The IU men's basketball team has added four more games to its 2018-19 nonconference schedule.
According to reports from both Jon Rothstein and Jeff Goodman via Twitter on Monday, it was announced the Hoosiers would be joining together with Arkansas for a new event called the Hardwood Showcase.
The setup of the event will feature a home and home series with the Razorbacks, with the Hoosiers playing at Arkansas at Bud Walton Arena this year on Nov. 18, and at home at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall for the 2019-20 season.
The Hardwood Showcase will also give IU three home nonconference games in 2018-19. This year, those games will be against Montana State, University of California at Davis and the University of Texas at Arlington.
While the Hoosiers will play Arkansas in 2019-20, they will still have home nonconference games against three of the four remaining teams in the event between Montana State, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, UC-Davis and UT-Arlington.
Arkansas will still be the headliner of group, as it could pose a tough test for IU on the road this year.
Last season, the Razorbacks had a successful season in which they went 23-12 overall and 10-8 in SEC conference play. They would go on to make the semifinals of the SEC tournament, where they were defeated by two-seed Tennessee.
They would also make the NCAA Tournament as a seven-seed, but were subsequently bounced in the first round by 10-seed Butler.
Meanwhile, UC-Davis lost in the first round of the NIT against Utah, capping off a 22-11 season, while UT-Arlington wound up 21-13 and Montana State finished 13-19 in 2017-18.
These will be the newest additions to an already impressive nonconference schedule for IU in 2018-19 that features home games against Marquette on Nov. 11 and Louisville on Dec. 8, an away game at Duke on Nov. 27 and a neutral site game against Butler at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Dec. 15.
Murphy Wheeler
