Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang talks about recruiting
Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang talks about recruiting during a Catbacker Tour event last month in Manhattan.
Kansas State basketball’s Big 12 schedule always has been a grind. Now it’s an even longer grind.
With the conference expanding to 16 schools — welcome Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah; so long to Oklahoma and Texas — the Big 12 announced Thursday that it will grow its league slate by two games to 20 for the 2024-25 season. Each team will face five opponents both home and away, five at home only and the other five on the road.
Dates, tipoff times and television information will be released at a later date. For K-State, the 20-game league schedule is the largest in school history.
K-State’s one locked-in home-and-home rivalry remains the Sunflower Showdown with Kansas. The Wildcats also will play Iowa State and Oklahoma State twice again, along with Arizona State and Cincinnati.
Combine that with visits from Arizona, Colorado, Houston, Texas Tech and West Virginia, and it offers an impressive lineup of conference home tests for Bramlage Coliseum. The road-only opponents are Baylor, Brigham Young, Central Florida, TCU and Utah.
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Some early preseason polls have KU, Iowa State, Houston, Arizona and Baylor all ranked in the top 10 nationally.
The Wildcats have played Kansas home-and-away every year since 1912, and at least once each season since 1907, with the 301 meetings the sixth-most played rivalry in Division I. K-State also has faced Iowa State both at home and on the road each year since 1918.
The Big 12 played a 16-game conference schedule from its inception in 1996 to 2011, then jumped to an 18-game double-round robin slate when it shrunk to 10 members in 2011. It remained at 18 games last year, its one season with 14 schools, but with only five home-and-home matchups.
Arne Green is based in Salina and covers Kansas State University sports for the Gannett network. He can be reached at agreen@gannett.com or on Twitter at @arnegreen.