The 2026-27 Iowa basketball schedule is loaded up early, and then the back half of Big Ten play looks like a grind.
That’s the shape of the Hawkeyes’ regular season now that the conference has released its dates. Iowa opens Nov. 3 against Lipscomb and closes March 6 with an Elite Eight rematch against Illinois, with a lot of interesting work in between as Ben McCollum enters his second season in charge.
The biggest change from a year ago is the non-conference slate. Iowa is set to face five high-major opponents - Virginia Tech, Creighton, Xavier, Iowa State and Alabama - nearly double the number it played in McCollum’s first season. Four of those games are in Iowa, but only one will be at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
McCollum laid out the thinking behind that setup in July.
“I’d love to have them in Carver, but people don’t want to do home and homes anymore, for the most part,” McCollum said in July. “It’s hard to schedule. So, my thought was this: I can go to an MTE (multi-team event) in California, an MTE in Hawaii, an MTE in the Bahamas, which would be probably more fun for me and my family.
“Or, I can do it in the state of Iowa, the exact MTE that we would do somewhere else. Our fans get to come watch it.
They watch it, they like the product and now we fill Carver for the Big Ten. So that was kind of the theory behind it.
We’ll see if it works. Hopefully, it doesn’t spoil our fans and make them lazy for coming to Carver.
‘I already saw them in Des Moines.’ So that was my thought on it.
We’ll see if it pans out.”
Whatever the venue, the Hawkeyes are clearly stepping into a tougher non-conference test than they had last season.
The opening months also tilt heavily toward home. From Nov. 24 through Jan.
9, Iowa plays only two games away from Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and just one of those is a true road game. The lone road trip in that span is Dec. 1 at Purdue, followed by a Dec. 21 game against Alabama in Des Moines.
That stretch gives Iowa a real chance to settle in, especially with four of its first five Big Ten games coming at home. The first three conference games after the New Year are also at Carver, so the Hawkeyes get a long early runway in front of their own crowd.
The early schedule doesn’t exactly allow for a soft landing, though. Iowa gets two lower-profile games to start, then jumps straight into a run that includes Virginia Tech, Creighton and Xavier. Virginia Tech and Creighton are neutral-site games in Iowa, while Xavier is the first true road game of the season and may be the toughest of the three.
After that, the Hawkeyes catch a brief break with UMBC and Prairie View A&M before conference play brings a demanding opening stretch. Purdue on Dec. 1 is about as difficult as road openers get, Indiana visits on Dec. 7, and Iowa State follows three days later in the Cy-Hawk rivalry.
Later on, the calendar flips and the travel starts stacking up.
From Jan. 12 to Feb. 24, Iowa plays eight of 12 conference games on the road.
In other words, the schedule turns from cozy to punishing in a hurry. The Hawkeyes will spend only four of those 12 games at home, and in the modern Big Ten that means long trips and little margin for error.
That matters because Iowa had some rough road moments last season, including losses to Penn State and Maryland, two teams that finished at the bottom of the conference standings. McCollum’s team is looking for much better results away from home in year two.
The road-heavy middle of the league schedule includes Rutgers, Nebraska, Ohio State, USC, UCLA, Northwestern, Michigan and Wisconsin, with only a few home stops mixed in.
And there are a couple of stretches that jump off the page.
First comes Ohio State on Jan. 26, Nebraska on Jan.
30, USC on Feb. 3 and UCLA on Feb. 6.
Three of those four are on the road, and the one home game still comes against a Nebraska team that could be plenty capable.
Then there’s the run from Feb. 16 through Feb. 24: Michigan State at home, then Michigan and Wisconsin on the road. Michigan State is usually in the Big Ten mix under Tom Izzo, Michigan still has talent despite the departure of coach Dusty May and the news that five-star freshman Brandon McCoy Jr. will miss the entire season after suffering an ACL injury, and Wisconsin is never a simple road trip.
For now, it’s all on paper. Schedules can look one way in September and feel completely different by February. Nebraska is the reminder here; last year the Cornhuskers were picked 15th in the USA TODAY Network Big Ten preseason poll and ended up tied for the second-best record in league play.
Still, the broad picture is clear. Iowa has a stronger non-conference schedule, a home-heavy start to Big Ten play and then a brutal road-heavy finish. The Hawkeyes will know plenty about themselves by the time March arrives.
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