The away games are brutal: Early glimpse at the Wisconsin's Big Ten hoops schedule

The Big Ten released the conference schedule for all of their conference teams today. Relegating which teams were playing which, where they played, and how many times they played. Every Big Ten team will need to play three other programs two times, while the rest will be only once. Some of those games will happen at home, and some will happen on the road.

The problem with Wisconsin's schedule is that it seems to tilt toward a really brutal away game slate while some of the more beatable opponents are coming to Kohl Center. You'd want it to be the opposite.

Wisconsin basketball has an extremely difficult conference schedule next season

The Wisconsin Badgers will play Minnesota, Ohio State, and Purdue twice, both at home and away. They will be home for USC, UCLA, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan St, Northwestern, and Rutgers, and on the road versus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oregon, Penn State, and Washington. If you're familiar with last year's performance and the projections for next year, it will be challenging.

Looking on paper, you can see that the away games feature two teams that finished high in the Big Ten last year: Illinois and Michigan. The crown champion Nebraska, a very good Oregon team. Penn State and Washington were towards the bottom. However, that's fool's gold because both Washington and Penn State have plenty of NIL and are rebuilding like crazy. The Huskies are projected as a fringe tournament team next season by ESPN.

However, if you just take the records for each of those groups from last season. The home games feature teams that went 72-68 in the Big Ten, while the away teams went 63-77. Therefore, the takeaway is probably more that the Big Ten is simply a hard conference. While the schedule may look brutal at first glance, if the away games and home games were reversed, it would still be brutal, with Michigan State, Maryland, UCLA, and USC all coming to town for the conference title next season.