2026-2027 IUBB Schedule

[Class of '66 Old Fart]

On Wednesday, Sept. 16, the 2026-27 Big Ten men’s and women’s basketball conference schedules will be unveiled during a special one-hour edition of B1G Live from 5 p.m. ET to 6 pm. ET on the Big Ten Network.

[Demo]

38 minutes ago, Class of '66 Old Fart said:

On Wednesday, Sept. 16, the 2026-27 Big Ten men’s and women’s basketball conference schedules will be unveiled during a special one-hour edition of B1G Live from 5 p.m. ET to 6 pm. ET on the Big Ten Network.

Why on earth would the broadcast be at 5 on a Wednesday? They didn’t want to bump Nebraska wrestling?

[Stuhoo]

33 minutes ago, Demo said:

Why on earth would the broadcast be at 5 on a Wednesday? They didn’t want to bump Nebraska wrestling?

In honor of the greatest basketball coach in B1G history, they will get over the scheduling hump by announcing on hump day.

[LIHoosier]

They're trying the schedule release thing like the NFL

 

[Demo]

https://www.thedailyhoosier.com/here-is-iu-basketballs-full-schedule-for-the-2026-27-season/
 

At 1st glance the conference schedule looks pretty favorable. None of those meat grinder stretches leaps out. 

[Hoosier987]

Tremendously favorable conference schedule. If there was ever a year to talk advantage, this would be it.

[Brass Cannon]

4 hours ago, LIHoosier said:

They're trying the schedule release thing like the NFL

 

It was worth it just for the Michigan part. 
 

 

[Home Jersey]

We should be able to seriously contend in the Big Ten this year IMO. Illinois, MSU, us, and probably USC. 

Arkansas, Kentucky, Iowa and Missouri will be the most telling games before January. 

I think Minnesota, Iowa and Maryland will be better than expected. Nebraska will probably fall off considerably from last year and Wisconsin looks like they'll take a step back too IMO.

Michigan / Purdue / UCLA / Ohio State will be tough opponents but very beatable. Gotta take care of business against Northwestern, Penn State, Ruger this year. Oregon and Washington should be W's too this year. 

My way too early preseason prediction: 24-8 overall, 14-6 in conference.

Just about 24 days until the Butler scrimmage. Really looking forward to it. 

[Stuhoo]

13 hours ago, Hoosier987 said:

Tremendously favorable conference schedule. If there was ever a year to talk advantage, this would be it.

It's a reasonably favorable schedule. 

The three double plays are Maryland (mid-tier team), Purdon't (mid-tier tem), and Northwestern (lower tier team).

[str8baller]

1 hour ago, Stuhoo said:

It's a reasonably favorable schedule. 

The three double plays are Maryland (mid-tier team), Purdon't (mid-tier tem), and Northwestern (lower tier team).

Purdue and Maryland could easily be below average this year. Of course, NW usually kicks our butts, so…

[HoosierHoopster]

We seriously need to beat NW this year. Enough already 

[Home Jersey]

On 9/16/2026 at 10:06 PM, Home Jersey said:

We should be able to seriously contend in the Big Ten this year IMO.

Apparently this is an overly optimistic take based on Evan Miya's team rankings. His relative ranking has IU at #51 nationally. If you exclude players whose eligibility case is still pending and they were considered ineligible, it would move up to #44. That is #12 in the Big Ten in both scenarios. Here is his relative ranking for Big Ten teams:

And here it is sorted for excluding pending eligibility cases:

Behind Illinois, Michigan State, Michigan, UCLA, Nebraska, Ohio State, Purdue, USC, Wisconsin, Maryland and Iowa. Ahead of Oregon, Minnesota, Washington, Rutgers, Northwestern and Penn State. 

Funny side note... LSU is ranked #17, but if you exclude potentially ineligible players, they're #150. 

[HoosierHoopster]

2 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

Apparently this is an overly optimistic take based on Evan Miya's team rankings. His relative ranking has IU at #51 nationally. If you exclude players whose eligibility case is still pending and they were considered ineligible, it would move up to #44. That is #12 in the Big Ten in both scenarios. Here is his relative ranking for Big Ten teams:

And here it is sorted for excluding pending eligibility cases:

Behind Illinois, Michigan State, Michigan, UCLA, Nebraska, Ohio State, Purdue, USC, Wisconsin, Maryland and Iowa. Ahead of Oregon, Minnesota, Washington, Rutgers, Northwestern and Penn State. 

Funny side note... LSU is ranked #17, but if you exclude potentially ineligible players, they're #150. 

That seems pretty pessimistic to me, but time will tell 

[Pagoda]

2 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

Apparently this is an overly optimistic take based on Evan Miya's team rankings. His relative ranking has IU at #51 nationally. If you exclude players whose eligibility case is still pending and they were considered ineligible, it would move up to #44. That is #12 in the Big Ten in both scenarios. Here is his relative ranking for Big Ten teams:

And here it is sorted for excluding pending eligibility cases:

Behind Illinois, Michigan State, Michigan, UCLA, Nebraska, Ohio State, Purdue, USC, Wisconsin, Maryland and Iowa. Ahead of Oregon, Minnesota, Washington, Rutgers, Northwestern and Penn State. 

Funny side note... LSU is ranked #17, but if you exclude potentially ineligible players, they're #150. 

For close to a $20M roster we better be better than that.  Otherwise that’s a lousy return.

I think we will be.  Really need to be a consistently ranked team this season.

[Home Jersey]

24 minutes ago, HoosierHoopster said:

That seems pretty pessimistic to me, but time will tell 

I agree, but it's not a subjective ranking. Here is how he defines the ranking on his site:

"Each team is ranked based on how it would be expected to perform head-to-head against other similarly ranked teams. Each head-to-head prediction is based on both teams’ efficiency ratings, opponent adjustment, and pace adjustment."

You can find the full set here: https://evanmiya.com/?team_ratings This will be a worthwhile page to keep track of during the season. 

17 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

For close to a $20M roster we better be better than that.  Otherwise that’s a lousy return.

I think we will be.  Really need to be a consistently ranked team this season.

Absolutely. We should get a decent idea of what we're working with pretty early with Syracuse being the 3rd game and playing Arkansas and Kentucky before Thanksgiving. I was surprised how low Miya has us but that is why they play the game after all. Huge year for DDV coming up. 

[IU Prof]

Is there any data reflecting how accurate these preseason power ratings end up being? Seems like a lot of subjectivity is involved estimating the impact if freshmen, and fit for transfers in a new system, etc.

[Home Jersey]

1 hour ago, IU Prof said:

Is there any data reflecting how accurate these preseason power ratings end up being? Seems like a lot of subjectivity is involved estimating the impact if freshmen, and fit for transfers in a new system, etc.

More on that here: https://blog.evanmiya.com/p/the-key-to-your-bracket-relative 

and on methodology here: https://blog.evanmiya.com/p/introducing-relative-ratings-and

https://evanmiya.com/?how_it_works

[HoosierHoopster]

1 hour ago, Home Jersey said:

I agree, but it's not a subjective ranking. Here is how he defines the ranking on his site:

"Each team is ranked based on how it would be expected to perform head-to-head against other similarly ranked teams. Each head-to-head prediction is based on both teams’ efficiency ratings, opponent adjustment, and pace adjustment."

You can find the full set here: https://evanmiya.com/?team_ratings This will be a worthwhile page to keep track of during the season. 

Absolutely. We should get a decent idea of what we're working with pretty early with Syracuse being the 3rd game and playing Arkansas and Kentucky before Thanksgiving. I was surprised how low Miya has us but that is why they play the game after all. Huge year for DDV coming up. 

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans. With an almost completely new team and different emphasis (size up front) from last year I’d think it’d be pretty hard to run an accurate analytics projection, the team never having played a game together 

[Home Jersey]

2 minutes ago, HoosierHoopster said:

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans. With a almost completely new team and different emphasis (size up front) from last year I’d think it’d be pretty hard to run an accurate analytics projection, the team never having played a game together 

Yeah. FWIW the relative rankings are based on the relative rating (the links I shared above explain better / in more detail than I could) and the margins are very thin when looking at it that way. 

Indiana's relative rating is 13.4 and and Michigan's is 21.3.

So the difference between the #12 Big Ten and #3 Big Ten team is less than 8 points. 

Relative Rating Interpretation Example: If Kansas has a Relative Ranking of 3rd, this means that they are expected to lose head-to-head to the teams ranked 1st and 2nd, but win head-to-head against the teams ranked 4th, 5th, and so on. Suppose Michigan State is 4th, and Kansas has a Relative Rating of 25.0 and MSU has a Relative Rating of 23.0. This means that Kansas is expected to beat Michigan State by 2 points per 100 possessions. If they played a typical 70 possession game, the game prediction would have Kansas favored by 1.4 points.

Kansas’s Relative Rating of 25.0 would roughly translate to them being predicted to beat a D1 average opponent by 25 points per 100 possessions. However, since each team’s Relative Rating is calculated based on how they are predicted to perform against other similarly ranked teams, the rating of 25 can’t be directly interpreted this way.

For example, at the end of 2022-23, UConn’s Relative Rating was 26.1 (1st in the country), and Houston’s Relative Rating was 24.7 (3rd in the country). However, since UConn’s Opponent Adjustment coefficient indicates that they excel against good teams (large positive red bar), but struggle against weaker teams, they were only predicted to beat an average D1 opponent by 24.0 points per 100 possessions. By contrast, Houston was great at dismantling weaker opponents (large negative blue bar), but struggled against stronger teams. As a result, they were predicted to beat an average D1 opponent by 28.1 points per 100 possessions, a larger margin of victory than for #1 UConn. Against each other, UConn would be predicted to beat Houston by 3.8 points per 100 possessions.

[IU Prof]

3 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

More on that here: https://blog.evanmiya.com/p/the-key-to-your-bracket-relative 

and on methodology here: https://blog.evanmiya.com/p/introducing-relative-ratings-and

https://evanmiya.com/?how_it_works

Thanks. I may have missed it, but everything I saw there was about the accuracy of pre-tournament ratings. I don't doubt that those are pretty accurate. I'm guessing the September ratings are less so, but could be wrong.