The Big Ten announced Indiana men’s basketball’s conference opponents for next season Tuesday, according to a release from IU Athletics.
For the sixth consecutive year, each Big Ten team will play seven opponents both at home and on the road, three only at home and three only on the road.
Indiana’s home and away opponents are Purdue, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio State, Penn State and Wisconsin. It will play Iowa, Michigan State and Northwestern at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall and will face Illinois, Rutgers and Michigan away.
Of Indiana’s home and away games, only two teams — Purdue and Maryland — finished in the top eight of the Big Ten during the regular season. Penn State finished runner-up in the Big Ten Tournament but will have a new coach next year and has lost a majority of its roster to the transfer portal. Five of Indiana’s opponents finished in the bottom six of the conference.
Thanks to the NCAA’s new transfer portal, programs who finished low in the conference standings can reload and teams that finished high in the standings can lose talent.
The Hoosiers themselves will be a vastly different team come October thanks to the departures of Trayce Jackson-Davis and Jalen Hood-Schifino, along with several other transfers and seniors who have left the program. Their play style will be different, making it hard to determine how Indiana is set to fare against its conference schedule. Currently, Indiana only has 10 players on scholarship after the addition of center Kel’el Ware.
Currently, the Hoosiers only have three nonconference games scheduled. Indiana will play in the Empire Classic on Nov. 19-20 at Madison Square Garden in New York City and will play two teams out of the University of Connecticut, the University of Louisville and the University of Texas. Indiana will play Kansas on Dec. 16 in Assembly Hall to close a two-game series.
