play, although that hasn’t been formally announced.
Women’s basketball is expected to remain at 18 games, with 16 single-plays and one double-play but otherwise follow the principles above.
The league also previewed the format for the postseason men’s and women’s Big Ten basketball tournaments, which will expand by only one team — meaning three teams will be left out of the event. In essence, the only change will be to add a third first round game, meaning the No. 10 seed no longer gets a bye.
Here is the anticipated tournament bracket:
For complete coverage of IU basketball, GO HERE.
The Daily Hoosier –“Where Indiana fans assemble when they’re not at Assembly”
- Find us on Facebook: thedailyhoosier
- You can follow us on Twitter: @daily_hoosier
- Seven ways to support completely free IU coverage at no cost to you.
