UConn facing non-conference scheduling crunch next season
UConn facing non-conference scheduling crunch next season
Over the last two weeks, UConn has gotten a much-needed break from conference play with trips to Tennessee and South Carolina. Instead of comfortably beating a Big East team in front of a small crowd at a high school sized gym, the Huskies had a chance to go into hostile environments and take on projected top seeds in the NCAA Tournament.
As a program, they’ve made a habit of scheduling marquee matchups at this point in the calendar. Per longtime beat writer Carl Adamec, UConn has played at least one non-conference game in February every season since 1998 with just three exceptions. Geno Auriemma views those contests as an important tune-ups ahead of the NCAA Tournament.
“I believe that they're necessary for a lot of reasons and they're helpful for a lot of reasons,” he explained ahead of the trip to South Carolina. “It shows you what your warts are, what your faults are, what your strengths are.”
There is a downside, though. With 11 schools in the Big East, each team gets a pair of byes during the course of conference play. Instead of using those breaks in the schedule to rest up, the Huskies fill them with these high-profile contests.
As a result, UConn will go 10 weeks — from Dec. 29 to March 2 — with games every 3-5 days. That adds up.
“I always try to point out, always, that majority of the teams don't really necessarily like playing these games. I don't either,” Auriemma said. “I think playing two of these games in February when every other team is getting a bye, getting three or four days off that weekend (is difficult).”
The problem will only get worse next season when the Big East shifts from an 18-game schedule back to a 20-game, double round robin slate. That will make it even tougher to fit in non-conference matchups once league play begins.
So while Auriemma understands the value of these February showdowns — both for his program and the sport at large — something has to break.
“The TV networks want you to play these games at this time of the year because it's a big non-conference game that attracts a lot of attention and gets a lot of people watching. So I get that part,” he said. “Does it come at a great time for both South Carolina and for Connecticut? Probably not, but you gotta do it.”
“When we go to 20 conference games next year, will it be as easy as it has been to fill in this many non-conference games of the magnitude that we had this year? … Certainly, it's going to get a little more difficult and some decisions are going to have to be made about where you go.”
With the new Big East schedule, UConn will have room for nine non-conference matchups and a multi-team event (think the Baha Mar Championship or Cayman Islands Classic from the last couple of seasons). At the moment, the Huskies have six slots filled: Tennessee and Ohio State (reported by CT Insider) at home, USF and USC on the road, then Louisville (Armed Forces Classic in Germany) and Iowa (Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden) at neutral venues.
That leaves three openings.
UConn has played a power conference team at Mohegan Sun Arena in 10 of the last 11 seasons (the lone exception being the Covid-impacted 2020-21 campaign), so that fills one. If the Huskies add a homecoming game in San Diego for Ice Brady when they travel to USC, that takes another.
Then there’s Notre Dame. Though the four-year series wrapped up this season, Auriemma wants to keep the rivalry going.
“I'm sure we will (renew),” he said back in December. “Games like this, I don't ever want it to go away. I mean, I hope Niele (Ivey) feels the same way. I love this game — win or lose.”
Whether or not UConn fills out its schedule with those three games exactly or does something completely different, it appears that South Carolina will be the biggest casualty of the Big East’s schedule increase.
Although the two schools have met in the regular season for 11 straight seasons, Auriemma hinted that the series won’t continue in 2025-26. When asked whether he wants to keep the Gamecocks on the schedule, the coach danced around the question.
“In a real world, I’d like to keep all of them but there has to be enough time so that we don't have to do two of these in February,” he said.
That could just be a product of UConn’s shorter non-conference slate. Or maybe the Huskies want to mix it up. It’s not as if these two teams routinely produce drama-filled contests. Instead, just two of the 15 meetings have been decided by single-digits.
“We've always been pretty good at trying to spread our brand around, not get stuck just playing regional type games,” he said. “So we've got the USC thing, right? That's a that's a new one. You want to try to keep adding new ones.”
The burden shouldn’t fall exclusively on UConn, though. Ideally, the Huskies wouldn’t have to shoehorn non-conference games into their bye weeks. The Big East could also alleviate some of that pressure by scheduling some conference matchups earlier in the calendar.
The AAC did just that for UConn back in the 2019-20 season by setting its conference opener for the third game of the season. The Huskies then played five non-league contests — Baylor, Tennessee, Team USA, Oregon and South Carolina — after the new year.
Though that proved to be far too many, which Auriemma admitted at the time, the conference still helped them make it happen. The Big East should do the same, though it remains to be seen whether it actually will.
“Sometimes the timing is just not great,” Auriemma said.
However it all shakes out, it seems that UConn’s non-conference schedule might look different next season.
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