Last summer, Illinois coach Brad Underwood’s phone was ringing off the hook.
From Michigan’s Dusty May to Ohio State’s Jake Diebler, coaches across college basketball wanted to pry into the most lopsided loss the Illini suffered last season: 110-67 at the hands of Duke and Cooper Flagg.
But it wasn’t the result that coaches were calling about.
Instead, it was the timing of the game — late February, one of the latest dates for a nonconference game in recent memory — and its neutral-site location, at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
“Would you still play it?” May remembered asking Underwood, conscious of the result. “And he said, 100 times out of 100.”
That game signaled a trend that’s quickly sweeping the sport: marquee college programs interrupting the routine of conference play weeks before Selection Sunday, as coaches look for any avenue to sharpen their NCAA Tournament resumes. Last weekend, Louisville (from the ACC) defeated Baylor (from the Big 12) in Fort Worth, Texas. The same day, Virginia (also from the ACC) outlasted Ohio State (from the Big Ten) in the Nashville Hoops Showdown in Tennessee. This weekend features the biggest, baddest nonconference clash of them all: No. 1 Michigan and No. 3 Duke squaring off in Washington, D.C., in a game that easily could be a Final Four preview and has sky-high ticket prices.
Historically, college teams have played all their nonconference games first, in November and December, before pivoting to league play — though there have been a few outliers (including ESPN’s BracketBusters, a series of February games between mid-majors, and the Big 12-SEC Challenge, which was played in late January from 2016 through 2022).
The new wave is driven by coaches who want their teams to be tested like they could be in fast-approaching March Madness, playing unfamiliar opponents outside of the cushy confines of college campuses.
“You’re prepping for a different style, a different conference,” said Virginia coach Ryan Odom. “You kind of have that NCAA Tournament feel to it.”
In conference play — especially with long-tenured coaches like Underwood, now in his ninth season at Illinois — scouting opponents is as much about a team’s specific personnel as a program’s year-over-year style. Big 12 teams, for instance, know that Kelvin Sampson and Houston are going to blitz ball screens. ACC foes have come to expect that Duke and Jon Scheyer will have tremendous positional length. And anyone in the Big Ten can tell you about the physicality of Michigan State’s defense under Tom Izzo.
But in the NCAA Tournament, teams have short turnarounds to game plan for opponents they’re much less familiar with. Simulating that scouting process in-season is as beneficial for coaches as it is for players.
“The change of pace,” Diebler said. “You get a chance to do that in February, get a rep of that in preparation for the postseason.”
The benefits go beyond prepping for the tournament, though, to helping teams qualify and improve their seed lines in the first place.
Conference realignment has led to super-sized leagues, but watered-down league schedules — expanded to accommodate these sprawling conferences — can actually prove damaging to some teams trying to bolster their resumes.
Take Duke last season. The Blue Devils, who went on to make the Final Four, were one of the sport’s best teams all season… but played in a conference, the ACC, that sent only three other teams to March Madness — none of which were top-four seeds. Accordingly, Duke went 19-1 in league play, regularly beating up on bad teams that didn’t enhance its tournament resume. The Illinois game, though, gave Scheyer’s squad another crucial Quad 1 opportunity, which the NCAA Tournament selection committee values when dishing out seeds.
Actually planning that game required cooperation with the ACC, though. Before last season, in the summer of 2024, Duke requested that the league give the Blue Devils one of their two bye weeks in February, so that Scheyer could schedule a nonconference clash. The ACC agreed, allowing Duke in turn to fill one of its bye weekends with the Illinois game.
And although the ACC is much-improved this season — the conference received eight postseason berths in The Athletic’s latest bracket projection, double last season’s total — Scheyer has said he still anticipates his program playing February nonconference games most every season for the foreseeable future.
“The lessons you come away with,” Scheyer said, “completely outweigh the risk-reward when you think about that game.”
It’s also no coincidence that some leagues, like the ACC, have reduced their number of annual conference games in lockstep. This season, ACC teams are back to playing only 18 conference contests, compared to 20 last season.
These late-season games also ensure that marquee opportunities exist once a team has had some time to figure itself out.
“You’re supposed to be playing your best this time of year,” said Mark Starsiak, vice president of sports at Intersport, which organized the Virginia-Ohio State game, “versus playing some of these games in November and December, when you may not be as fresh or guys are still jelling together, in the era of building a new roster every year.”
And while what transpires on the court is obviously what matters most with these late-season nonconference games, there are off-court realities, too.
With the college football and NFL calendars extending further and further into what has traditionally been college hoops’ marquee viewership window — the college football championship, for example, isn’t until Jan. 25 next year — there’s an additional squeeze on college basketball to capitalize on its narrowing moment in the spotlight.
There are still plenty of marquee conference games, but yearly roster turnover makes it harder to predict those, and harder for leagues to schedule accordingly.
Anytime brands like Virginia, Louisville, Duke and Michigan are involved, though?
“The ratings show that they’re well received by the fans,” May said. “I remember being a young kid, being glued to the TV to watch a cross-country matchup between two historic programs.”
That combination of brand value and television exposure is especially paramount in the revenue-sharing era, in which schools are desperate for additional revenue anywhere they can find it. “With NIL and things like that,” May added, “we’re constantly trying to generate revenue for our program.”
As The Athletic reported in November, the goal for schools participating in neutral-site nonconference games is to come as close to a home gate as possible. According to The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State received $150,000 for participating in the Nashville Hoops Showdown against Virginia last weekend, with additional revenue possible based on net ticket sales. Meanwhile, Louisville received $300,000 for playing Baylor on Valentine’s Day, according to The Louisville Courier-Journal.
“Our pitch and angle from the business perspective is that more often than not, these games, these windows, can have a little more upside for everyone involved,” Starsiak said. “Football’s over. The focus is on college basketball from a fan standpoint, meaning eyeballs on TV. Meaning, people going to buy tickets and attend events, to also sponsors and brands … working on some of their scheduling and programmatic stuff leading into March Madness.”
No surprise, then, that Intersport is already in discussions with multiple programs to put on more of these games next year, Starsiak said. So these February nonconference clashes aren’t going away anytime soon.
If anything, this is only the beginning.