The vibes are different around Big Ten men\u2019s basketball this spring, both individually and collectively. Michigan ended the league\u2019s 26-year run without an NCAA title by knocking off UConn 69-63. Six league members reached the Sweet 16, four made the Elite Eight and Illinois joined the Wolverines in the Final Four.<\/p>\n
At the Big Ten spring meetings in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., coaches and administrators projected universal confidence in the league\u2019s on-court product.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Big Ten obviously has been a top-tier league for a long time, but we did have the national championship drought,\u201d Michigan coach Dusty May said. \u201cNow we have that off of our backs, and I think the league continues to gain momentum in basketball and football and women\u2019s basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the game is in a good place even with all the stuff on the periphery,\u201d Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg said. \u201cYou take that away, that\u2019s a pretty good product on the floor right now, and I think you saw that in the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the chaos surrounding runaway spending, the transfer portal and the proposal to give all athletes five years of college eligibility dominated conversations. The Athletic talked about these topics and more with six Big Ten men\u2019s basketball coaches at the Terranea Resort, where the meetings were held.<\/p>\n
Nonconference scheduling<\/p>\n
The 2026-27 men\u2019s basketball regular season tips off on Nov. 1, which is earlier than ever before. Teams can schedule 32 regular-season games, an increase from 31. But the extra game hasn\u2019t made finding nonconference contests any easier.<\/p>\n
Hoiberg, who led Nebraska to its first Sweet 16 in March, has tried to bring a power-conference opponent to Lincoln in early November because the Huskers are traveling to in-state rival Creighton. But nothing has materialized.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing a lot of neutral-site games,\u201d Hoiberg said. \u201cIt\u2019s a great way for us to build up our (NIL) pot, so we can build a roster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iowa has a similar issue. Ben McCollum, who guided the Hawkeyes to their first Elite Eight in 39 years in his debut season, continues to search for power-conference foes but thus far has settled for a game against Creighton in Des Moines, which is located about halfway between the campuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on trying to get some more marquee games,\u201d McCollum said. \u201cIf not, we\u2019re going to try to play some neutral games closer to Iowa City so that we can get our Iowa fans there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Players can collect name, image and likeness money from neutral-site games and tournaments, such as The Players Era in Las Vegas, which has nudged coaches toward those events and away from traditional multi-team events. Those MTEs often require a $100,000 or more to participate and sell their own media rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s transitioned away from the traditional MTEs for obvious reasons,\u201d May said. \u201cOur league has been more of an adviser to us of not giving away free inventory that has value to ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like, do you play one neutral game for a lot of money, or do you go to an MTE that you have to pay money?\u201d McCollum asked.<\/p>\n
Big Ten play<\/p>\n
Travel has been an unavoidable headache since the league\u2019s West Coast expansion, and more than any other sport, men\u2019s basketball coaches have made their thoughts on it public. It\u2019s particularly rough for the four former Pac-12 members, who make three (in USC\u2019s case) or four (for UCLA, Washington and Oregon) trips to the Central or Eastern time zone for conference games each winter.<\/p>\n
The four West Coast teams went 7-21 on their trips east last season, with a 14-point average margin of defeat. USC coach Eric Musselman requested a three-game road trip, which was granted, and the Trojans lost at Michigan and Michigan State by a combined 59 points before knocking off Minnesota in overtime. Musselman thought his team had adjusted the right way by the third game, and he wants the Big Ten to allow four-game road trips, which he dealt with often when he coached in the NBA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just following people that have been doing it for a long time, meaning the NHL, NBA, like they do it for a reason,\u201d Musselman said. \u201cEconomically, it makes more sense. It\u2019s better for your body.\u201d<\/p>\n
UCLA coach Mick Cronin, never shy about expressing his opinions, is on the opposite side of that issue. After his Bruins upset top-five Purdue at home last January, he called out the league office for scheduling five of UCLA\u2019s first seven Big Ten games on the road. He said in May that he later received a helpful answer on the league\u2019s rationale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they were trying to accomplish was keeping us home towards the end, anticipating that we\u2019ve got to go to the Big Ten tournament, and then we might have to go (east) again to an NCAA site,\u201d Cronin said. \u201cThey front-loaded us on the road, so there\u2019s a thought process to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The league office sent each program a survey requesting feedback on the scheduling sequence. Among the questions included is whether the teams wanted more games in December than the two currently sandwiched in between nonconference matchups before the new year.<\/p>\n
One area of difference among the coaches: one-day preps. The West Coast coaches would prefer only one day of prep between games on their trips east, which was granted once to Oregon and once to Washington last year. Among the Big Ten\u2019s old guard, the two-day prep became a core scheduling principle and remains the coaches\u2019 preference.<\/p>\n
Recruiting<\/p>\n
Should the NCAA Division I Council give final approval to eligibility rules changes that have been in the works for months, thousands of college athletes will receive a fifth year of competition. In basketball, that change would directly impact the current recruiting cycle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 5-for-5 rule is a huge one for how we\u2019re going to construct our rosters moving forward,\u201d Hoiberg said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to obviously put hundreds of more players available to build your roster with next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
More veteran players on the market mean more opportunities to win immediately, but they\u2019ll be more expensive, and their presence will push hundreds of 2027 freshmen down a tier, sending some three-star prospects to lower levels. As one of the coaches quipped, \u201cI guess they\u2019ll go to a mid-major for a year and then we\u2019ll sign them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Transfers powered Michigan\u2019s first national title since 1989, but the Wolverines are going strong with high school recruits in this cycle. Their six incoming freshmen, including a five-star and three four-stars, rank as the nation\u2019s No. 4 recruiting class per the 247Sports Composite. May said freshmen will provide \u201cthe foundation\u201d of his future recruiting classes. The success of his first two seasons has helped him look at prospects differently and not \u201cmake too many concessions on certain players.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have to go another direction from a guy you\u2019re recruiting, there\u2019s going to be a lot more options,\u201d May said. \u201cBefore it was almost like, if we don\u2019t get this guy, we may not be able to replace this level of talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cronin chooses his recruits more carefully as much to preserve his own sanity as to comply with UCLA\u2019s strict admission standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lack of rules, the lack of guidance, the lack of guidelines, you\u2019ve got to raise all this money, nobody likes any of that, so I gotta like something, right?\u201d Cronin said. \u201cI want to like my players. So for me, it\u2019s just make sure they\u2019re good kids and coach them up and enjoy them and try to help them chase their dreams and make sure they get a UCLA degree. It just simplifies it for me because the rest of it will drive you nuts. It\u2019ll drive you out of coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
The financial \u2018arms race\u2019<\/p>\n
Every college coach is thinking about money, and there\u2019s a general paranoia about what other programs are providing their players amid the overall lack of clarity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith revenue sharing coming into play this year, you thought there\u2019d be some rules in place, but there really hasn\u2019t,\u201d Hoiberg said. \u201cThe deals have gone up. It\u2019s really hard to operate in today\u2019s landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wisconsin coach Greg Gard bemoaned the lack of \u201cguardrails\u201d pertaining to outside payment for players and called the atmosphere surrounding the sport \u201ca constant survival of the fittest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil we get to a point where you have salary caps and arbitration and players associations and everything that governs professional sports that tries to create the equity, there\u2019s going to continue to be the haves and the have-nots, and there\u2019s varying levels right within our league,\u201d Gard said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Wisconsin, we continue to compete and do things with maybe less resources than some other competitors have, and we\u2019ve been doing it that way for a long, long time, long before all this really had the curtain pulled on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
With two players earning more than $2 million, Iowa provided significant resources in McCollum\u2019s first season, but the Hawkeyes still fell far below what many traditional powers pay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the arms race is important,\u201d McCollum said. \u201cYou do have to embrace somewhat of what\u2019s happening and make sure that you are ready to compete with that, and if you don\u2019t compete with it, then you\u2019re going to fall behind, unfortunately. And you just got to embrace it, and hope that eventually they\u2019ll come up with some sort of rules and guidelines and salary caps and all those things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The vibes are different around Big Ten men\u2019s basketball this spring, both individually and collectively. Michigan ended the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,1411,68477,74884,122007,1418,712,713,87334,714,120281,709,1219,1218,1409,103557,85,1415,1228,717,1410],"class_list":["post-708206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-illinois-fighting-illini","tag-indiana-hoosiers","tag-iowa-hawkeyes","tag-maryland-terrapins","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-michigan-wolverines","tag-minnesota-golden-gophers","tag-nebraska-cornhuskers","tag-northwestern-wildcats","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-oregon-ducks","tag-penn-state-nittany-lions","tag-purdue-boilermakers","tag-rutgers-scarlet-knights","tag-sports","tag-ucla-bruins","tag-usc-trojans","tag-washington-huskies","tag-wisconsin-badgers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}