The exercise to choose the five best non-conference schedules always involves a decent amount of speculation because we currently only know which Big Ten opponents we think are going to be good. We also don’t know how the various holiday tournament brackets will work out, but we can give it our best guesses. Here are the best five.
5. Purdue: The Boilermakers ease into things for exactly one game before they will play the reigning National Champion Villanova at Mackey Arena in their Gavitt Games match-up. Purdue will also be tested with a trip to Louisville in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, followed by a contest against Notre Dame in the Crossroads Classic. Furthermore, a potential showdown with Chris Beard — the head coach last seen leading Little Rock to an upset over Purdue in the NCAA Tournament — and his new team, Texas Tech, could be tasty if the bracket holds in the Cancun Classic.
Tim Miles and his Nebraska team will have a rough early schedule in 2016-17. (Getty).
4. Nebraska: This schedule might be a bit on the ambitious side for a team picked to finish near the bottom of the Big Ten standings. Start with a road game against former Big 12 foe Kansas followed by a home game against their intrastate rival Creighton. They also have to visit the newly renovated Littlejohn Coliseum at Clemson, a team that could very well be make the NCAA Tournament this season. The Cornhuskers also play Dayton in the First Round of the Wooden Legacy Tournament, with a bracket path that could involve games with some combination of UCLA, Virginia Tech, or Texas A&M.
3. Indiana: The Hoosiers play their usual slate of easier games where they don’t leave Bloomington (UMass-Lowell, Mississippi Valley State, Houston Baptist, etc.), but they also play three teams currently ranked among the top 15 of the preseason AP Poll, including two tough neutral site games against Kansas and Louisville. National runner-up North Carolina visits Assembly Hall for this year’s ACC/Big Ten Challenge, and Indiana will also play a solid Butler team in Indianapolis as the second part of the Crossroads Classic. An interesting road game to Fort Wayne could trip up Tom Crean’s group as well.
2. Wisconsin: The Maui Invitational is loaded, with four AP Top 25 teams in the field this year. Wisconsin begins its trek to the islands with Tennessee, and if the bracket holds, the Badgers would play Oregon followed by either North Carolina or Connecticut. Greg Gard’s team will also travel to Creighton and Marquette and host potential NCAA Tournament teams Syracuse and Oklahoma. There’s plenty of room here for the Badgers to build a deep and compelling resume.
1. Michigan State: Even under ideal conditions, games against Arizona, Kentucky and Duke are always arduous. But then you factor in that none of these games will be played within the state of Michigan and that results in the most difficult non-conference schedule in the Big Ten. The Battle 4 Atlantis field doesn’t appear quite as strong as Maui this year, but the Spartans will also potentially play two of the quarter of Baylor, VCU, Louisville and Wichita State in the Bahamas. This is a brutal stretch for the first three weeks of the season.